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Foreigners, Crime and Changing Mobilities

NCJ Number
199306
Journal
British Journal of Criminology Volume: 43 Issue: 1 Dated: Winter 2003 Pages: 1-21
Author(s)
Claire Valier
Date Published
2003
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article explores the conceptual significance of changing mobilities for theories of crime and punishment through a critique of the work of scholars from the Chicago school of sociology in the 1920's and 1930's; the author advances the argument that the Chicago school's concepts are implicated in the processes by which America demarcated its nationals from "foreigners."
Abstract
The concepts of social disorganization, differential association, and culture conflict originate in the work of the members of the Chicago school and were grounded within a particular set of ideas about mobilities, identities, and forms of belonging. These concepts have been identified as orientalist, in the sense that they depict the "other" as inferior, dangerous, criminal, and amoral (Agozino, 2000). They are also part of the colonial and national histories of the United States. The author of this article argues that the apparently benign concepts of social disorganization, differential association, and cultural conflict are implicated in the processes by which America demarcated its nationals from "foreigners." Chicagoan concepts are thus viewed as an important adjunct of the modern state's monopolization of the means of movement, as well as the modern expression of power in the exclusionary monopolization of space (Torpey, 2000; Sibley, 1995). Chicagoan concepts have had a part in the forging of modern interconnections between racialization, criminalization, and national citizenship. Today, however, these distinctions between "us" and "them" are undergoing complex transformations, questioning the continuing validity of the Chicagoan paradigm. Today's scholars work with a notion of differential mobilities, instead of the escalator notion of geographical and social mobility favored by the Chicagoans. Additionally, enforced immobilities are evident in the use of imprisonment as a powerful form of containment, shoring up an increasingly contested caste division. What is needed today is a rethinking of the politics of belonging in a way that engages with diasporic and hybrid identities, as well as what Saskia Sassen (1998) calls the transnationalization of identities and loyalties. The Chicagoan notion of cosmopolitan solidarity envisaged a purified nation of individuals. Contemporary scholars must theorize new forms of belonging, individual and collective identities, and concepts of "home" and "away." 89 references

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