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American Behavioral Scientist
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Article
White Supremacy, Patriarchy,
and Global Capitalism in
Migration Studies
Tanya Golash-Boza1, Maria D. Duenas1,
and Chia Xiong1
Abstract
Ten years after sociologist Mary Romero lamented the
“ideological and theoretical
gulf between immigration research and the sociology of race,”
researchers have
begun to bridge this theoretical gulf by centering critical race
theory in studies of
migration. Building on these analyses, this article argues that
migration flows and
immigrant incorporation are shaped not only by White

supremacy but also by
patriarchy and global capitalism. Insofar as migrants,
predominantly from the Global
South, are usually racialized as non-White, and come to work in
a labor market
shaped by exploitation, oppression, and patriarchy, it is critical
to think of migrant
flows and settlement within the context of what bell hooks
describes as a White
supremacist capitalist patriarchy. We draw from examples from
our research with a
broad spectrum of migrants and their children to elucidate how
these three systems
of oppression shape the experiences of migrants.
Keywords
White supremacy, intersectionality, immigration
Introduction
In her 2008 article in Contemporary Justice Review, Mary
Romero wrote, “There is an
enormous ideological and theoretical gulf between immigration
research and the soci-
ology of race” (p. 26). Ten years later, several publications have
bridged this gulf,
incorporating a race analysis and moving away from
assimilationist frameworks.
Sanchez and Romero (2010), for example, center race to
illuminate illegality and
racialized citizenship. Sáenz and Douglas (2015) show the
influence of racial hostility
1University of California, Merced, CA, USA
Corresponding Author:

Tanya Golash-Boza, University of California, 5200 North Lake
Road, Merced, CA 95343, USA.
Email: [email protected]
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2 American Behavioral Scientist 00(0)
toward immigrants that assimilationist frameworks obscure.
Treitler (2015) explains
how assimilationist perspectives support White supremacy by
placing the onus of
incorporation on racialized immigrants and ignoring racial
barriers.
Building on recent scholarship’s use of a critical race
framework to study immi-
grants and their children, this article argues for including
analyses of patriarchy and
global capitalism in addition to White supremacy in migration
studies. We explore
how these systems of oppression affect immigrant
incorporation, migration flows,
refugees, immigration status, and deportation.
Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality
Critical race theory (CRT) was first developed by legal scholars

who insisted race is
central to the development of law (Bell, 1992) and the
construction of citizenship
(Lopez, 1997). A central tenet of CRT is that institutions and
everyday practices nor-
malize racism and render it invisible (Delgado & Stefancic,
2001; Yosso & Solorzano,
2005). CRT centers race yet also addresses how White
supremacy intersects with other
systems of inequality like patriarchy and capitalism. The
intersectionality framework
underscores how systems of oppression simultaneously shape
our lives (Crenshaw,
1991; hooks, 2000; McCall, 2005; Romero, 2017; Weber, 1998).
Patriarchy, White supremacy, and global capitalism are all
systems of oppression
that shape migration flows and immigrant incorporation.
Patriarchy means that “men
hold power and are the central figures in the family,
community, government, and
larger society” (Saraswati, Shaw, & Rellihan, 2017, p. 3). White
supremacy means that
White people hold the power (Mills, 1997). Global capitalism
maximizes profit for
capitalists through the exploitation of workers, which is a
necessary condition of capi-
talism (Marx & Engels, 1907).
We draw from bell hooks and use the concept of White
supremacist capitalist patri-
archy. Hooks (2000) explains “interlocking systems of classism,
racism, and sexism
work to keep women exploited and oppressed” (p. 109). She
points out that Western
women’s economic gains rely on the enslavement or

subordination of Third World
women (hooks, 2000, p. 109). Hooks (2000) alternates between
calling out classism
and pointing to capitalism as a system of oppression. This
distinction between focus-
ing on discrimination and the underlying system of oppression
is key. CRT scholars
generally call for an end to racism, sexism, and classism and the
dismantling of White
supremacy and patriarchy. Most CRT scholars agree people of
color are underpaid, but
do not call for an end to capitalism, even though class
exploitation is a necessary part
of capitalism. As critical scholars, it is important for us to
reflect on this hesitancy to
critique capitalism, and to ask if it reflects our position of
relative privilege within the
system of global capitalism.
CRT and Migration Scholarship
In addition to calling for CRT engagement in 2008, Mary
Romero (2017) has more
recently pointed out that capitalism, patriarchy, and White
supremacy shape the
Golash-Boza et al. 3
experiences of migrants and their children because citizenship
status has always been
raced, classed, and gendered insofar as citizenship was initially
the right of only White,
propertied men. We extend this insight through an explicit
discussion of how these

