Projects

The overarching themes in my scholarly work are racism, capitalism, and the law.
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My research can be broken down into six major projects under these themes. I describe these projects in the side tab. You can click through the tabs below to view the publications in each project, or view all of them on this page.

My Research Projects

  • Die Forschung zu Abschiebungen verdeutlicht, dass diese leidvoll sind und schwerwiegende Folgen für Betroffene und ihre Familienangehörigen haben. Es gibt jedoch relativ wenige Studien darüber, wie sich die Erfahrungen zwischen verschiedenen nationalen Kontexten unterscheiden. Ausgehend von 81 Interviews mit dominikanischen und brasilianischen Abgeschobenen argumentieren wir, dass ihre Reintegration von Makro-, Meso- und Mikrofaktoren beeinflusst wird. Darunter zählen individuelle Merkmale wie kulturelle Anpassung und Humankapital (mikro), nationale und transnationale Bindungen (meso) sowie soziale und wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen, unter denen Abgeschobene aufgenommen werden (makro). Das Forschungsdesign des vorliegenden Artikels arbeitet diese Faktoren heraus und zeigt, wie sie voneinander abhängen. Je ungünstiger sich der Aufnahmekontext auf die Reintegration auswirkt, desto relevanter werden Faktoren auf der Meso- und Mikroebene. Dominikanische Abgeschobene werden von Regierung und Gesellschaft stigmatisiert und sind daher mehr auf transnationale Bindungen und ihre eigene Resilienz angewiesen. Im Gegensatz dazu stoßen brasilianische Deportierte auf einen weniger feindlichen Kontext, was bedeutet, dass sich Personen mit lokalen Bindungen und Humankapital einfacher reintegrieren. Scholarship on deportation makes it clear that deportations are painful and have severe consequences for deportees and their family members. However, there is relatively little scholarship on how post-deportation experiences vary from one national context to another. Drawing on 81 interviews with Dominican and Brazilian deportees, we argue that post-deportation experiences are shaped by macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors. Micro-level factors include individual characteristics, such as acculturation and human capital. Meso-level factors include national and transnational ties. Macro-level factors include the context of reception – the social and economic conditions into which deportees are received. We put forward a framework that both highlights these factors and shows how they are interdependent. The more adverse the context of reception, the more likely that deported people rely on other factors, such as transnational ties or human capital. Dominican deportees face stigmatisation from government and society, and, thus, depend more on transnational ties and their own resilience. In contrast, Brazilian deportees encounter a friendlier context, meaning that those deportees with more local ties and human capital are able to reintegrate with fewer challenges.

  • More than six million people have been deported from the United States since 1996. The Dominican Republic is one of the top ten countries to which deportees are sent. Most scholarship on deportation focuses on the challenges deportees face post-deportation. There is also a long history of scholarship on how migrants draw from social, human and financial capital to integrate into host societies. This article thus asks what forms of capital are useful for deportees’ re-integration and focuses on the forms of capital deportees draw from to survive in the aftermath of deportation. An analysis of 60 in-depth interviews with Dominican deportees reveals how deportees’ combination of limited human capital, fractured social capital and positive psychological capital assists in their re-integration. Results also show that access to employment is not only an important step in social and economic integration, but that it also helps deportees to achieve emotional stability.  

  • Golash-Boza T, Navarro YC. Life after Deportation. Contexts. 2019;18(2):30–35.

    Deportees’ reintegration is shaped by the contexts of reception in their countries of origin and the strength of their ties to the United States. For some, the deprivation and isolation of deportation is akin to a death sentence.

  • Golash-Boza T, Navarro YC. ’My Whole Life Is in the USA’: Dominican Deportees’ Experiences of Isolation, Precarity, and Resilience Khosravi S, Khosravi S, editors. After Deportation. 2018:149–168.

    This chapter analyses the experiences of isolation, precarity, and resilience of Dominican deportees. The context of reception of persons deported from the USA to Latin American and Caribbean countries is highly dependent on the cultural context and laws of each country. However, recent research has shown that deportees suffer isolation and stigmatisation that has clear effects on their social and labour market reintegration. This chapter, drawn from 46 interviews with Dominican deportees, explores how highly stigmatised individuals with minimal job experience find opportunities in the precarious and informal Dominican labour market. The ability of Dominican deportees to re-integrate is in part due to their ability to access the limited labour market opportunities, as well as through remittances from family members in the USA.

  • Golash-Boza T. Raced and Gendered Logics of Immigration Law Enforcement in the United States. In: Bosworth M, Parmar A, azquez YV, Bosworth M, Parmar A, azquez YV, editors. Race, Criminal Justice, and Migration Control: Enforcing the Boundaries of Belonging. New York: Oxford University Press; 2018. pp. 229–244.

    This chapter considers how biased policing practices, combined with institutional cooperation between immigration and criminal law enforcement agents, influences broader trends in deportation. Deportation laws in the United States are race- and gender-blind, but their implementation is not. Ninety-four per cent of interior removals involve men, even though women account for 47 per cent of unauthorized immigrants in the United States. And, 88 per cent of interior removals involve people from just four countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, even though nationals from these countries only make up 66.3 per cent of unauthorized migrants. An analysis of how deportations happen that puts together on-the-ground practices of policing with immigration law enforcement cooperation helps us to understand these gendered and racialized patterns of deportation. This chapter draws from interviews with 117 deportees in the Dominican, Republic, Jamaica, and Guatemala in 2009 and 2010.

