The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant "Illegality”

TY - JOUR

T1 - The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant "Illegality”

AU - De Genova, Nicholas

PY - 2004/7

Y1 - 2004/7

N2 - Mexican migration to the United States is distinguished by a seeming paradox that is seldom examined: while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the US as Mexico, major changes in US immigration law since 1965 have created ever more severe restrictions on "legal" migration from Mexico in particular. This paper delineates the historical specificity of Mexican migration as it has come to be located in the legal economy of the US nation-state, and thereby constituted as an object of the law. More precisely, this paper examines the history of changes in US immigration law through the specific lens of how these revisions with respect to the Western Hemisphere, and thus, all of Latin America, have had a distinctive and disproportionate impact upon Mexicans in particular.

AB - Mexican migration to the United States is distinguished by a seeming paradox that is seldom examined: while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the US as Mexico, major changes in US immigration law since 1965 have created ever more severe restrictions on "legal" migration from Mexico in particular. This paper delineates the historical specificity of Mexican migration as it has come to be located in the legal economy of the US nation-state, and thereby constituted as an object of the law. More precisely, this paper examines the history of changes in US immigration law through the specific lens of how these revisions with respect to the Western Hemisphere, and thus, all of Latin America, have had a distinctive and disproportionate impact upon Mexicans in particular.

U2 - 10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600085

DO - 10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600085

M3 - Article

VL - 2

SP - 160

EP - 185

JO - Latino Studies

JF - Latino Studies

IS - 2

M1 - N/A

ER -