systems of oppression have shaped the lives of migrants and
their children. We focus
our study on three aspects of international migration:
deportation, second-generation
incorporation, and refugee studies.
Scholarship on deportation has expanded in recent years, yet
relatively few works
on deportation pay close attention to larger systems of
inequality. Studies focusing on
racialized and gendered discourses are more common. For
example, Golash-Boza and
Hondagneu-Sotelo (2013, p. 271) explores deportation as
“gendered racial removal”
due to the disparate consequences of deportation laws and
practices and the role of
raced and gendered rhetoric in shaping them. It stops short of
explaining the role of
global capitalism, patriarchy, and White supremacy. We include
a discussion of depor-
tation as it provides an opportunity to consider migration flows
as well as incorpora-
tion from an alternative perspective.
Scholarship on the second generation currently dominates
migration scholarship,
much of it drawing on the assimilation paradigm. Assimilation
theories focus on eth-
nic capital, ethnic enclaves, or ethnic economies (see Light &
Gold, 2000; Portes &
Zhou, 1992; Zhou & Bankston, 1998). These studies may
include a consideration of
gender or class, but rarely focus on race. Exceptions (e.g.,
Telles & Ortiz, 2008) do not
account for how the racialization of Latinxs is situated within
the intersecting systems

of oppression of White supremacy, patriarchy, and global
capitalism. CRT scholars
have heavily critiqued assimilationist scholarship for its lack of
inclusion of a critique
of White supremacy (Sáenz & Douglas, 2015; Treitler, 2015)
but scholars have not
adequately addressed their critiques.
Similarly, the sociological literature on refugees in the United
States has also taken
an assimilation/integration approach, which centralizes
ethnicity, and pays little atten-
tion to the system of White supremacy. Portes and Zhou’s
(1992) study of Cubans,
Dominicans, and Chinese concludes that Cuban refugees who
stayed within their eth-
nic economies fared better than those who left. Zhou and
Bankston (1998) also under-
score the importance of ethnic community in the lives of
Vietnamese refugees, arguing
that ethnic and familial networks made upward mobility
possible. A singular focus on
ethnic enclaves obscures the impact of race, racism, and
racialization on refugees, and
does not give due attention to patriarchy or capitalism.
In keeping with a CRT tradition of valuing experiential
knowledge of people of
color as a tool for understanding racial subordination (Yosso &
Solorzano, 2005), we
present the narratives of three people of color whose lives have
been shaped by migra-
tion, White supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy. These forces,
we contend, shape
migrants’ lives.

The first case study concerns deportation. Betty1 is a
Guatemalan woman deported
from the United States. While less than 10% of people deported
from the United States
are women (Golash-Boza & Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2013), Betty is
typical in that she has
a history of racialized oppression, domestic violence, and
poverty. Centering the expe-
riences of a woman of color likewise supports our broader aim
in this article.
The second case study concerns the second generation. Ana was
born in the
United States with family origins in the Dominican Republic.
She and her mother,
Rose, were interviewed as part of the second author’s research
on racial and ethnic
socialization among low-income and middle-class second-
generation Latinxs in
Florida and California. Ana and Rose’s experiences represent
typical cases within
the middle-class subsample regarding racial and ethnic
socialization practices.
The third case is of a Hmong refugee woman who came to the
United States as a
child, Mao. Interviews revealed her experiences to be typical
among the broader study
of Hmong refugees in which she participated. Like most others,
she is a naturalized
citizen. She is slightly older and better educated than the
median age in that study, but

the fact that, unlike most she can recall her experiences in Laos
and Thailand gives her
experiences relevance to a broader range of refugees.
Deportation and Immigration Law Enforcement From an
Intersectional CRT Perspective
When Betty was 18 months old, she and her mother left her
father in Guatemala and
migrated to California without documentation. Betty’s mother
initially worked as a
fieldworker, but soon became a sex worker. Betty’s mother
married a Mexican man,
with whom she had two children. When Betty was 10 years old,
her stepfather began
to sexually abuse her. Betty’s mother ignored her pleas for help,
insisting that Betty
respect, love, and obey her stepfather. Her stepfather threatened
Betty’s mother with
immigration action if she defied him. He raped Betty regularly
until she was 18 years
and moved out of the house and into her boyfriend’s house.
As a young woman, Betty had several intimate relationships, all
with men who also
used drugs, and all with men who abused her. She also had five
children, each of which
she lost to Child Protective Services, due to her poverty,
homelessness, and drug
addiction. When Betty was pregnant with her fifth child, she
enrolled in a rehabilita-
tion program, had her baby, and then moved into an apartment
with her boyfriend and
her baby. She was resolved that things would work out this
time. She believed it until
one day Betty and her boyfriend got into a fight. He beat her