  • Golash-Boza T. Structural Racism, Criminalization and Pathways to Deportation for Dominican and Jamaican Men in the United States. Special Issue of Social Justice titled "Neoliberal Confinements: Social Suffering in the Carceral State". 2017;44(2/3):137–161.

    Structural racism — in the form of heavy policing, residential segregation, and limited social services and labor opportunities — combined with changes in immigration laws in 1996 and the rise of immigration policing in the early twenty-first century has shaped the incorporation patterns of Black and Latino male immigrants. This article puts policing and incarceration at the center of the analysis by asking how mass incarceration and structural racism have affected the incorporation trajectories of Black male immigrants. Drawing from 29 interviews with deportees in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, I argue that gendered structural racism has a greater impact than individual attitudes on the trajectories of black male immigrants. Just as gendered racial removal affects Latino communities through mass deportation, gendered structural racism affects black and Latino immigrant communities through local and immigration law enforcement cooperation.

  • Golash-Boza T. ’Negative Credentials’, ’Foreign-Earned’ Capital, and Call Centers: Guatemalan Deportees’ Precarious Reintegration. Citizenship Studies. 2016;20(3-4):326–341.

    This article explores the precarious conditions deported Guatemalans encounter in their country of birth, alongside a consideration of how Guatemalan deportees’ agency is structured by precarity yet mediated by individual factors such as foreign-earned capital and negative credentials. Previous research has found that deportees are often criminalized, stigmatized, and blamed for social problems. Researchers have also found that deportees can be well-suited for work in the transnational call center sector when they have adequate English skills. This raises the question of how deportees’ individual characteristics and the local context of reception influence their (re)incorporation. This study, based on interviews with 34 Guatemalan deportees, reveals that deportees have varied trajectories, yet that the availability of call center jobs combined with deportees’ capacity and agency creates a bifurcation in labor market outcomes between deportees who secure jobs in call centers and those who do not.

  • Golash-Boza T. Feeling Like a Citizen, Living as a Denizen: Deportees’ Sense of Belonging. American Behavioral Scientist. 2016;60(13):1575–1589.

    The implementation of restrictive immigration laws in 1997 in the United States has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of legal permanent residents—denizens who had made the United States their home. Mass deportations of denizens have given renewed importance to territorial belonging and legal citizenship for theories of citizenship, a relatively neglected area of scholarship in this field. This article draws from interviews with 30 deported Jamaicans who were once legal permanent residents of the United States to argue that denizens often feel “like citizens” based on their family and community ties to the United States, yet that their allegiance and sense of belonging is primarily to their family and community—not to the state. In this sense, there is a disconnect between the law—which privileges legal citizenship—and the daily lives of denizens—in which they can experience a profound sense of belonging in their communities.

  • Golash-Boza T. Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York: New York University Press; 2015. p. 320.

    The United States currently is deporting more people than ever before: 4 million people have been deported since 1997—twice as many as all people deported prior to 1996. There is a disturbing pattern in the population deported: 97% of deportees are sent to Latin America or the Caribbean, and 88% are men, many of whom were originally detained through the U.S. criminal justice system. Weaving together hard-hitting critique and moving first-person testimonials, Deported tells the intimate stories of people caught in an immigration law enforcement dragnet that serves the aims of global capitalism. Tanya Golash-Boza uses the stories of 147 of these deportees to explore the racialized and gendered dimensions of mass deportation in the United States, showing how this crisis is embedded in economic restructuring, neoliberal reforms, and the disproportionate criminalization of black and Latino men. In the United States, outsourcing creates service sector jobs and more of a need for the unskilled jobs that attract immigrants looking for new opportunities, but it also leads to deindustrialization, decline in urban communities, and, consequently, heavy policing. Many immigrants are exposed to the same racial profiling and policing as native-born blacks and Latinos. Unlike the native born, though, when immigrants enter the criminal justice system, deportation is often their only way out. Ultimately, Golash-Boza argues that deportation has become a state strategy of social control, both in the United States and in the many countries that receive deportees.

  • Golash-Boza T. Targeting Latino Men: Mass Deportation from the United States, 1998-2012. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2015;38(8):1221–1228.

    The number of people being removed from the USA on an annual basis is far higher than ever before. The increases in removals since the passage of the 1996 laws have had a disproportionate impact on Mexican and Central American male immigrants. Moreover, the changes made to the laws in 1996 were draconian insofar as they removed judicial discretion in certain removal cases, and the laws were applied retroactively. The raced and gendered disparities in immigration law enforcement are one more instance of institutionalized racism in the USA insofar as these laws primarily harm black and Latino families.

  • Once forcibly returned to their countries of citizenship, how and why do deportees engage in transnational relationships? Through analyses of 37 interviews with Jamaican deportees, I approach the question of why deportees engage in transnational practices and reveal that deportees use transnational ties as coping strategies to deal with financial and emotional hardship. This reliance on transnational ties, however, has two consequences: (1) male deportees who rely on transnational strategies to survive face a gendered stigma because they must relinquish the provider role and become dependants; and (2) the transnational coping strategies serve as a reminder of the shame, isolation and alienation that deportees experience because of their deportation. This consideration of the consequences of transnational relationships sheds light on why some migrants are transnational and others are not.

