THE SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE OF THE CRIME-IMMIGRATION NEXUS: MIGRANT MYTHOLOGIES IN THE AMERICAS

Abstract

For nearly a century, criminological research in the United States has debated implicitly and explicitly whether a link exists between crime and immigration. Research to date has tended to turn on a series of questions that parallel the public debate on this issue. The main questions that have been asked are (1) whether immigrants commit more or less crime than individuals born in the United States; (2) if individual, structural, or cultural differences exist, how might we understand them; and (3) how might these different trajectories unfold over time. We now have some answers, and we need to do more to advance theoretical and substantive research on this issue. Through our analysis in this essay, we demonstrate the importance of contextualizing research on crime and immigration as part of a broader sociological analysis of the state. Building on the work of Adbelmalek Sayad (2004), a scholar of Algerian migration to France, our work takes the view that studies of immigration must be attuned equally to the dynamics of emigration that lead to it (2004:1–6). As a result, research on emigration–immigration requires a focusing of our attention on the social trajectories of migrants, including the challenges they experience, the “capital of origin” they bring with them, and their ability to convert or reproduce that capital successfully in these new locales (Sayad, 2004:170). Most centrally, Sayad demonstrates that we must acknowledge the role of the state in setting the terms of the crime–immigration debate; as we discuss in this essay, the continued and baseless identification of a crime– immigration nexus reveals a discomfort of the state with the immigrant condition, which is an official distrust that is reflected implicitly in scholarly and public discourse (2004:278–285). Indeed, the crime–immigration nexus often is the prime rhetoric through which this state distrust becomes