extremely badly, leaving
her covered in bruises. He made the same threat she had heard
many times before, that
he would call immigration authorities if she called the police.
Betty called them anyway. When the police came to arrest her
boyfriend, he was
alone with their child, and they called Child Protective Services
to come take the
baby. Learning of this, Betty panicked. She had been clean for
months, but she
turned to alcohol and drugs to cope with her feelings. When she
went to claim her
baby, she was high. The police officer arrested her for public
intoxication and her
baby went to foster care.
When the officer arrested her, he said, “You’re illegal, right?”
Betty imagines
her boyfriend must have told them about her status. They turned
her over to immi-
gration authorities. Betty was transferred from the local jail to
immigration deten-
tion, where she spent several months. During this time, her case
could have come
to the attention of immigration lawyers. She qualified for
legalization under laws
designed to protect victims of domestic abuse. Although she had
been on and off
drugs for years, she did not have any serious criminal charges.
She had one charge

for paraphernalia and one for public intoxication. Without
information or resources
to pursue her case, Betty was deported to Guatemala. She never
expects to see her
children again.
White Supremacy
How did the system of White supremacy affect Betty’s
trajectory? The United
States has deported over 6 million people since 1996, 97% of
them to Latin America
(Office of Immigration Statistics, 2017). Immigration law
enforcement in the
United States is at an all-time high and is primarily directed at
Latin American men.
Scholarship on immigration law enforcement has drawn from
CRT to explain these
racial disparities. Getrich (2013, p. 463) contends that border
enforcement practices
“reinforce a racialized form of belonging” not only for
immigrants but also for their
children. Other scholars have theorized the racialization of
citizenship as “racist
nativism” (Huber et al., 2008, p. 43)—practices that justify the
superiority and
domination of the native born, who is imagined as White, over
the foreign born,
who is imagined as non-White. These scholars describe
immigration enforcement
practices as supporting “white supremacy . . . a system of racial
domination and
exploitation whereby power and resources are unequally
distributed to privilege
whites and oppress People of Color” (Huber et al. 2008, p. 41).
Racist nativism

shapes the experiences of immigrants through their encounters
with racial profiling
(Schueths, 2014); interpersonal discrimination (García, 2017b);
local law enforce-
ment agents (Armenta, 2016); and immigration law enforcement
(Aranda &
Vaquera, 2015; Getrich, 2013).
Betty and her mother’s immigration status put them in a
precarious position that
men used to keep them from seeking help. The vast majority of
undocumented peo-
ple in the United States are non-White, and the marginalization
of undocumented
migrants is directly related to White supremacy. The racialized
rhetoric of politi-
cians who characterize undocumented migrants as non-White,
lawbreakers, crimi-
nals, and terrorists supports a continued refusal to reform
immigration law or legalize
long-term residents.
Betty’s mother’s position in the labor market was also related to
White suprem-
acy. She followed the well-worn path of Mexican and Central
American migrants
to the Central Valley of California to work in the fields.
Farmers in this area have
relied on migrant laborers to perform agricultural labor for 100
years, yet the
United States refuses to offer them legal residency. Keeping
these workers undoc-
umented is a deliberate strategy to keep them in the fields where
their labor is
needed. The underfunding of education and social programs in
the Central Valley

limits both agricultural workers’ options for upward mobility
and those of their
children. The extreme vulnerability of farmworkers, who are
nearly all non-White,
is a direct consequence of racialized laws that have denied basic
labor protections
to farmworkers. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act’s
provisions for
minimum wage do not apply to people who work on small
farms, and overtime pay
is not mandatory for farm workers.
Betty’s mother could have qualified for legal permanent
residency under the
Immigration Reform and Control Act as an agricultural worker
in 1986. When her
husband abused Betty and used her legal status to threaten her,
Betty’s mother also
could have applied for legalization under the Violence against
Women Act (VAWA),
which has provisions to protect women under these
circumstances. Betty could have
done the same thing, either in response to her stepfather’s abuse
or those of any of her
boyfriends. But neither of them knew about VAWA.
The paucity of legal aid available in the Central Valley may
explain the lack of
information about VAWA. Whereas San Francisco and Oakland
together have 500
members of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the