  • Golash-Boza T, Hondagneu-Sotelo P. Latino Immigrant Men and the Deportation Crisis: A Gendered Racial Removal Program. Latino Studies. 2013;11(3):271–292. doi:10.1057/lst.2013.14

    This article reviews how US deportations ballooned between 1997 and 2012, and underscores how these deportations disproportionately targeted Latino working class men. Building on Mae Ngai’s (2004) concept of racial removal, we describe this recent mass deportation as a gendered racial removal program. Drawing from secondary sources, surveys conducted in Mexico, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published statistics, and interviews with deportees conducted by the first author in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Brazil and Jamaica, we argue that: (1) deportations have taken on a new course in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the wake of the global economic crisis – involving a shift towards interior enforcement; (2) deportation has become a gendered and racial removal project of the state; and (3) deportations will have lasting consequences with gendered and raced effects here in the United States. We begin by examining the mechanisms of the new deportation regime, showing how it functions, and then examine the legislation and administrative decisions that make it possible. Next, we show the concentration of deportations by nation and gender. Finally, we discuss the causes of this gendered racial removal program, which include the male joblessness crisis since the Great Recession, the War on Terror, and the continued criminalization of Black and Latino men by police authorities.

  • Golash-Boza T. Due Process Denied: Detentions and Deportations in the United States. 1st ed. New York: Routledge; 2012. p. 70.

    Due process protections are among the most important Constitutional protections in the United States, yet they do not apply to non-citizens facing detention and deportation. Due Process Denied describes the consequences of this lack of due process through the stories of deportees and detainees. People who have lived nearly all of their lives in the United States have been detained and deported for minor crimes, without regard for constitutional limits on disproportionate punishment. The court’s insistence that deportation is not punishment does not align with the experiences of deportees. For many, deportation is one of the worst imaginable punishments.

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  • Escobar M, Golash-Boza T. Constructing Citizenship, "Legality," and "Illegality" in Comparative Perspective. The Oxford Encyclopedia of International Criminology. 2021.

    Citizenship rights are often unevenly allocated—sometimes by design and sometimes not. Even when citizenship rights are evenly allocated on paper, these rights are often unevenly distributed in practice, with some people experiencing full citizenship and others lesser forms of citizenship. Citizenship is both inclusionary and exclusionary. Through its inclusionary aspects, citizenship is the foundation of a democratic society. Through its exclusionary aspects, citizenship produces denizens, undocumented populations, and other precarious individuals who are excluded from the polity and denied the right to shape their environment via voting and running for office. When people cross borders without following the host country’s legal process, they often become labeled “illegal.” Illegality, however, is a racialized category that sticks to some people more than others. Immigrants labeled as illegal experience not only the denial of rights but also enhanced vulnerability. Citizenship, illegality, and legality are constructed in different ways across time and space. These socially and legally constructed categories have significant consequences for people’s lives.

  • Golash-Boza T, Navarro YC. Apartheid Global y Migraciones. In: Sandoval C, Sandoval C, editors. Puentes no Muros: Contribuciones para una pol\ ıtica migratoria. San Jose, Costa Rica: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales and La Fundaci\ on Rosa Luxemburgo; 2020.
  • Known N. Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field. Golash-Boza T, Golash-Boza T, editors. Oxford University Press; 2018. p. 250.

    Former President Barack Obama’s administration oversaw three million deportations-far more than any previous President, and more than the sum total of all deportations prior to 1997. President Donald Trump has promised to surpass these record numbers of deportations. With mass deportation constantly in the news, students crave a deeper understanding of how we have arrived at this particular historical moment. This collection of powerful essays-written by leading scholars in migration studies-puts a human face on mass deportation by telling the stories of people bearing the brunt of immigration law enforcement. Each narrative in Forced Out and Fenced In: Immigration Tales From the Field centers on a person or a small group of people and places their story within the broader socio-legal and historical context. The authors weave the relevant historical, political, and socio-legal analysis throughout each essay, yet the narrative remains the most important element in each piece. The book is ideal for courses on immigration in sociology, anthropology, political science, law and society, ethnic studies, Latino studies, history, geography, and American studies.

  • Valdez Z, Golash-Boza T. Master status or intersectional identity? Undocumented students’ sense of belonging on a college campus. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. 2018;27(4):481–499.

    Research on undocumented students in the United States often focuses on the challenges they face navigating postsecondary education, rooted in their precarious legal status. The observed influence of legal status on undocumented students’ sense of belonging and academic progress provides compelling evidence that being undocumented functions as a master status – a salient identity that conditions students’ educational incorporation. Yet, this research tends to highlight legal status while deemphasizing or excluding other identities. Our study takes an intersectional approach. Using focus group data with undocumented students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution, we show that students rarely identify legal status in isolation or implicate it as the sole source of adversity. Instead, students’ reveal a sense of belonging rooted in multiple dimensions of identity including ethnicity and class. This study reconsiders the utility of the master status concept in favour of an intersectional one for a comprehensive picture of undocumented students’ educational incorporation.

  • Golash-Boza T, Valdez Z. Nested Contexts of Reception: Undocumented Students at the University of California, Central. Sociological Perspectives. 2018;61(4):535– 552.

    This article draws from five focus groups with 35 undocumented students who enrolled in the University of California–Central (UC Central), a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) located in a Latino-majority, working-class community in the heart of the Central Valley, after the passage of the California Dream Act. We develop a framework of nested contexts of reception to argue that students encounter distinct contexts at the local, state, and federal levels that shape their educational incorporation. By considering nested contexts, we reveal how local, state, and federal policies and societal reception combine to help or hinder undocumented students’ success in higher education.

  • Palter C, Golash-Boza T. The fiscal and human costs of immigrant detention and deportation in the United States. Sociology Compass. 2017;11(11).

