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Banished Men: How Migrants Endure the Violence of Deportation
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
What becomes of men the U.S. locks up and kicks out? From 2009 to 2020, the U.S. deported more than five million people—over 90 percent of them men. In Banished Men, Abigail Andrews and her students tell 186 of their stories. How, they ask, does expulsion shape men's lives and sense of themselves? The book uncovers a harrowing carceral system that weaves together policing, prison, detention, removal, and border militarization to undermine migrants as men. Guards and gangs beat them down, till they feel like cockroaches, pigs, or dogs. Many lose ties with family. They do not go "home." Instead, they end up in stripped of their very humanity. Against the odds, they fight for new ways to belong. At once devastating and humane, Banished Men offers a clear-eyed critique of the violence of deportation.
What becomes of men the U.S. locks up and kicks out? From 2009 to 2020, the U.S. deported more than five million people—over 90 percent of them men. In Banished Men, Abigail Andrews and her students tell 186 of their stories. How, they ask, does expulsion shape men's lives and sense of themselves? The book uncovers a harrowing carceral system that weaves together policing, prison, detention, removal, and border militarization to undermine migrants as men. Guards and gangs beat them down, till they feel like cockroaches, pigs, or dogs. Many lose ties with family. They do not go "home." Instead, they end up in stripped of their very humanity. Against the odds, they fight for new ways to belong. At once devastating and humane, Banished Men offers a clear-eyed critique of the violence of deportation.
313 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 29, 2023
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August 17, 2024
I didn't think the theses were as well developed as the ones in Undocumented Politics. There was also some gratuitous use of the term "criminal," which seemed at odds with the arguments for abolition given at the end of the book. While I like the author's focus on gender throughout her work, my recent Ruth Wilson Gilmore binge left me wanting a more macroeconomic and spatial analysis of deportation. Such a framework is in my opinion much more rigorous and, as Gilmore's writings show, gender easily integrates into this framework as well. That said, the book is still provocative and sets out to understand important issues.
Displaying 1 of 1 review