entire Central Valley
of California has only 40,2 for an estimated almost 300,000
undocumented migrants.3
A plurality of Central Valley residents are Latinx, and the lack
of services is a conse-
quence of structural racism—a system where people of color do
not have the same
access to opportunities and resources as Whites.
Patriarchy
The vast majority of deportees are men and the law enforcement
officers who are car-
rying out deportations—from police officers to Immigration and
Customs Enforcement
officers to Customs and Border Patrol agents—are
predominately male. Nevertheless,
immigration-related research that focuses on gender tends to
consider the experiences
of women, instead of focusing on a broader gendered
experience. For example, one
piece that highlights gender (Doering-White et al., 2016, p. 326)
considers how undoc-
umented women navigate a “gendered deportation regime.”
Boehm (2016) discusses
how gender relations shift when women are deported.
A gendered lens can help us understand both the gender
disparities in deportations
and the gendered effects of these disparities. When men are
deported, they may leave
women behind to support their household on a single income
smaller than the deport-
ee’s, reflecting gendered divisions of labor and unequal pay.
When women are
deported, many lose their children to foster care.

An analysis of Betty’s story allows us to see how patriarchy
shaped her life and
ultimately led to her deportation. Betty encountered many male
abusers in her life. The
prevalence of intimate partner violence in our society is directly
related to patriarchal
culture where men seek power through domination over women
(Adames & Campbell,
2005; Saraswati et al., 2017). The normalization of violence
against women is com-
mon both in Guatemala and the United States (Menjívar, 2011).
We do not know why
Betty’s mother ignored her husband’s abuse of Betty. However,
it is likely that it
reflects her dependence on her husband’s income, and possibly
her own experiences of
abuse. Her own experiences of abuse may have played a role as
well as a sense that
girls are not important. In short, patriarchy has everything to do
with the trauma Betty
experienced.
Global Capitalism
As capitalism has engulfed the world, the world has become
more unequal (Robinson,
2000). There is massive inequality within as well as between
nations. Countries have
varying degrees of development and access to modern comforts.
Richer countries for-
tify their borders out of fear not only that blacker and browner

bodies will cross those
borders, but out of a desire to protect their material interests.
Deportation is the physi-
cal manifestation of border controls. Without the possibility and
reality of deportation,
countries would be incapable of preventing migration across
their borders.
An understanding of deportation thus requires a consideration
of global capitalism.
Global capitalism drives migrants to the United States in the
first place. Guatemalans
like Betty’s mother began to migrate to the United States during
their long and violent
civil war, which began in 1954 with a CIA-sponsored military
coup. The United States
became involved in Guatemala’s civil war because of U.S.
interests in capitalist expan-
sion and the concomitant fight against the spread of
communism. Communist coun-
tries would not be part of the global capitalist economy and thus
would not be
exploitable by U.S. interests. Thus, the United States provided
military aid to the gov-
ernment of Guatemala and trained Guatemalan military officers
to defeat the commu-
nists in the civil war. Migration to the United States continued
after the war because
the Guatemalan government implemented a series of neoliberal
reforms—trade liber-
alization, the promotion of foreign direct investment and
exports, and tax cuts for
investors—intended to integrate the country into the global
economy. These reforms
generated some jobs in Guatemala but mostly in temporary,
low-skill, low-wage occu-

pations such as maquiladoras (factories) and tourism.
Global capitalism drives the United States to rely on immigrants
of color for its
labor needs. Neoliberal economic reforms in the United States
have facilitated the
restructuring of the U.S. economy toward the service sector.
Immigrants perform
many low-paid service jobs, such as gardeners and nannies
(Boehme, 2011; Louie,
2001; Massey, Durand, & Malone, 2002). These workers and
their families subsist on
extremely little.
While migrants who entered the United States prior to the era of
deindustrialization
could obtain well-paying, unionized factory jobs, their children
do not have access to
those jobs. These struggles are further exacerbated by
institutional racism that targets
men and women of color differently. This results in the low
income, racialized immi-
grants and their children struggling financially due to their
position within the White
supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Few scholars who focus on immigration law enforcement take a
broader political
economy perspective. In an exception, Robinson and Santos
(2014) analyze the vul-
nerability of immigrants from the perspective of global
capitalism. They contend that
the criminalization of undocumented migrants renders them
vulnerable to super-
exploitation, and that the availability of a large global class of
exploitable workers puts

downward pressure on wages around the world. The persistent
denial of rights to non-
citizen workers allows capitalists to control the labor power of
migrants on which they
depend. Robinson and Santos (2014) as well as Golash-Boza
(2016) make it clear that
the possibility and reality of deportation render undocumented
migrants vulnerable
and exploitable in the current permutation of global capitalism.
Betty’s position in the White supremacist capitalist patriarchy
put the odds against
her from the beginning. The persistent poverty Betty and her
mother experienced after
leaving war-torn Guatemala is a consequence of class
oppression, which is character-
istic of capitalism. In California, Betty’s mother found she had
limited options as a
modestly educated undocumented Latina. These limited options
made it difficult for
her to escape an abusive marriage, which in turn led Betty to
run away from home at
age 18, and into a life of drug abuse and homelessness.
Immigrant Incorporation From an Intersectional CRT
Perspective
Ana is a 20-year-old college student from Orlando, FL. She
grew up in a single-parent
household with her 45-year-old mother, Rose, and two brothers.
Her father, an immi-

