System Avoidance, Bare Life, and Statelessness. Early research regarding the criminalization of immigration status posits that such legislation would work to create a vulnerable population of immigrants who would be easily victimized in the complete absence of state protection. More recent studies move past theory and into empirical reality, finding that new legislation and enforcement against undocumented immigrants increases their victimization (Zatz and Xxxxx 2012). Because they reasonably fear deportation – with the attendant family separation (Xxxxxx- Xxxxxx, et al. 2011), lengthy detention (Xxxxxx-Xxxx 2012a), subsequent unclear reintegration path in the home country (Xxxxx, Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx 2008), and, at worst, political and criminal victimization upon repatriation (Xxxxxx 2004) – undocumented immigrants do not call the police when they are in danger (Zatz and Xxxxx 2012). Though the relationship in this literature is quite clear, the causal mechanism is implicit – because their bodies and place make them guilty of status offenses, undocumented immigrants avoid the institutions of the state and are thus rendered vulnerable (Xxxxx 2012). Evidence of system avoidance by Latinos – irrespective of their individual immigration status – is, at present, largely through qualitative studies with small or medium sample sizes and limited geographic coverage. When, for example, Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx (2015) argue that “[t]he fear that rumors of raids produce is so real that parents to do not show up for work, children miss school, and the police become people to avoid,” they do so based on interviews with 27 undocumented immigrant youth. Dreby (2012) draws on interviews with 110 children and 91 parents – combined with home and school visits with 12 families – to illuminate the ways in which the threat of deportation, specifically, makes US-born children afraid of police and fearful of the state as a potential agent in family separation. She finds that the ubiquitous threat of family dissolution not only strains family relationships, especially between siblings of different immigration statuses and between children and fathers, but causes children to withdraw from visible parts of national life. These studies suggest that the ramifications of increased criminalization have widespread effects for youth in immigrant communities. Work done by Xxxxxxxx (2013) at the University of Illinois at Chicago may represent the best example of semi-quantitative large-n work on system avoidance in the immigrant community ...