    An extensive body of literature has analyzed the individual impacts and collateral consequences of mass incarceration. However, few studies explore the consequences of a parallel and overlapping system: mass immigration detention and deportation. The last 30 years witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of noncitizens detained in and deported from the United States. Individuals detained under immigration laws are held pending adjudication, often mandatorily, and without many basic constitutional protections. Immigrant detention and deportation impose severe burdens on immigrants and their households and levy significant costs to society—financially, as well as in terms of social capital and community well-being. Chiefly due to the difficulty in accessing noncitizens in the process of detention and deportation, this system has largely escaped sociological inquiry. This article provides a background for understanding the growth and consequences of detention and deportation in the United States. It reviews the literature on these immigration law enforcement programs and suggests topical and methodological directions for future research.

  • Golash-Boza T. Racialized and Gendered Mass Deportation and the Crisis of Capitalism. Journal of World-Systems Research. 2016;22(1):38–44.

    By the time President Obama leaves the Oval Office there will have been 3 million deportations from the United States during his eight years in office.  This sum is 50 percent more than the total number of all deportations prior to 1997, and far more than any previous U.S. president.  I argue in this essay that the confluence of four factors in recent years has created the conditions for mass deportation from the United States: (1) nearly all deportees are Latin American and Caribbean men; (2) the rise of a politics of fear in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; (3) the global financial crisis; and (4) the potential that mass deportation creates for corporate profit-making.  I place this argument in the larger context of race and ethnicity in the capitalist world-system.

  • Golash-Boza T. International Migration. In: Brunsma DL, Smith KEI, Gran BK, Brunsma DL, Smith KEI, Gran BK, editors. Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights. Paradigm Publishers; 2013. pp. 300–307.
  • Immigration Nation provides a critical analysis of the impact that U.S. immigration policy has on human rights. In the wake of 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security was founded to protect America from the threat of terrorist attacks. However, along with dramatic increases in immigration law enforcement raids, detentions, and deportations have increased six-fold in the past decade American citizens, families, and communities have ultimately borne the cost. Although family reunification is officially a core component of U.S. immigration policy, these same policies often tear families apart. Pundits and politicians nearly always frame this debate in terms of security and economic needs, but here, Tanya Maria Golash-Boza addresses the debate with the human rights of migrants and their families at the center of her analyses.

  • Golash-Boza T, Navarro YC. Causes and Consequences of International Migration: Sociological Evidence for the Right to Mobility. The International Journal of Human Rights. 2012;16(8):1213–1227.

    Human rights declarations provide the right for any person to leave their country, yet do not provide the right to enter another country, stopping halfway in asserting a right to mobility. In this article we provide evidence that 1) state policies and actions create migration flows; 2) migrants often travel to fulfil their human rights; and 3) current restrictions on immigration curtail migrants’ human rights. We argue, based on sociological evidence, that the right to mobility is a fundamental human right, and deserves a place in human rights doctrine.

  • Golash-Boza T. What Does a Sociology without Borders Look Like?. Societies Without Borders . 2012;7(4):397–404.

    In this essay, I consider what a sociology without borders would look like through an exploration of two questions: 1) How can sociology be mobilized to make the world a better place? and 2) What does a sociology of human rights look like? To answer these questions, I take the reader through a discussion of the history of Sociologists without Borders, the influence of Professor Judith Blau, and my own excursions into the sociology of human rights in the United States and abroad.

  • Golash-Boza T. Immigration Nation: Raids, Detentions and Deportations in Post-911 America. Boulder/ New York: Paradigm Publishers/ Routledge; 2012.

    In the wake of September 11, 2001, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created to prevent terrorist attacks in the US.This led to dramatic increases in immigration law enforcement - raids, detentions and deportations have increased six-fold. Immigration Nation critically analyses the human rights impact of this tightening of US immigration policy. Golash-Boza reveals that it has had consequences not just for immigrants, but for citizens, families and communities. She shows that even though family reunification is officially a core component of US immigration policy, it has often torn families apart. This is a critical and revealing look at the real life - frequently devastating - impact of immigration policy in a security conscious world.

  • Golash-Boza T. The Criminalization of Undocumented Migrants: Legalities and Realities. Societies Without Borders . 2010;5(1).

    Undocumented migrants are not criminals. Detention is not prison. Deportation is not punishment. These are truths in the legal system of the United States. However, undocumented migrants are treated like criminals; detainees feel as if they are in prison; and deportees experience their exclusion as punishment. This article examines the contradictions between legal arguments which indicate that immigration proceedings are not criminal proceedings and the experiences of deportees who often feel as if they were treated like criminals and that banishment from the country in which they have lived most of their lives is a cruel punishment.

  • The concept of an immigration industrial complex draws from previous work on the prison industrial complex and the military industrial complex. All three of these complexes point to the ways that the interests of government bureaucracies, corporate elites, and politicians shape laws and policies. This article explains how the undocumented status of migrants provides advantages to at least three groups: (a) media pundits who make their careers railing against ‘illegal aliens’; (b) politicians who use undocumented migrants as scapegoats; and (c) contractors who profit from massive immigration enforcement expenditures. The disenfranchised status of undocumented migrants enhances the ability of each of these groups to benefit from their presence. This confluence of interests explains why Congress has not enacted viable immigration policies that effectively deal with the ‘problem’ of illegal immigration. This is the second in a two-part series on the immigration industrial complex.