grant from the Dominican Republic, also lived with them but
left for New York and
later the Dominican Republic to financially support the family
when Ana was in sev-
enth grade. Despite her father’s absence, Ana describes her
childhood as happy. She is
“ridiculously close” to her two brothers, and highly values
family. She learned Spanish
as a child but lost much of the language once she began school.
She is currently
enrolled in a Spanish class in college and proudly remarks that
she is getting an A in
the class. She hopes it will help her converse more easily with
her extended family,
with whom she struggles to communicate due to language
barriers.
Although Ana can be classified as second generation because
she has one immi-
grant parent, she had few transnational, physical, or emotional
attachments to the
Dominican Republic because her single mother, Rose, did not
expose her to Dominican
culture since she did not know much about Dominican Republic
herself. Rose’s par-
ents were born there but they made little effort to transmit
Dominican cultural prac-
tices to her. Her father’s absence and her mother’s lack of
cultural knowledge led to
Ana growing up with little access to Dominican culture.
Ana is perceived as Black by others, perceives herself as having
White skin, but
self-identifies as non-Black Hispanic. When asked if she had
ever experienced racism,
Ana expressed great uncertainty:

I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever, knock on wood,
experienced something where I’m
like okay they’re being racist, you know, like towards me. I
mean I hope to not ever, I
hope my kids never, you know? But to be honest, I really don’t
know, ‘cause my friends
always make fun of me ‘cause they’re like “you think
everyone’s nice and you think
everyone is a good person” and I’m just like . . . so really
someone could have been racist
to me and I was just “oh they’re having a bad day” and I just,
you know. Honestly, I have
no idea, I don’t know, maybe, maybe not.
Ana engaged in a rhetorical strategy of color-blind racism
named rhetorical incoher-
ence, which she signaled by her repetitive use of “I don’t know”
many times in
responding to this question (Bonilla-Silva, 2013). Her
incoherence makes sense
because she is uncertain about her ability to identify a social
situation as racially
oppressive. She also desires to believe that “everyone is a good
person,” and racism is
not in line with what kind people do. Research shows that
Latinxs often use color-
blind rhetoric, as Ana did, to distance herself from any possible
experiences with racial
discrimination (Dowling, 2014).

White Supremacy
Despite having little access to Dominican culture growing up,
Ana’s parents
actively engaged in racial discourses that caused her to
internalize both a national-
ity and a Hispanicized U.S. racial schema (Roth, 2012). For
example, her parents
both self-identified as “Dominican” or “Hispanic” rather than
Black and would
assert these identities when other people assumed they were
Black. Ana thus devel-
oped a racial and ethnic identity that has two sources: the
historical denial of
African ancestries in the Dominican Republic, which is a legacy
of dictator Rafael
Trujillo’s racial project (Candelario, 2007; Comas-Diaz, 1994;
Duany, 1998), and
an Indo-Hispanic Dominican national identity discourse that
emphasizes identifica-
tion with Indio heritage because it symbolizes Dominican
resistance to Haiti, Spain,
and the United States (Candelario, 2007).
Comas-Diaz (1994) posits that when Latinxs who have
phenotypically African fea-
tures are not taught about or are taught to deny their African
ancestry, they experience
numerous drawbacks. Some of the drawbacks include identity
conflicts between how
they are perceived and how they self-identify, enduring racism
without being taught
how to cope with it, and internalizing racism. Twine (2010)
introduces the idea of
racial literacy—a form of cultural capital that teaches children
how to identify, navi-

gate, cope with, and safely challenge racism in everyday
interactions. In earlier work,
Twine (1998) shows that children who lack this skill do not
challenge racist com-
ments, but drastically change their own behavior to avoid
hearing the comments again.
Hordge-Freeman (2015) likewise found that when Afro-Latin
American families
reproduced rather than challenged anti-Blackness in antiracist
ways, it affected chil-
dren’s sense of self-worth, sense of belonging, and the overall
quality of familial rela-
tionships. Ana’s belief that she has never experienced racism
may reflect a lack of
racial literacy. A lack of racial literacy maintains White
supremacy by hindering peo-
ple of colors’ ability to advocate for themselves and challenge
racial domination.
The assimilation paradigm does not account for the racism that
people of color
experience, how the system of White supremacy shapes
assimilation processes, or the
racist, nativist, and other oppressive structures in the United
States (García, 2017a;
Valdez & Golash-Boza, 2017). White supremacy devalues the
cultures, languages, and
knowledge of racial/ethnic minorities. People of color who are
socialized into Anglo-
American culture lose valuable skills, networks, and knowledge.
Ana’s story points to
how easily a child in the second generation can lose a
minoritized culture and how
losing a minoritized culture may mean a loss of valuable forms
of capital for immi-
grants and their descendants. Existing research suggests this

