After the raid: feminist geolegality and the spaces of encounters in a US poultry town. Issue 4 (3rd April 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Gorman, Cynthia S.; Wilson, Bradley R.
• Is Part Of: Gender, place and culture. Volume 29:Issue 4(2022)
• Page Start: 502
• Page End: 523
• Publication Date: 2022-04-03
• Subjects: ICE raid -- poultry -- immigrant -- Appalachia -- rural -- border -- encounters; Human geography -- Periodicals; Feminism -- Periodicals; Géographie féministe -- Périodiques; 305.305
• DOI: 10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873745
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-369X

Abstract

Abstract: Over the past two decades United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have engaged in a series of workplace raids in small rural towns home to meat processing plants. Targeted enforcement operations such as workplace raids are indicative of a shifting spatiality of bordering practices as immigrant policing moves from the territorial borderline into the 'everyday' spaces where migrants and non-migrants live and work. Drawing upon a feminist geolegal framework, we examine how raids - as geolegal events - extend beyond the work site to shape spaces of encounters in small, rural towns home to poultry processing. In particular we consider the short and long term impact of a workplace raid at a poultry plant that took place a decade ago in Moorefield, West Virginia. Using interview data with white non-immigrant residents still living in Moorefield, we demonstrate how the workplace raid was not only acutely traumatic for immigrant targets, but also affected resident-bystanders' perceptions of place and the legal geographies of migration with lasting effects on embodied, emotional and social relationships in spaces of encounters. We find that the raid reconfigured some white resident bystanders' sense of humanitarian concern, responsibility, friendship and solidarity with immigrants who live in their community yet the legal rationale for the raid also normalized the discourse of racialized criminality performed through the raid itself. These insights, elucidated through feminist geolegal analysis, highlight the cascading effects of the state's bordering practice in small towns as well as how resident-bystanders reconcile or may resist border enforcement.