  • This article provides a genealogy of the idea of an immigration industrial complex.The immigration industrial complex isthe confluence of public and privatesector interests in the criminalizationof undocumented migration, immigrationlaw enforcement, and the promotion of ‘anti-illegal’ rhetoric. This concept isbased on ideas developed with regardto the prison and military industrialcomplexes. These three complexes sharethree major features: (a) a rhetoric offear; (b) the convergence of powerful interests; and (c) a discourse of other-ization.This article explores why Congress has notpassed viable legislation to deal withundocumented migration, and instead has passed laws destined to fail, and hasappropriated billions of dollars to the Department of Homeland Security toimplement these laws. This has been exacerbated in the context of the War on Terror,now that national security has been conflated with immigration law enforcement.This is the first in a two-part serieson the immigration industrial complex.

  • Golash-Boza T, Parker D. Immigrant Rights as Human Rights. In: Embrick D, Hattery A, Smith L, Embrick D, Hattery A, Smith L, editors. Globalization and America: Race, Human Rights, and Inequality. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield; 2008. pp. 107–126.

    As globalization expands, more than goods and information are traded between the countries of the world. Hattery, Embrick, and Smith present a collection of essays that explore the ways in which issues of human rights and social inequality are shared globally. The editors focus on the United States’ role in contributing to human rights violations both inside and outside its borders. Essays on contemporary issues such as immigration, colonialism, and reparations are used to illustrate how the U.S. and the rest of the world are inextricably linked in their relationships to human rights violations and social inequality. Contributors include Judith Blau, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, and Joe R. Feagin. 

  • Golash-Boza T, Parker D. Language Rights. In: Blau J, Brunsma D, Moncada A, Zimmer C, Blau J, Brunsma D, Moncada A, Zimmer C, editors. The Leading Rogue State: The U.S. and Human Rights. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers; 2008. pp. 125–137.
  • Golash-Boza T, Parker D. Human Rights in a Globalizing World: Who Pays the Human Cost of Migration?. Journal of Latino and Latin American Studies. 2007;2(4):34–46.

    This paper examines the relationship between globalization and immigration, and makes the case that current foreign policies and immigration regulations in the United States and France result in the violation of the human rights of migrants. In the United States, the House and Senate proposals presented in 2005 and 2006 to stem the tide of immigrants and thereby fix the immigration "problem" either criminalize undocumented workers or transform them into temporary workers. In France, the "selected immigration" bill introduced by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, and passed in 2006, makes it easier for skilled workers to enter and remain in France and harder for less skilled workers to do so. These proposals and bills fail to see immigrants as human beings with dignity and fundamental rights to a livelihood, a family, and a community, and fail to take into account the receiving countries" complicity in producing emigration. Designed to maximize profits for corporations, and minimize the prices of consumer goods for customers in the Global North, these policies and regulations have a high human cost. This paper explains how temporary worker programs are designed to extract labor from immigrants while preventing them from becoming full and equal members of the communities in which they work and live, and how the criminalization of undocumented immigrants transforms migrants into second-class citizens. From a human rights perspective, all human beings should have the right to food security, to decent health care, to safe working conditions, to an education, to a family, to their cultural identity, and to fight and organize for their rights. Temporary worker programs that permit workers to come to a country only to work for low wages and no benefits, and do not permit them to bring their families, to send their children to school, and to form communities are a violation of these workers" human rights.

  • Golash-Boza T, Bonilla-Silva E. Rethinking Race, Racism, Identity and Ideology in Latin America. Introduction to: Special Issue of: Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2013;36(10):1480–1484.

    This special issue explores ideas of race and racial hierarchy in Latin America in the twenty-first century. By examining the intersection between racialization and processes of identity formation, political struggle, as well as intimate social and economic relations, these essays question how and to what extent traditional racial ideologies continue to hold true. In so doing, we consider the implications of such ideologies for anti-racism struggles. This collection of articles provides a unique insight into the everyday lived experiences of racism, how racial inequalities are reproduced, and the rise of ethnic-based social movements in Latin America. The qualitative nature of the projects allows the authors to advance our understanding of how racial ideologies operate on the ground level. The geographic diversity of the articles – focusing on Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica and Cuba – enables a greater understanding of the distinct ways that racial ideologies play out across different settings.

  • Sue C, Golash-Boza T. ‘It was only a joke’: how racial humour fuels colour-blind ideologies in Mexico and Peru. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2013;36(10):1582–1598.

    In Mexico and Peru, denigrating racial humour about blacks and indigenous populations is prolific, despite the existence of colour-blind national ideologies (which minimize or negate the existence of racism) and social norms that silence various forms of race talk. This article draws on interviews and participant observation from these two countries to analyse the popular uses and interpretations of racial humour, and their consequences for racial ideology. We illustrate how racial humour serves to reproduce Mexican and Peruvian national ideology and reinforces the countries’ racialized systems of domination. In this article, we identify three mechanisms involved in this process: ‘going along’ with jokes; framing racial humor as benign; and using laughter to ‘soften’ racism. Taken as a whole, our analysis reveals how racial humour works to maintain colour-blind ideology.

  • Golash-Boza T. Yo Soy Negro: Blackness in Peru. Gainesville: University Press of Florida; 2011.

    Yo Soy Negro is the first book in English—in fact, the first book in any language in more than two decades—to address what it means to be black in Peru. Based on extensive ethnographic work in the country and informed by more than eighty interviews with Peruvians of African descent, this groundbreaking study explains how ideas of race, color, and mestizaje in Peru differ greatly from those held in other Latin American nations. The conclusion that Tanya Maria Golash-Boza draws from her rigorous inquiry is that Peruvians of African descent give meaning to blackness without always referencing Africa, slavery, or black cultural forms. This represents a significant counterpoint to diaspora scholarship that points to the importance of slavery in defining blackness in Latin America as well as studies that place cultural and class differences at the center of racial discourses in the region.