may be a disadvantage.
For example, Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway
(2008) found that there is
a second-generation advantage for those who learn about a
minoritized culture where
they fare better than their parents and Whites on traditional
measures such as English
proficiency, obtaining jobs in the mainstream labor market,
political engagement, and
more. The children of immigrants who have access to ethnic
culture through close
family and community ties have higher self-esteem and better
educational outcomes
(Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Portes & Zhou, 1993).
Patriarchy
The assimilation paradigm does not account for the ways that
patriarchy structures
patterns of settlement (Donato, Enriquez, & Llewellyn, 2017;
Hondagneu-Sotelo,
1994; Parrado & Flippen, 2005; Viruell-Fuentes, 2006),
consequently shaping the
lives of the second generation. Similar to deportation studies,
the few studies that
integrate gender have focused on women (Donato et al., 2017;
Hondagneu-Sotelo,
1994). These studies have found that migration to the United
States can make
households more gender-egalitarian (Boehm, 2012; Hondagneu-
Sotelo, 1994) and

that immigrant women sometimes decide to stay in the United
States longer than
they had anticipated because of this (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1994).
Parrado and
Flippen (2005) caution that changes in gendered dynamics vary
according to race,
class, ethnicity, and legal status.
Patriarchy creates gendered dynamics and gendered norms, and
these dynamics
and norms shape the incorporation processes of the children of
immigrants. Patriarchy
places rigid, heteronormative gender roles and division of labor
on both mothers and
fathers. Mothers are expected to do most of the caregiving work
in the family. Thus,
mothers tend to stay with their children and not migrate. Men,
on the other hand, are
expected to financially provide for their family and to be
detached from their emo-
tions, which assumes that they will not suffer due to their
physical separation from
their loved ones after migrating.
Patriarchy structured who was present in Ana’s home growing
up. Due to gendered
dynamics in the family, Ana’s mother was the parent who
became the primary care-
giver of the children, while Ana’s father lived away from his
children to financially
support the family. Within a system of White supremacy where
Whites dominate every
institution, children of color are unlikely to learn about their
minoritized culture out-
side of their homes. Patriarchy and White supremacy have
created the circumstances

whereby Ana is outwardly identified as a woman of color yet
has few tools at her
disposal to help her navigate racial dynamics in the United
States, such as the diffi-
culty she faces in identifying racism.
Global Capitalism
Migration is not simply a decision of individuals, but a
consequence of global flows of
capital (Wallerstein, 1998). Large multinational corporations
enter poor countries to
exploit their lands, raw materials, labor, and markets. They
build factories and produce
goods that compete with those made locally. The
deindustrialized U.S. economy
created a bifurcated labor market that offers both highly skilled
and unskilled jobs, but
few well-paying, working-class jobs in the middle (Kivisto &
Faist, 2010).
Like Guatemala, the Dominican Republic has experienced
migration outflow due
to global capitalism. U.S. involvement in the Dominican
Republic to maintain control
over the country’s sugar industry and prevent the
implementation of communism
peaked in 1961-1968. At that time, Dominicans had the second
highest level of migra-
tion to the United States following Mexico (Golash-Boza,
2012). Most migrated to

seek economic opportunity, something lacking in the Dominican
Republic because of
U.S. exploitation of the land and workers. This exploitation
created a large flow of
Dominican migration, which included Ana’s grandmother who
migrated to the United
States around 1965.
Although global capitalism is a macro-level social structure, the
positioning of
Ana’s parents within the global economy reflects this structure.
Rose has an
Associate’s degree from a community college and now works as
a medical coder for
a hospital. The availability of such jobs reflects the current
version of capitalism,
which is characterized by deindustrialization and the growth of
the service sector.
Rose is considered low skilled, but she relies on this job and her
husband’s income
as her main sources of household income to support her three
children, two of whom
are in college.
Ana has overcome many barriers as a first-generation college
student, a woman of
color, and a child of an immigrant. While her story is a far
happier one than Betty’s, it
nonetheless reflects the role of patriarchy, White supremacy,
and global capitalism in
shaping access to cultural, familial, and community resources.
Global capitalism led
to the migration of the members of her family. The historical
practices of White
supremacy in the Dominican Republic, specifically the erasure
of Black ancestry from

