Thursday, October 2, 2025 12:00pm - 1:30pm
There are approximately 150 detention facilities across the United States, with plans to construct more in the future. Though the law maintains that detention is "non-punitive," facilities function as total institutions where almost all daily activities are overseen by authorities, and those detained are not guaranteed legal representation. Based on participant observations and multiple interviews with 41 immigrants in detention from Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean collected at two detention centers, I show how legal processes imposed by the state exclude certain immigrant populations from due process, societal membership, and participation. Specifically, I examine how the state makes immigrants illegible, bureaucratically transforming victims into suspects, compounding their misery through the everyday toll of detention, and depriving them of resources which undermines their cases and often leads to deportation. The detention regime constitutes a violence of illegibility brought down by the state that is not fully explored by existing frameworks.
Rocío Rosales is Associate Professor of Sociology and former Associate Dean of Faculty Development at the University of California Irvine. She researches and teaches in the areas of international migration, immigrant detention, race/ethnicity, and qualitative methods. She is the author of Fruteros: Street Vending, Illegality, and Ethnic Community in Los Angeles (2020, UC Press).
This is an accessible event. If you have accessibility needs and need reasonable accommodations to participate they will be provided. For more information, and to make a request, please contact Ezra Bristow at ezrabristow@berkeley.edu