  • This article explores how race and color labels are used to describe people in an Afro-Peruvian community. This article is based on analyses of 88 interviews and 18 months of fieldwork in an African-descended community in Peru. The analyses of these data reveal that, if we consider race and color to be conceptually distinct, there is no "mulatto escape hatch," no social or cultural whitening, and no continuum of racial categories in the black Peruvian community under study. This article considers the implications of drawing a conceptual distinction between race and color for research on racial classifications in Latin America.

  • Golash-Boza T. Had They Been Polite and Civilized, None of This Would Have Happened: Discourses of Race and Racism in Multicultural Lima. Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. 2010;5(3):317–330.

    In 2006, the Peruvian government passed a law that made racial discrimination a crime punishable by incarceration. This law, part of a multicultural reform in Peru, can be seen as an effective recognition of the reality of racism in Peruvian society. Such recognition, however, contrasts with official depictions of Peru as a country without racism, and of Peruvians as people who deny the existence of racism in their society. Based on semi-structured interviews conducted in Lima, this note explores everyday discourses on this issue. The findings show that Limeños recognize racism as a societal problem, but they adhere to a restrictive definition of racism and use rhetorical strategies that allow them to portray themselves as not racist. Their expressions of distaste for people of color demonstrate that racism persists in interpersonal discourses because of deeply embedded ideas about the inferiority of blacks and Indians.

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  • Navarro YC, Golash-Boza T. "Trauma Makes You Grow up Quicker": The Financial and Emotional Burdens on Family Members of Deportation and Incarceration Massey DS, Massey DS, editors. Daedalus, Special Issue on “Immigration, Nativism, and Race in the United States. 2021;150(2):165–179.

    Research on the impacts of incarceration and deportation describes the negative consequences for children and young people. But how these events impact adults and members of extended families has not been broadly considered. And no study has directly compared incarceration with deportation. The study described in this essay, based on interviews with 111 adult individuals with a family member deported (57) or incarcerated (54), reveals how these experiences have long-lasting emotional and financial impacts and considers the similarities and differences between incarceration and deportation. The deportation or incarceration of parents is devastating; yet the absence of other relatives such as sons, sisters, brothers, aunts, cousins, grandchildren, and other household members also translates into severe sentimental and economic hardships not only for the immediate but also for the extended family.

  • Golash-Boza T. Punishment Beyond the Deportee: The Collateral Consequences of Deportation. American Behavioral Scientist. 2019;63(9):1331–1349.

    Deportations from the United States reached record highs in the aftermath of the Great Recession (2007-2009). At the peak of this wave of deportations, over 400,000 people were deported from the United States—as many in 1 year as in the entire decade of the 1980s. The majority of these deportees have U.S. citizen family members, nearly all of whom continue to live in the United States. Over 90% of these deportees are men, and nearly all are sent to Latin America, creating gendered and raced consequences for specific communities. This article draws from interviews with 27 people from California who experienced the deportation of a family member to provide insight into the effects of deportation on these families. This article builds on scholarship on the collateral consequences of incarceration to enhance our understanding of the collateral consequences of deportation. The findings reveal that family members face short, medium, and long-term consequences in the aftermath of a deportation and that many adolescents are forced to make an abrupt transition to adulthood when one or both of their parents is deported.

  • Golash-Boza T. The Parallels between Mass Incarceration and Mass Deportation: An Intersectional Analysis of State Repression. Journal of World-Systems Research. 2016;22(2):484–509.

    In the spring of 2014, President Obama’s administration reached a landmark of over 2 million deportations—more in under six years than the sum total of all deportations prior to 1997. Mass deportation has not affected all communities equally: the vast majority of deportees are Latin American and Caribbean men. Today, nearly 90 percent of deportees are men, and over 97 percent of deportees are Latin American or Caribbean. This article explores the global context under which mass deportation has occurred and draws parallels with mass incarceration. Whereas other scholars have characterized mass deportation as a tool of social or migration control, this article argues that mass deportation is best understood as a racialized and gendered tool of state repression implemented in a time of crisis. I argue that the confluence of four factors has created the conditions of possibility for mass deportation from the United States: (1) nearly all deportees are Latin American and Caribbean men; (2) the rise of a politics of fear in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11th; (3) the global financial crisis; and (4) the utility of deportees.

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  • Joseph T, Golash-Boza T. Double Consciousness in the 21st Century: Du Boisian Theory and the Problem of Racialized Legal Status Parton N, Parton N, editors. Social Sciences. 2021;10(9):345.

    In W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk, he argued that the problem of the 20th century in the United States was the problem of the color line. Given that de facto and explicit racial discrimination persist, anti-immigrant rhetoric is intensifying, and legal status has become more salient, we argue Du Boisian theory remains relevant for understanding social and political cleavages in the 21st century United States. The intersection of race, ethnicity, and legal status or “racialized legal status” represents a new variation of Du Bois’ “color line,” due to how these statuses generate cumulative disadvantages and exclusion for citizens and immigrants of color, particularly the undocumented. We begin with a review of Du Bois’ double consciousness theory, highlighting the marginalization of African Americans. Next, we apply double consciousness to the 21st century U.S. context to empirically demonstrate parallels between 20th century African Americans and the marginalization faced today by people of color. We close with a discussion about how double consciousness enhances our understanding of citizenship and has also generated agency for people of color fighting for socio-political inclusion in the contemporary United States.

