Apartheid Policing: examining the US migrant labour system through a South African Lens

Abstract

This article draws a parallel between the Apartheid regime in South Africa and the post-IRCA immigration regime in the USA. I argue that both regimes were organised around Apartheid Policing, which may be defined as a legal process consisting of three mutually reinforcing mechanisms: differentiation of migrants into non-citizen insiders with legal residence rights and non-citizen outsiders without them; stabilisation of migrants as permanent or long-term residents, enabling the growth of the migrant workforce; and marginalisation of migrants as politically vulnerable outsiders, including exploitation at work. But the two regimes were supported by different political and ideological apparatuses. While placing a disproportionate burden on Latino migrants, the post-IRCA immigration regime differed from the Apartheid regime in that it was not organised around an explicit racial hierarchy, and offered non-citizens a greater array of rights. As a result, Apartheid Policing under the post-IRCA immigration regime is potentially more politically sustainable.

Keywords::

• migration
• labour
• citizenship
• policing
• race

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Michael Burawoy and Fidan Elcioglu for providing inspiration to pursue this project. I am also grateful to Shannon Gleeson, Abigail Andrews, Calvin Morrill, Kevin Escudero, Jaclyn Cock, Karl von Holdt, Philip Bonner, Paul Stewart, two anonymous reviewers, the Berkeley Dissertation Group, and participants in two seminars at the University of Witwatersrand and the Berkeley Empirical Legal Studies Program for valuable feedback on previous versions.

Notes

^1. An important exception is Burawoy's (1976) comparative analysis of migrant mine workers in South Africa and migrant farm workers in California, which examines aspects of migrant labour control. While a useful reference for the current study, this article misses key features of the Apartheid state that are especially relevant beyond the mining sector, and does not appreciate the significant transformation of the US migrant labour system between the late 1960s and the 1980s. Burawoy's analysis is thus most effective at highlighting similarities between the pre-Apartheid regime in South Africa and the pre-IRCA regime in the USA. For detailed critiques and reconstructions of Burawoy's (1976) comparative analysis, see Paret (2011, 2014).

^2. My focus here is on the group officially classified by the Apartheid state as ‘black’, ‘African’, and ‘native’, as distinct from those who were officially classified as ‘Indian’ or ‘Coloured’. While in some instances the term ‘black’ was used to encompass all non-white groups in South Africa, including ‘Indian’ and ‘Coloured’, it was most commonly used to refer to those officially classified as ‘Africans’ or ‘natives’, who were subject to the harshest treatment under Apartheid.

^3. Other factors contributing to the demise of the Bracero program included both declining interest from growers, due to the mechanisation of cotton and new restrictions on how braceros could be used, and growing resistance from workers, including both braceros and native-born workers (Calavita 1992; Bardacke 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Funding and workspace from the South African Research Chair in Social Change at the University of Johannesburg enabled me to complete the project.