The Spectacle of Illegality (De Genova)

In “The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant ‘Illegality'”, Nicholas De Genova discusses the ways in which law has actively created the illegality of Mexican migrants. De Genova discussed various immigration acts, such as the Immigration Act of 1924, which created “unequal numerical allotments for immigrant visas, on a country-by-country basis” (De Genova 163). For much of U.S. history, Mexican migrants have traveled freely across the border, and were often used as laborers. However, restrictive immigration legislation disproportionately impacted Mexican migrants, who traveled to the U.S. in greater numbers than other immigrant groups. Consequently, Mexicans were labeled, by the law, as illegal migrants.

After noting the various ways in which the law produced Mexican migrant illegality, De Genova discusses what he terms “the spectacle of ‘the illegal alien’…” (De Genova 177). While the law creates the “illegal alien,” De Genova notes how the border acts as a stage on which to display the spectacle of the “illegal alien”. As De Genova suggests, “The elusiveness of the law, and its relative invisibility in producing ‘illegality,’ requires this spectacle of ‘enforcement’ at the border precisely because it renders a radicalized Mexican/migrant ‘illegality’ visible, and lends it the commonsensical air of a ‘natural’ fact” (De Genova 177). It seems that De Genova is attempting to say that the legal construction of Mexican migrant illegality has been rendered invisible, and hence enforcing the laws at the border not only creates a spectacle of illegality, but also renders Mexican migrants as naturally illegal. It is also important to note that the spectacle of illegality is not only produced at the border, but also through the “policing of public spaces” (De Genova 178).

In order to sustain the “illegality” effect, De Genova notes how, “[t]he operation of the ‘revolving door’ at the border…always combines an increasingly militarized spectacle of apprehensions, detentions, and deportations – as well as increasingly perilous and sometimes deadly circumstances required to evade detection – with the banality of a virtually permanent importation of undocumented migrant labor” (De Genova 177). The federal government attempts to create laws that will apprehend Mexican migrants from coming to the U.S. as well as make the illegality of these migrants an issue. However, it seems that the federal government, as well as U.S. businesses, continue to import undocumented labor. The U.S. exercises continual power over the Mexican migrants through the threat of deportability, not actual deportation (De Genova 179).

The U.S. has gone to great lengths to construct Mexican migrant illegality, while still relying on the labor of undocumented migrants. Why does the U.S. construct undocumented migrant workers in such a way, but still depend on their labor? Why does the U.S. use the threat of deportation, as well as the border and daily policing to exercise power over Mexican migrants? Why does the U.S. have immigration laws that are seemingly strict, but still allow large numbers of undocumented migrants to still enter the country? Is the U.S. attempting to exercise power over undocumented migrants, or produce a system of racial domination over these migrants?