  • Golash-Boza T. Race and Racisms: Brief Edition. 3rdrd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2021.

    Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach, Third Edition, engages students in significant—and timely—questions related to racial dynamics in the U.S. and around the world. Written in accessible, straightforward language, the book discusses and critically analyzes cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Organized into topics and concepts rather than discrete racial groups, the text addresses: * How and when the idea of race was created and developed* How structural racism has worked historically to reproduce inequality* How we have a society rampant with racial inequality though most people do not consider themselves to be racist* How race, class, and gender work together to create inequality and identities* How immigration policy in the United States has been racialized* How racial justice could be imagined and realized Centrally focused on racial dynamics, Race and Racisms, Third Edition, incorporates an intersectional perspective, discussing the intersections of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

  • Golash-Boza T, Due\~nas M, Xiong C. White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and Global Capitalism in Migration Studies. American Behavioral Scientist. 2019;63(13):1741–1759.

    Ten years after sociologist Mary Romero lamented the “ideological and theoretical gulf between immigration research and the sociology of race,” researchers have begun to bridge this theoretical gulf by centering critical race theory in studies of migration. Building on these analyses, this article argues that migration flows and immigrant incorporation are shaped not only by white supremacy but also by patriarchy and global capitalism. Insofar as migrants, predominantly from the Global South, are usually racialized as non-white, and come to work in a labor market shaped by exploitation, oppression, and patriarchy, it is critical to think of migrant flows and settlement within the context of what bell hooks describes as a White supremacist capitalist patriarchy. We draw from examples from our research with a broad spectrum of migrants and their children to elucidate how these three systems of oppression shape the experiences of migrants.

  • Ramirez S, Golash-Boza T, Unger J, Baezconde-Garbanati L. Questioning the Dietary Acculturation Paradox: A Mixed-Methods Study of the Relationship between Food and Ethnic Identity in a Group of Mexican-American Women. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2018;118(3):431–439.

    BackgroundEpidemiological studies have described an “acculturation paradox.” Increased acculturation to the United States is associated with increased consumption of dietary fat and decreased consumption of fruits/vegetables.ObjectiveTo expand understanding of the dietary acculturation paradox, this study examined how bicultural Mexican-American women construct ethnic identity and how these identities and identity-making processes relate to perceptions of health and nutrition.DesignWe utilized embedded mixed methods (in-depth interviews; survey).Participants/settingWe analyzed a purposive sample of English-speaking Mexican-American women aged 18 to 29 years (n=24) in rural California to assess ethnic identity and diet beliefs.ResultsParticipants described food as central to expressing cultural identity, usually in terms of family interactions. Mexican food traditions were characterized as unhealthy; many preferred American foods, which were seen as healthier. Specifically, Mexican-American women perceived Mexican patterns of food preparation and consumption as unhealthy. In addition, traditional Mexican foods described as unhealthy were once considered special-occasion foods. Among the participants who expressed a desire to eat healthfully, to do so meant to reject Mexican ways of eating.ConclusionsThis study raises questions about the nature of the “dietary acculturation paradox.” While food—the eating of Mexican foods—is central to the maintenance of ethnic identity throughout acculturation, negative perceptions about the healthfulness of Mexican foods introduce tension into Mexican-American women’s self-identification. This study suggests a subtle contradiction that may help to explain the dietary acculturation paradox: While previous research has suggested that as Mexicans acculturate to the United States they adopt unhealthy diets, this study finds evidence that they do so at least in part due to perceptions that American diets are healthier than Mexican diets. Implications for interventions to improve Latinos’ diets include an emphasis on the family and use of Spanish linguistic cues. Finally, messages that simply advocate for “traditional” diets should be reconsidered because that message is discordant with perceptions of the healthfulness of such foods.

  • Golash-Boza T. Race and Racisms: Brief Edition. 2ndnd ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2018. p. 368.

    Ideal for instructors who want the flexibility to assign additional readings, Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach, Brief Second Edition, is a topical text that engages students in significant questions related to racial dynamics in the United States and around the world. Shorter than Golash-Boza’s highly acclaimed comprehensive text, the Brief Second Edition features a streamlined narrative and is enhanced by its own unique features. New to this Edition: Increased coverage of gender and intersectionality, including a new section on whiteness, class, gender, and sexuality New "Talking about Race" features in the front matter and at the end of each chapter New discussions of biology and ethnicity An expanded section on white privilege Coverage of racial justice social movements such as #OscarsSoWhite Updated "Thinking about Racial Justice" features, which encourage reflection and social involvement

  • Valdez Z, Golash-Boza T. U.S. Racial and Ethnic Relations in the Twenty-First Century. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2017;40(13):2181–2209.

    The study of U.S. racial and ethnic relations is often reduced to the study of racial or ethnic relations. This article reveals the limitations of a focus on ethnicity or race, in isolation, and instead urges a new framework that brings them together. We consider three cases that have been conceptualized by the ethnicity paradigm as assimilation projects and by the race paradigm as structural racism projects, respectively: (1) African-American entrepreneurs; (2) the Mexican middle class; and (3) black immigrant deportees. We reveal the shortcomings of the ethnicity paradigm to consider race as a structural force or to acknowledge that structural racism conditions incorporation in marked ways; and the limitations of the race paradigm to take seriously group members’ agency in fostering social capital that can mediate racial inequality. Instead, we offer a unifying approach to reveals how ethnicity and race condition members’ life chances within the U.S. social structure.

