S. Lisa Washington, Fammigration Web, 103 B.U. L. REV. 117 (2023).
Abstract
A growing body of scholarship examines the expansive nature of the criminal legal system. What remains overlooked are other parts of the carceral state with similarly punitive logics and impacts. To begin filling this gap, this Article focuses on the convergence of the family regulation and immigration systems. This Article examines how the cumulative effects of these two systems increase the risk of immigration detention, deportation, and permanent family separation for noncitizen and mixed-status families. It argues that system convergence produces feedback effects that bolster punitive interventions and outcomes in both systems, ultimately creating what I call a web. When referring to this phenomenon, I use the term "fammigration web," similar to the way other scholars refer to criminal legal and immigration system overlap as "crimmigration. " Although the exact number of noncitizen families impacted by the family regulation system remains unclear, the existing literature suggests that thousands of families are adversely affected. While practitioners and advocates increasingly discuss the relationship between the family regulation and immigration systems, scholarship has not fully caught up.
This Article makes three central contributions. One, it provides the first theoretical account of family regulation system and immigration enforcement system interconnectedness. Two, it identifies how nodes in the fammigration web exacerbate the risk of family separation for noncitizen and mixed-status families by marking and subordinating them. Three, it situates efforts to shrink the fammigration web alongside other efforts to shrink the carceral state. To dismantle carceral logics, we must identify how they are produced across systems. While this requires long-term strategies, this Article offers a few immediate ways to sever threads and shrink the fammigration web.
