Abstract

Excerpted From: Asad L. Asad and Livia Baer-Bositis, Spatial and Temporal Contexts of Formal Social Control and System Involvement: U.S. Latinos under Immigration Policing, 59 Law and Society Review 172 (March, 2025) (16 Footnotes/References) (Full Document Requested)

System avoidance refers to the tendency of individuals who are concerned about formal social control by the state or its authorities to avoid institutions that engage in surveillance via recordkeeping - typically, hospitals, banks, the workplace, and schools. Drawing on theories of surveillance, procedural justice, and legal cynicism, scholars have described system avoidance as a behavioral response to prior negative interactions with law enforcement. It is marked by mistrust in government and reluctance to engage with these so-called surveilling institutions, whose records authorities can use to track or sanction individuals. Evidence of system avoidance is most robust in studies of individuals with criminal-legal contact. But individuals worried about deportation - including U.S. Latinos across citizenship statuses, the focus here -- also avoid surveilling institutions, despite most lacking criminal-legal contact and deportation experience. Their vulnerability instead stems from the potential for formal social control, as reflected by their citizenship status and/or racialized ethnic identity, in a deportation system that disproportionately targets Latinos. System avoidance not only risks detaching individuals concerned about state sanction from institutions that promote well-being but also perpetuates multiple forms of inequality, given the overlap between race, class, and legal estrangement in the United States.

While a sanctionable status indicates an individual's vulnerability to formal social control, the threat of sanction it entails can vary across space and time. Qualitative studies of individuals with criminal-legal contact suggest that, while individuals acknowledge their vulnerabilities, whether and to what extent it circumscribes their involvement in surveilling institutions depends on their perceptions of police behavior in their spatial and temporal contexts. Where and when policing is more present or punitive, institutional involvement is lower than where and when it is less present or punitive. Some involvement nonetheless remains following criminal-legal contact. This dynamic is also present in ethnographic studies of individuals vulnerable to deportation, where concerns of police behavior likewise matter for their reported system involvement. Importantly, these concerns center on state and local police, rather than federal immigration officers per se, given that most deportations from the U.S. interior begin with a noncitizen's arrest by state or local police. Yet, aside from quantitative studies based on a single surveilling institution, a single city in a single year, or that control for neighborhood disadvantage, we lack insight into whether and how the threat of formal social control across space and time is associated with involvement in a range of surveilling institutions among people sharing a sanctionable status.

Building on theories of legal consciousness, we posit that the threat of formal social control across space and time is associated with institutional involvement and noninvolvement among individuals with a sanctionable status. By “threat of formal social control,” we refer to the laws, policies, and practices that heighten or lessen the risk of policing in daily life for individuals sharing a sanctionable status. Legal consciousness describes how individuals understand, experience, and respond to legal authorities, institutions, and processes. Although theories of system avoidance and legal consciousness have developed separately, we argue that legal consciousness helps clarify the relationship between a sanctionable status and involvement in surveilling institutions across spatial and temporal contexts of formal social control. Specifically, individuals may orient themselves as “against” or “with” the law, depending on situational context. An ““against the law” orientation aligns with system avoidance, wherein individuals with a sanctionable status perceive surveilling institutions as risky when the threat of formal social control is high. In such cases, we expect a lower incidence of institutional involvement, which refers to the share of individuals engaging with these institutions. By contrast, individuals who maintain a “with the law” orientation may remain involved in surveilling institutions despite potential risks. In these cases, the degree of involvement - reflecting how frequently or intensely individuals interact with these institutions - may not change even as the threat of formal social control intensifies. Legal consciousness may therefore shift patterns of system involvement situationally: as the threat of formal social control increases, the incidence of institutional involvement may decline (i.e., fewer individuals participate), while the conditional degree of involvement may remain stable (i.e., those who continue to participate do so at consistent levels).

We evaluate these hypotheses using the case of U.S. immigration policing. By ““immigration policing,” we refer to arrests of noncitizens by state and local police whom federal immigration officers express an interest in deporting (see Armenta 2017). Our main analyses link individual-level data on Latinos' involvement in surveilling institutions (i.e., medical, financial, work, and educational) from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) to state-year estimates of immigration policing from Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). We find that the relationship between a sanctionable status and involvement in surveilling institutions varies situationally according to the threat of formal social control across space and time. Regarding the incidence of institutional involvement, and consistent with an against the law orientation, we find that Latinos in state-years with higher rates of immigration policing are less likely to report any institutional involvement; this pattern extends to the foreign-born and, within that group, noncitizens. By institutional type, we observe that Latino noncitizens report lower average rates of involvement in work-related institutions, and U.S.-born Latinos report lower average rates of involvement in educational institutions, as the threat of formal social control increases. Regarding the conditional degree of involvement, and consistent with a with the law orientation, we do not find that immigration policing predicts the amount of time Latinos who remain involved report spending in these institutions. This result holds across nativity, citizenship status, and institutional type, suggesting that, while the threat of formal social control may be associated with reductions in overall involvement, it is not necessarily associated with the level of engagement among those who remain involved in surveilling institutions.