  • Golash-Boza T. A Critical and Comprehensive Sociological Theory of Race and Racism. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. 2016;2(2):129–141.

    This article contests the contention that sociology lacks a sound theoretical approach to the study of race and racism, instead arguing that a comprehensive and critical sociological theory of race and racism exists. This article outlines this theory of race and racism, drawing from the work of key scholars in and around the field. This consideration of the state of race theory in sociology leads to four contentions regarding what a critical and comprehensive theory of race and racism should do: (1) bring race and racism together into the same analytical framework; (2) articulate the connections between racist ideologies and racist structures; (3) lead us towards the elimination of racial oppression; and (4) include an intersectional analysis.

  • Golash-Boza T. Race and Racisms: Brief Edition. 1stst ed. New York: Oxford University Press; 2015.

    Race and Racisms, A Critical Approach, Brief Edition, is a topical critical text that engages students in significant questions related to racial dynamics in the United States and around the world. Approximately thirty percent shorter than Golash-Boza’s highly acclaimed comprehensive text, the Brief Edition features a streamlined narrative and is enhanced by its own unique features. It is ideal for instructors who want the flexibility to assign additional readings.Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach engages students in significant questions related to racial dynamics in the U.S. and around the world. Written in accessible, straightforward language, the book discusses and critically analyzes cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Organized into topics and concepts rather than discrete racial groups, the text addresses:* How and when the idea of race was created and developed* How structural racism has worked historically to reproduce inequality* How we have a society rampant with racial inequality, even though most people do not consider themselves to be racist* How race, class, and gender work together to create inequality and identities* How immigration policy in the United States has been racialized* How racial justice could be imagined and realizedCentrally focused on racial dynamics, Race and Racisms, Brief Edition also incorporates an intersectional perspective, discussing the intersections of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.

  • Golash-Boza T. Assessing the Advantages of Bilingualism for the Children of Immigrants. International Migration Review. 2006;39(3):721–753.

    This article responds to the current academic debate on the advantages of bilingualism to the children of immigrants in the United States. The author utilizes data from the 1992–1993 and 1995–1996 Children of Immi rants Longitudinal Study to estimate the effects of bilingualism on efucational outcomes. In contrast to a recent study, the author rovides conclusive evidence that there are advantages to bilingualism beyond the functional ability to communicate with one’s parents. The author also provides evidence that demonstrates that bilingualism is only advantageous in those communities with low levels of English proficiency and high levels of resources and networks.

  • Are predictions that Hispanics will make up 25 per cent of the US population in 2050 reliable? The authors of this paper argue that these and other predictions are problematic insofar as they do not account for the volatile nature of Latino racial and ethnic identifications. In this light, the authors propose a theoretical framework that can be used to predict Latinos’ and Latinas’ racial choices. This framework is tested using two distinct datasets – the 1989 Latino National Political Survey and the 2002 National Survey of Latinos. The results from the analyses of both of these surveys lend credence to the authors’ claims that Latinas’ and Latinos’ skin colour and experiences of discrimination affect whether people from Latin America and their descendants who live in the US will choose to identify racially as black, white or Latina/o.

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  • Golash-Boza T. Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC’s Racial Wealth Gap. First Edition. University of California Press; 2023.

    Draws a direct line between redlining, incarceration, and gentrification in an American city.

    This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. In Before Gentrification, Tanya Maria Golash-Boza tracks the cycles of state abandonment and punishment that have shaped the city, revealing how policies and policing work to displace and decimate the Black middle class.

    Through the stories of those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, Golash-Boza explores how DC came to be the nation's "murder capital" and incarceration capital, and why it is now a haven for wealthy White people. This troubling history makes clear that the choice to use prisons and policing to solve problems faced by Black communities in the twentieth century—instead of investing in schools, community centers, social services, health care, and violence prevention—is what made gentrification possible in the twenty-first. Before Gentrification unveils a pattern of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism in DC that has implications for all US cities.

  • When middle-class and White residents move into working-class and poor Black neighborhoods, are there increases in the frequency of arrests of Black people? There are a handful of published articles that examine quantitatively the relationship between gentrification and policing. These studies focus almost exclusively on Los Angeles and New York City and the focus on racialized policing is limited. The present study considers racialized policing in a city that was, until very recently, majority Black and explores the extent to which gentrification and racial change in Washington, DC are associated with enhanced policing of Black residents. A spatial regression analysis which models the association between gentrification, White encroachment, and the policing of Black residents using arrest data from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and a gentrification score based on American Community Survey data reveals clear racialized and spatial disparities in arrest rates in Washington, DC. We hypothesized that census tracts experiencing gentrification and White encroachment would have higher drug arrest rates of Black residents. We found support for our White encroachment hypothesis but not for our gentrification hypothesis.

  • Research on crime and neighborhood racial composition establishes that Black neighborhoods with high levels of violent crime will experience an increase in Black residents and concentrated disadvantage—due to the constrained housing choices Black people face. Some studies on the relationship between gentrification and crime, however, show that high-crime neighborhoods can experience reinvestment as well as displacement of Black residents. In Washington, DC, we have seen both trends—concentration of poverty and segregation as well as racial turnover and reinvestment. We employ a spatial analysis using a merged data set including crime data, Census data, and American Community Survey (ACS) data to analyze the relationship between crime and neighborhood change at the Census tract level. Our findings demonstrate the importance of distinguishing between periods of neighborhood decline and ascent, between the effects of property and violent crime, and between racial change and socioeconomic change.

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