Dominican history, have led to Ana’s lack of connection to a
Black identity. White
supremacy and patriarchy jointly structured Ana’s limited
exposure to Dominican cul-
ture because patriarchy prevented her father from transmitting
culture and White
supremacy ensured she could not get it elsewhere. In a White
supremacist capitalist
patriarchy, power and material and psychological resources are
unequally distributed.
The intergenerational legacies of White supremacy in the
Dominican Republic and the
intergenerational loss of culture due to gender roles and
gendered divisions of labor
resulted in Ana’s lack of cultural capital that she could use to
challenge these systems.
Extending the analysis of the second generation from an
assimilation-focused approach
to an intersectional critical race approach can offer innovative
insights into under-
standing how the White supremacist capitalist patriarchy
structures the settlement of
immigrants and their descendants.
Refugee Studies From an Intersectional CRT Perspective
Mao is a Hmong woman who came to the United States as a
child with her widowed
mother and eight siblings. Her father died 3 days after returning
from fighting in the
Secret War. The United States made extensive use of chemical
weapons during the

Vietnam War, including Agent Orange and napalm, and it is
likely that her father
died due to exposure (Hamilton-Merritt, 1999; von Meding &
Hang Thai, 2017).
Mao’s family fled Laos in 1979, along with hundreds of
thousands of refugees,
many of whom crossed the Mekong River into Thailand (Long,
1993). Some Hmong
refugee families strategically split up based on gender because
they knew that when
men were caught they were more likely to be captured and/or
killed, whereas women
and children would be returned to Laos. Mao’s brothers thus left
first, leaving Mao
behind. When Mao, her mother, and her two younger sisters
made their first attempt to
escape, communist soldiers caught them and returned them to
Laos. In their next
attempt to seek refuge in Thailand, Mao, her mother, and sisters
made it half way
across the Mekong River onto a river island. As they were
waiting for the next group
of smugglers to take them across the other half of the river to
safety in Thailand, they
were attacked by communist soldiers. Fearing for their lives,
they returned to Laos,
once again to live among the communist soldiers. In their third
attempt, they made it
safely to Thailand in December of 1979. The Thai government
refused permanent
asylum to the Hmong because they feared the toll of waves of
asylum seekers on their
fragile economy (Long, 1993). Mao has vivid recollections of
eating everything from

grasshoppers to roots. She recalls witnessing sexual violence
against young women,
and the lifeless bodies of many fellow Hmong refugees during
her family’s escape
when she was 6 years old. She mentioned several times that she
had survived against
the odds and that this gave her a determination to succeed
academically and
professionally.
The international community stepped in, and Mao’s family was
among those reset-
tled in the United States. This likely reflects the Migration and
Refugee Assistance Act
of 1975 and the Refugee Act of 1980 (Long, 1993). Mao’s
family landed by plane in
Portland, Oregon in the spring of 1980.
Mao and her mother and eight siblings spent a month living in a
converted enclosed
porch with an American family that sponsored them. Two years
later, they moved to
the Central Valley of California, where they heard from other
refugees that they could
cultivate their own land. Mao’s mother operated a small farm
and Mao was able to
finish high school, college, and a master’s degree in social work
that allowed her to
earn a generous living.
White Supremacy
Although Mao is educationally, economically, and
professionally successful, an analy-
sis of her story is incomplete without a discussion of
racialization. Mao is racialized as

an Asian American, although she primarily identifies as Hmong.
Even though she has
become a U.S. citizen, she does not consider herself American.
She explains,
I would not consider myself as American because there is no
way I can be an American
. . . I identify myself as Hmong, that’s why it doesn’t matter,
my hair, my color’s not
going to change. Even if I dye my [hair] color, they going to
look at me and they say she
is Asian or Hmong. And so yes, that’s why I’m always going to
identify as Hmong.
Although Mao acknowledged others may see her as Asian, she
emphasizes that she
will always identify with her ethnic identity, Hmong.
One could use an ethnicity framework to understand Mao’s
experiences, as she
has benefited from ethnic networks (Zhou & Bankston, 1998)
and takes pride in her
ethnicity (Portes & Zhou, 1993). Nevertheless, her experiences
as a racialized
immigrant also form a key part of her socialization in the
United States. Mao was
twice passed over for promotion and White colleagues were
promoted above her;
even in one case, when her boss told her she had performed
exceptionally well in
her interview and could not improve her performance in any
way. She has taken on

