Out‐laws: Deportees, Desire, and “The Law”

On the durability and the decomposition of citizenship: the social logics of forced return migration in Cape Verde

“…Therefore, some Cape Verdean DPs continue to believe in the juridical path for imagining their return to the USA, despite the fact that no deportee included in my research knew of a single case of a legal re-entry into the USA after a prior deportation. However, as Nathalie Peutz observed among Somalian deportees (Peutz 2007), when comparing rights and benefits of Cape Verdean and US citizens, DPs in Cape Verde valued and praised the USA as a 'country of law and justice', where every citizen could access legal rights and protection. Although prior to their arrests the majority of them simply ignored the legal background of their stay in the USA, during their times in prison they became aware of 'the law' as a decisive regulatory framework for migratory populations.…”

“Why are we put in prison?”– Independent Guatemalan minor migrants’ experiences of transnational childhoods

“…US, Mexican, and Guatemalan state approaches largely refer to those children and youth who migrate independently of an immediate relative as "unaccompanied migrant minors." In the face of hegemonic practices of categorizing independent child migrants, questions of which term to use seem to be crucial, since legal definitions reify and reproduce categorizations inherent to specific migration and deportation regimes (Bhabha, 2008;Orgocka, 2012;Peutz, 2007;Seugling, 2004;Uehling, 2008). Following the definition of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, "unaccompanied children are those who are separated from both parents and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible to do so" (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, (UNHCR), 1994, p. 121).…”

“…Unfortunately, I did not manage to conduct formal interviews with any of the girls present during the investigation; this is to be kept in mind in order to prevent perpetuating a gendered bias commonly found in migration research (see Clark-Kazak, 2012, on the need for "further study of gender relations" in the context of independent child migration). 10 All interviews were conducted at the shelter, as the minors were still involved in the deportation process and not allowed to leave the institution (see Peutz, 2007; on ethical concerns of researching "deportees" and Punch, 2002, on the ethics of research with children). Furthermore, all interviews were conducted in Spanish.…”

The Queer Politics of Migration: Reflections on “Illegality” and Incorrigibility

“…As insightfully suggested by an anonymous reviewer of this essay, this latter formulation potentially introduces some additional ambiguity, such that the slogan has come to be deployed on behalf of "animal rights" and other concerns of deep ecology movements, dedicated to transcending a human-centric politics altogether. 14 For a related discussion, specifically regarding deportees' equivocal desire for the law, see Peutz (2007). 15 I am indebted to Ayça Çubukçu and Engin Isin for pushing me, in their respective and discrepant ways, to address this problem more fully.…”