[Via H-ItalianDiaspora we have the following announcement.]
Immigration Control and Resistance: Historicizing the Present Moment
A Special Issue of the Journal of American Ethnic History
Guest Editors:
Chantel Rodríguez, University of Maryland, College Park
Andy Urban, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
The 2016 presidential election foregrounded public debates about immigration, national security, and belonging in ways that scholars have struggled to understand. The hardline stances on immigration emanating from the new presidential administration-from Executive Orders aimed at suspending migration from designated majority-Muslim countries to the proposal to "build a wall" on the US-Mexico border-represent to many a daunting expression of how the federal government plans on exercising its power to conduct immigrant surveillance, detention, and deportation.
In this environment, how the United States came to be a "gatekeeping nation" is again a topic of considerable importance. This special issue of the JAEH seeks to historicize the current political moment by examining how the immigration enforcement apparatus developed; how immigration controls functioned during previous eras of enforcement; how immigrant communities and activists have organized to contest and resist such efforts in the past; and how the governance of national borders informed immigration policy. We also seek submissions that historicize Americans and the United States government's attitudes toward refugees, and address how asylum policies in the past have either conformed to or challenged restrictions and controls on migrants already in place.
The editors encourage submissions that examine immigration policies through the multiple frameworks required to understand border surveillance; and that examine the politics of immigration control as both involving federal, state, and municipal actors-as well as social workers, legal advocates, and community and religious leaders-working to disparate ends. Articles that shed light on the historical origins of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and its predecessors, detention facilities and prosecutorial strategies used to remove immigrants are also encouraged.
Lastly, the guest editors welcome submissions that examine cultural responses to restrictive immigration policies and enforcement practices, which historicize how immigrant and ethnic publics have used art, literature, music, and other mediums as modes of criticism
