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Law and Society

Selected Works

2017

Immigration detention

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Legal Attitudes Of Immigrant Detainees, Emily Ryo Feb 2017

Legal Attitudes Of Immigrant Detainees, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

A substantial body of research shows that people’s legal attitudes can have wide-ranging behavioral consequences.  In this paper, I use original survey data to examine long-term immigrant detainees’ legal attitudes.  I find that the majority of detainees express a felt obligation to obey the law, and do so at a significantly higher rate than other U.S. sample populations.  I also find that the detainees’ perceived obligation to obey U.S. immigration authorities is significantly related to their evaluations of procedural justice, as measured by their assessments of fair treatment while in detention.  This finding remains robust controlling for a variety of …


Fostering Legal Cynicism Through Immigration Detention, Emily Ryo Dec 2016

Fostering Legal Cynicism Through Immigration Detention, Emily Ryo

Emily Ryo

Every year, tens of thousands of noncitizens in removal proceedings are held and processed through an expanding web of immigration detention facilities across the United States. The use of immigration detention is expected to dramatically increase under the Trump administration’s mass deportation policy. I argue that this civil confinement system may serve a critical socio-legal function that has escaped the attention of policymakers, scholars, and the public alike. Using extensive original data on long-term immigrant detainees, I explore how immigration detention might function as a site of legal socialization that helps to promote or reinforce widespread legal cynicism among immigrant …