We also consider whether factors within and beyond the context of formal social control may moderate our observed associations. Specifically, we examine the presence of sanctuary policies that limit some police collaboration with ICE, as well as policies that regulate noncitizens' access to educational and labor market institutions. Using an original dataset on sanctuary policies, we find that these policies partially moderate - but do not fully account for - the results. Similarly, we show that policies restricting access to work and educational institutions partially moderate the results for noncitizens and U.S.-born citizens, respectively.

These results make several theoretical and empirical contributions. First, we leverage theories of legal consciousness to show how individuals with a sanctionable status are likely to situate the threat of that status in their spatial and temporal contexts and orient their relationships to surveilling institutions accordingly. Aligned with an against the law legal consciousness, individuals sharing a sanctionable status report lower rates of involvement in surveilling institutions where and when the contextual threat of formal social control is higher; by contrast, and consonant with a with the law legal consciousness, some individuals with a sanctionable status maintain their institutional involvement despite the threat of formal social control. Second, our results offer a population-representative complement to a growing, mostly ethnographic literature that suggests how subordinated populations' institutional involvement varies in part by the context of formal social control across space and time. Finally, while recognizing that there are many reasons why individuals with a sanctionable status may adjust their institutional involvement, we note the importance of how they manage the context of formal social control - including what their patterns of system involvement and noninvolvement imply for inequality.

[. . .]

Finally, beyond the threat of immigration policing, individuals worried about deportation may face differential access to specific surveilling institutions depending on other laws, policies, or regulations they must manage across state-years. Given the results of our main analysis, we consider whether two of these moderate our observed associations between immigration policing and the incidence and conditional degree of involvement in work or educational institutions. For involvement in work institutions, we consider whether a state-year participates in E-Verify, a federal program that requires public and/or private employers to verify the work authorization of their employees. We code any such participation as “E-Verify” and no such participation as “No E-Verify.” Finally, for involvement in educational institutions, we consider whether a state-year offers in-state tuition benefits for undocumented immigrants. “Comprehensive” refers to in-state tuition benefits available at all universities and colleges in a state-year; “Partial” refers to these benefits at some universities and colleges in a state-year; and “None” refers to these benefits being unavailable at all universities and colleges in a state-year.

All preceding variables are observed 1 year prior to the ATUS survey year to minimize the possibility that reverse causality accounts for our results.

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Our goal in this article has been to consider whether and how spatial and temporal variation in the threat of formal social control is related to the incidence and conditional degree of involvement in surveilling institutions among individuals with a sanctionable status. Future research should consider, perhaps from a multilevel perspective, how features of an individual or household might enable or constrain the dynamics identified here. For example, we suspect that institutional involvement among Latinos worried about deportation may differ among those with and without criminal-legal contact, as well as those with and without deportation experience. Differences may also be apparent between households with and without U.S. citizens, or between single-and mixed-status households. Research suggests that, in households with at least one adult U.S. citizen, these members may facilitate greater institutional involvement than members who are noncitizens (Dreby 2015). Although the randomized selection of the household member who completes the ATUS survey minimizes concerns that these dynamics might affect our results, explicit consideration of individual-, household-, and state-level interactions may prove valuable. In a similar vein, the growing presence of U.S.-citizen children born to noncitizen parents likely accounts for some fraction of the results we observe in this study. As research increasingly shows, these children are the conduits through which their parents - including and perhaps especially the undocumented - become involved in surveilling institutions. Data that better account for the citizenship status of children in the household are needed. To the extent that these data also include attribution questions with information on why respondents report system involvement or noninvolvement, we can also disentangle how much system involvement or noninvolvement reflects ““avoidance,” “discrimination,” or “exclusion”. Finally, the processes emerging from this study should be scrutinized in other fields characterized by spatial and temporal variation in the context of formal social control, such as Child Protective Services investigations and probation. If variation in these contexts matters for involvement in surveilling institutions - those considered here and others such as public assistance -- we may learn more about the situational effects of a sanctionable status on system involvement.

Asad L. Asad is Assistant Professor of Sociology and a faculty affiliate at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.  Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

Livia Baer-Bositis is a senior analyst at Hart Research, a national public opinion research firm.