Abstract
Using feminist abolitionist theory, The Violence of Protection explores the relationship between Asian immigrant women and the immigration system using a legal ethnographic framework. After discussions with legal advocates, social workers, and nonprofit workers, Wang finds major flaws in the way law enforcement treats these women. Because an undocumented immigrant is already a “legal subject,” immigrant women take on that title in two ways: as the victim and the perpetrator. Therefore, Wang argues the fine line between the two is exploited by law enforcement to place undocumented women into a transactional exchange where protection is levied against the purpose they can serve for the police. Wang underscores this point by using examples of legislation that require cooperation with law enforcement in exchange for temporary visas to provide an example of the ways that survivors’ experiences have been provisioned as political and legal fodder. Wang argues that conditional protection keeps immigrant women in legal limbo through coercive measures that attach their humanity to their utility, effectively creating a way for these women to be considered “race neutral” legal subjects yet keeping them within the racialized policing system. Despite the limited scope of the interviewees in the San Francisco Bay area, Wang creates an interesting, generalizable framework.
With only an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion, Wang creates a comprehensive, albeit short, overview of how undocumented women navigate ways to safety within the criminal legal system. The introduction is where Wang makes her assertion that the system we have in place to deal with survivors of violence is set up to protect “… the longevity of the law and not the life of a person or a community …,” meaning “… racial violence and sexual violence do not end” (p. 26).
Chapter 1 explores legal fictions surrounding the idea of what a victim is and what makes their story successful/believable in a racialized system. Wang argues the law is written in a manner that almost celebrates victimhood. A major theme in this chapter is how undocumented women do not receive the privilege of silence because their safety and legal status depend on telling their stories as a crime victim. Wang purports that victimhood is racialized, and in this instance because “… white supremacy disregards gender and sexual violence as symptomatic of state violence …,” (p. 44). As part of the larger theme, Wang conceives these women as more than just their stories, believing their pain cannot be categorized by legal jargon that subjugates them to the rule of law as only a victim.
Chapter 2 discusses what conditions make someone a crime victim. Wang reviews the model minority myth, an assumption that Asian people are the superior minority, especially in opposition to Black people. This myth is not only harmful to Black people but also to Asians as well, because it places further stipulations on their safety and what is considered a good versus a bad immigrant. The model minority is used as a tool to penalize other minorities for not assimilating and covers up neoliberal policies based on race, creating a “… legal fiction that Asianness would somehow transfer from one racial subject to another and bootstrap others upward,” (p. 64). Further, Wang addresses the kind of mutual exchange that must occur between victims and law enforcement. As she points out “… immigrant women have to say that someone did something to them … to obtain temporary legal status, not freedom or liberation,” (p. 57). This exchange can be dehumanizing for the women as it makes them relive their trauma, furthering state-sanctioned violence that stems from imperialism and colonization tactics, themes present throughout the book.
Chapter 3 emphasizes previous points about victims being contractable to the state, but specifically assesses trafficking and how its rise has contributed further to the idea of the perfect victim using terminology like “modern-day slave,” which Wang says “..produces a non-Black legal subject whose cooperation is harnessed to aid in anti-immigrant state projects of security and policing under antitrafficking laws,” (p. 73). Here, Wang goes deeper into the ways in which the contractable victim becomes a proxy for larger political issues. She discusses how federal funds given to nonprofits for antitrafficking measures come with stipulations that reinforce right-wing ideas, like keeping clients away from reproductive care. Such campaigns against trafficking used it as a basis for the vilification of other cultures to maintain the status of the West as saviors of whom Wang calls “Other” women—immigrant women who need to be “rescued” from their own cultures. Wang believes antitrafficking laws “… are often less about the survivor-as-rescued and more reflective of the state-as-rescuer,” (p. 83). Still, the white savior complex and state rescuer ideal are only reserved for people deemed worthy. The contractable, perfect, cooperative, nonblack victim, willing to sell their story; malleable to what the state offers as “protection.”
Wang structures her argument around three things: individual testimony, legislation and laws, and historical precedent—all of which provide evidence of a racialized system that stipulates protection for utility. Despite the model minority myth, Asian women are not safe from legal objectification. Wang’s work is not an exhaustive list of the ways undocumented women are legally taken advantage of, although unique, explaining their exploitation as by-products of the written law that demands something of survivors to be eligible for asylum and the privilege of victimhood.
Wang’s writing is incredibly academic, at times maneuvering around her point with lengthy, abstract jargon. The book should have included more excerpts from the interviews, as it was lacking that main element needed to be considered an ethnography. Despite the limitations, The Violence of Protection fills a gap in research regarding Asian women who, often, aren’t a part of conversations about law enforcement interactions. This book would be a beneficial read for students, professors, or researchers interested in immigration law, criminology, and Asian American affairs. This work uniquely situates itself as a starting point for further research in other areas of the law that require a legal subject. Wang solidifies herself as an expert and a pioneer while leaving space for others to advance the literature.
