They watch for color: mixed-status couples experience with the police

ABSTRACT

This research qualitatively examines experiences with the police for 42 interracial mixed-status couples, living or originating mainly from the Southern United States. Race-based policing operates within a structure of racist nativism where white skin is a marker of U.S. citizenship, and brown skin is an indication of being foreign-born. Law enforcement at all levels, including the local level, situated their attention toward Latino immigrant men, especially those perceived as working-class, when compared to white U.S. citizen wives. The penalties for racial profiling included family strain through detention and deportation of Latin-American born men. In addition to human rights violations for undocumented Latino immigrants, U.S. citizens are serving as collateral damage in an already broken immigration system that racially profiles Latino immigrant men. Couples’ precariousness situations contest the rhetoric that police are only protecting citizens’ national security. Framed by racist nativism, the findings have implications for anti-oppressive, evidence-based immigration policy.

KEYWORDS:

• Racial profiling
• racist nativism
• mixed-status couples
• immigration
• deportation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Georgia Southern University.

Notes on contributors

April M. Schueths

April M. Schueths, Ph.D., LCSW is an associate professor at Georgia Southern University. Within the broad area of social inequality, her research focuses on the intersection of race with family, education, and health. Much of her work focuses on couples and families where she explores the contrast between public perceptions and private realities.  She is co-editor of Living Together, Living Apart: Mixed-Status Families and US Immigration Policy (2015). She has peer-reviewed articles published in Children and Youth Services Review, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Latino Studies, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Critical Sociology, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Race, Education, and Inequality, Journal of Social Issues, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Sociological Spectrum, Teaching in Higher Education, and, The American Sociologist.