Displacement and stigma: The social-psychological crisis of the deportee

Abstract

The phenomenon of forced repatriation for non-citizens has grown exponentially since the passing of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and the Patriot Act of 2001. This development is the `natural' result of the three wars on the globalized `other': the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, and the war on the immigrant (see Brotherton and Kretsedemas, 2008). Based on five years of ethnographic study (2002—7) with Dominican deportees in both the Dominican Republic and the United States we set out to answer two questions: how do Dominican deportees fare when they return to their `homeland' after living most of their lives in the United States? And how are deportees reacted to by different levels of Dominican society after being labeled by the public media as criminals and as anti-social elements? In our analysis of the data we found that the crisis of subjectivity of the deportee hinged around two prominent themes: the twin notions of place and displacement and the experience of stigmatization. We concluded that almost regardless of how long the deportee had lived in the United States the stain of a criminal past on his or her identity was permanent. Furthermore, the majority felt that despite their `freedom' they were still `doing time' in a world to which flock thousands helped by these same deportees to get the most out of their (tourist) time (Kempadoo, 1999).