Borderland Circuitry - by Ana Muñiz (Paperback)

About the Book

"Political discourse on immigration in the United States has largely focused on what is most visible, including border walls and detention centers, while the invisible information systems that undergird immigration enforcement have garnered less attention. Tracking the evolution of various surveillance-related systems since the 1980s, Borderland Circuitry investigates how the deployment of this information infrastructure has shaped immigration enforcement practices. Ana Muäniz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muäniz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands. Diving deep into a select group of information systems, Borderland Circuitry reveals how those with legal and political power deploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization"--

Book Synopsis

Political discourse on immigration in the United States has largely focused on what is most visible, including border walls and detention centers, while the invisible information systems that undergird immigration enforcement have garnered less attention. Tracking the evolution of various surveillance-related systems since the 1980s, Borderland Circuitry investigates how the deployment of this information infrastructure has shaped immigration enforcement practices. Ana Muñiz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muñiz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands. Diving deep into a select group of information systems, Borderland Circuitry reveals how those with legal and political power deploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization.

From the Back Cover

"Borderland Circuitry provides a groundbreaking description and analysis of US immigration surveillance databases and a sobering assessment of the costs of our intrusive, racially discriminatory enforcement system. Using research methods that force governmental transparency, Ana Muñiz exposes the insufficiency of technocratic reforms and convincingly calls for an abolitionist stance toward borders."--Jennifer Marie Chacón, coauthor of Immigration Law and Social Justice

"Engaging and well-written. Muñiz offers novel insights into the use of databases and technology to facilitate immigration enforcement and surveillance by federal immigration authorities."--Bryce Clayton Newell, Police Visibility: Privacy, Surveillance, and the False Promise of Body-Worn Cameras

"A powerful, important book. Weaving together careful research and analysis, eloquent personal reflections, and incisive critique, Muñiz examines the hidden ways in which a sprawling network of digital technologies has fundamentally reshaped gang enforcement and immigration control practices in the United States. The book's urgent call to reassess these developments in light of their devastating human costs deserves wide attention."--Anil Kalhan, Professor of Law, Drexel University

Review Quotes

"Borderland Circuitry's strength is in Muñiz's approach to detail and carefulness. . . . The book speaks to scholars and students interested in migration studies, digital surveillance studies, and ethnographical research on border and gang databases in the United States."-- "Border Criminologies"

"Borderland spaces, and the people who are navigating the violence of bordering processes within them, come alive in the pages of this worthwhile book."-- "Jotwell: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots)"

About the Author

Ana Muñiz is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Police, Power, and the Production of Racial Boundaries.