Doctoral Dissertation Research: Immigrant Family Detention: The Family, Law, Security, and Space in U.S. Immigration Policy and Practice

2006年，美国移民和海关执法局(ICE)宣布扩大家庭拘留，作为其安全边境倡议的一部分。从那时起，移民和寻求庇护的家庭一直被拘留在两个设施中：宾夕法尼亚州利斯波特的伯克斯县家庭关爱庇护所和德克萨斯州泰勒的T·唐·赫托家庭居住设施。虽然移民研究检查了劳动力市场、政策、个人和集体身份以及公民身份做法，但这些研究没有分析移民执法做法在移民过程中的作用。为了填补这一空白，这项研究考察了家庭拘留的空间策略如何成为该政策及其法律争议的理由的核心。家庭拘留结合了空间战略，方法是：(1)将移民家庭与人口分开；(2)区分可拘留和不可拘留的移民；(3)管制移民在伯克斯省和胡图市的时间和空间位置。为了理解这些空间策略如何与家庭、安全和空间的话语重叠，本研究询问：(1)在家庭拘留实践及其法律辩论中使用空间的不同方式揭示了空间、家庭、儿童和移民作为政治范畴之间的关系？(2)家庭拘留政策及其公开辩论如何再现和传播家庭和儿童的空间化概念？(3)家庭拘留的管理和监管揭示了安全和移民执法实践之间的新联系？这项研究采用多种方法，结合了针对家庭的移民执法政策的档案数据，以及对关键政策制定者、法律专家、倡导者和前被拘留者的半结构化访谈。该研究审查了现有的仅有的两个家庭拘留设施--Hutto和Berks的运作情况，提供了关于家庭拘留做法的全面和比较数据。本研究采用定量内容分析和定性解释分析相结合的方法，分析了家庭拘留的空间策略和话语如何依赖于移民法和移民政策在拘留中心地点的本地化应用。这项研究对一个未被充分研究的地理现象进行了实证分析：对移民家庭的拘留。最近的立法特别将T.Don Hutto设施指定为新的家庭拘留中心的典范，但只有一项关于家庭拘留的研究可以用来评估家庭拘留政策(妇女委员会，2007年)。在地理方面，移民研究分析了跨国劳动力市场、政策以及个人和集体身份因流动而发生的变化。然而，这些研究没有审查移民执法政策和做法对这些过程的影响，也没有审查移民在被捕和驱逐出境之间会发生什么。将家庭拘留做法的空间战略与家庭、儿童、移民和安全的法律和政治话语的传播联系起来，这一分析将揭示国土安全担忧如何鼓励将拘留和驱逐做法扩大到新的人口。因此，这项研究将有助于分析家庭的空间化配置如何改变政策，为安全、移民和亲属关系的多学科研究贡献家庭拘留的政治地理概念化。这项研究的结果分发给政府和非政府移民政策制定者，并在学术期刊上发表，将提供关于家庭拘留的法律、政治和物质影响的新信息和分析。

In 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced the expansion of family detention as part of its Secure Border Initiative. Since then, immigrant and asylum-seeking families have been detained at two facilities: the Berks County Family Care Shelter in Leesport, Pennsylvania and the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Taylor, Texas. While immigration research has examined labor markets, policy, individual and collective identities, and citizenship practices, these studies have not analyzed the role of immigration enforcement practices in the immigration process. Seeking to fill this gap, this research examines how the spatial strategies of family detention are central to justifications for the policy and its legal contestation. Family detention combines spatial strategies by (1) segregating migrant families from the population; (2) differentiating between detainable and non-detainable migrants; (3) regulating the temporal and spatial location of migrants' inside Berks and Hutto. To understand how these spatial strategies overlap with discourses of the family, security, and space, the research asks: (1) What do the different ways of using space in family detention practice and its legal contestation reveal about the relationship between space, the family, the child, and the migrant as political categories? (2) How do family detention policy and its public contestation reproduce and circulate spatialized conceptions of the family and the child? (3) What does the administration and regulation of family detention reveal about new connections between security and immigration enforcement practices? Using a multi-method approach, the research combines archival data on immigration enforcement policy towards families and semi-structured interviews with key policy makers, legal experts, advocates, and former detainees. The study examines the operation of the only two existing family detention facilities, Hutto and Berks, providing comprehensive and comparative data on family detention practices. Combining quantitative content analysis with qualitative interpretive analysis, the research analyzes how the spatial strategies and discourses of family detention rely upon localized applications of immigration law and policy at detention center sites. The research contributes an empirical analysis of an understudied geographical phenomenon: the detention of migrant families. Recent legislation specifically names the T. Don Hutto facility as its model for a new family detention center, yet a single study of family detention exists from which to evaluate family detention policy (Women's Commission 2007). In geography, immigration research has analyzed how transnational labor markets, policy, and individual and collective identities have changed as a result of mobility. These studies do not, however, examine the impact of immigration enforcement policy and practice on these processes, nor what happens to migrants between arrest and deportation. Linking the spatial strategies of family detention practice to the circulation of legal and political discourses of the family, the child, the migrant, and security, this analysis will reveal how homeland security concerns have encouraged the expansion of detention and deportation practices to new populations. Thus, the research will contribute an analysis of how spatialized configurations of the family can change policy, contributing a political geographic conceptualization of family detention to multidisciplinary research on security, migration, and kinship. Distributed to governmental and non-governmental immigration policy-makers and published in academic journals, the results of this research will provide new information and analysis about the legal, political, and material implications of family detention.