Part Two: 2015 Michael Kearney Lecture STEPHEN, Lynn (U Oregon) Creating Pre-Emptive Suspects: National Security, Border Defense and Immigration Policy, 1980-Present

Michael Kearney Lecture STEPHEN, Lynn (U Oregon) Creating Pre-Emptive Suspects: National Security, Border Defense and Immigration Policy, 1980-Present

 

COMMENTATORS: CRUZ-TORRES, Maria L. (Arizona State U), HOLMES, Seth M. (UCBerkeley)

 

ABSTRACT: 

STEPHEN, Lynn (U Oregon) Creating Pre-Emptive Suspects: National Security, Border Defense and Immigration Policy, 1980-Present. U.S. trade, foreign, and immigration policy over the past fifty years play a large role in contemporary patterns of immigration to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America. This talk will provide a big-picture analysis of patterns of migration as well as touch individual experiences.  Topics will include: U.S. support of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments in civil wars during the 1970s and 1980s and promotion of policies of militarization since then; U.S. drug war policy which pushed cocaine and other drug transshipment to Mexico from the Caribbean and then into Central America; deportation of Salvadoran gang members from the U.S. to El Salvador; promotion of free trade agreements which greatly increased economic inequality and poverty in the region; the construction of border walls which pushed migration traffic into desert corridors controlled by organized crime; the lack of any comprehensive immigration policy in the U.S. since the mid-1980s, the restructuring of the U.S. economy as a service economy with a high demand for immigrant labor; the importance of family unification as a driver of migration. (TH-122)

 

Session took place in Pittsburgh, PA at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology in March 2015.