Geographies of migration II: The racial-spatial politics of immigration

Abstract

This second report on geographies of migration examines scholarship on the racial-spatial politics of immigration in the Global North, which have emerged as important issues in the context of rising nativism, the criminalization of immigrants, and the racist exclusion of immigrants from polities. The report first highlights research that has revealed the entanglements of race, immigration law, and citizenship before turning to ‘new immigrant destinations’ as central contemporary sites where race and belonging are hashed out. The following section examines the effects of anti-immigrant policing and racist politics on the health and well-being of immigrants. Activism and immigrant youth mobilization that challenge anti-immigrant politics and racist exclusions from citizenship are at the center of the arguments I discuss in the penultimate section. I conclude by calling for more geographic analysis of the racial-spatial politics of immigration, as well as of the activism that challenges such politics.