A Regional Great Transformation: U.S. Contractualization of Citizenship and Crimmigration Regime

摘要

A "zero-tolerance" immigration policy is an integral part of the United States' political economy. The immigrant "question" is politicized, as its push and pull factors vanish in the midst of xenophobia. This article provides an institutional perspective to study contemporary immigration. It approaches the U.S. immigrant "question" from a regional Great Transformation perspective by interpolating the ideas of labor commodification and citizenship's contractualization. The shift towards criminalizing unauthorized immigrants illustrates the commodifying path to obtain citizenship. Immigrant struggles unfold a Double Movement. A social force that recreates an alternative notion of citizenship, in an attempt to re-embed the economy into its social fabric by emphasizing the need to reconstruct the social contract's non-contractual nature.