“Beyond Walls and Cages”: Liberating the Immigration Debate

Unlike most treatments of the topic, the book questions the basic concepts and considers immigration policy historically and in relation to incarceration policies and neoliberal economics. Most importantly, the contributors discuss ways to talk about these issues with a broader public.
     
By David L. Wilson, Upside Down World
March 5, 2013

Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis. Jenna M. Loyd, Matt Mitchelson, and Andrew Burridge, editors. University of Georgia Press, 2012.  Paperback, 344 pages, $24.95.

Immigration reform is back on the U.S. political agenda this year, and with it the mainstream’s carefully scripted “immigration debate.” Once again we hear about the need to “secure our borders” and “enforce our laws”; once again, commentators endlessly repeat the word “illegal.” Through it all we act as if terms like “border” and “illegal” express self-evident and eternal truths on which we all agree.

This year, though, the politicians seem a little worried. [...]

Read the full article:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/4165-beyond-walls-and-cages-liberating-the-immigration-debate