training new workers and interns as an additional responsibility
without receiving
an increase in pay. She told her boss she would file a formal
grievance if the extra
work she was doing was not compensated. Her boss took away
the responsibility of
training, but began to assign her more complex cases that had
been designated for
someone else.
Mao has left the organization where she experienced
discrimination and found a
company that values her work more highly. Nonetheless, she
lost income and experi-
enced the stagnation in which minoritized groups are often
given fewer economic and
psychological rewards for the same work in a White supremacist
society (Bonilla-
Silva, 1996). A singular focus on ethnicity would not have
accounted for how White
supremacy has shaped Mao’s life.
Patriarchy
The traumatic nature of Mao and her family’s escape from Laos
illustrates the impact
of patriarchy on girls’ and women’s lives. Men are more likely
to be selected for mas-
sacre, and to serve in the army compared with women
(Carpenter, 2006). These cir-
cumstances created a situation in which traveling with her male
relatives would not
have afforded Mao, her sisters, and her mother any protection
on a highly dangerous
escape from Laos.

Mao also works in a gendered profession that is dominated by
women (Abrams &
Curran, 2004; Salsberg et al., 2017). Mao’s cases require her to
be patient, sympa-
thetic, sensitive about clients’ situations, and willing to educate
them about the sys-
tem—all of which are gendered expectations. Rather than being
appreciated for her
patience and sensitivity, she was exploited and overworked, to
the point where she
considered filing for stress leave.
Mao’s racialized experiences and her maneuvering within
racism in the U.S.
context cannot be understood in isolation from gender. Mao’s
gender helped Mao
survive the war. Escaping from death gave her determination to
survive racial and
gender injustices in the U.S. context, particularly in her
gendered profession. Mao
is aware of institutional racism and carefully selects which
battles she will fight.
She has learned to maneuver White supremacy. Her experiences
as a girl delayed
her migration to refuge in Thailand, but that experience
provides the conditions
and mind-set for her resilience in the face of racism.
Global Capitalism
Studies of refugees point to their economic status. Espiritu’s
(2014) study of Vietnamese

refugees shows that resettlement has left many formerly well-
to-do families poor. For
example, Lien Ngo noted how her dad was wealthy in Vietnam,
but in the U.S. con-
text, he is a janitor. This indicates that for Ngo’s family, war
changed their socioeco-
nomic status from upper to working class. While Hmong
refugees rarely hail from the
upper classes in their country of origin (Ngo & Lee, 2007), war
and migration further
impoverish them. Mao’s family borrowed money from relatives
to get to Thailand and
repaid the debt over 17 years.
Some scholars note that economic and political interests lead to
refugee flows
(Massey, Arango, Hugo, Kouaouci, & Pellegrino, 1999) without
looking at the role of
global capitalism specifically. A refugee is someone fleeing his
or her country (Bohmer
& Shuman, 2008) who has a “well-founded fear of violence”
(Zolberg, Suhrke, &
Aguayo, 1989, p. 33) if he or she returns to home (Nibbs, 2014).
Any discussion of
refugees must therefore begin with the violence that
transformed people into refugees.
In the case of Hmong refugees, U.S. intervention in Laos, as in
Guatemala and the
Dominican Republic, reflects interests driven by global
capitalism—principally, to
prevent the spread of communism.
The Secret War began when the CIA recruited Hmong people
living in Laos to help
them in the Vietnam War (Hamilton-Merritt, 1999). The Hmong
saw in the North

Vietnamese a shared enemy as the Communist regime
threatened their way of life and
autonomy. The end of the Vietnam War thus put the Hmong
collaborators in a precari-
ous situation (T. Vang & Flores, 1999) as soldiers in Laos and
Vietnam persecuted
them for having aided the United States (Hamilton-Merritt,
1999; M. Vang, 2012).
U.S. refugee resettlement policies, which provided Mao’s
family assistance with
housing and access to the Aid for Families with Dependent
Children and Medicaid
programs, access to health care, technically apply to all refugee
in the United States.
However, refugee policies have primarily benefited political
refugees from communist
regimes (Zhao, 2016). In fact, in 1957, refugees were defined as
those fleeing commu-
nist nations or the Middle East and refugees from Vietnam,
Laos, and Cambodia made
up more than half of the refugees the United States accepted in
the 1980s (Zhao, 2016).
Mao’s migration was initiated by the Vietnam War, and the
United States’ interven-
tion into Laos. This war was motivated by global capitalist
intentions of preventing the
expansion of communism. Patriarchy delayed Mao’s refuge to
Thailand, while her
brothers arrived first. This experience exposed her to more
trauma as a young child.
Patriarchy also shapes her profession. At the same time, White
supremacy continues to
shape her experience as a naturalized citizen as she does not
define herself as American

and has experienced discrimination in the workplace.
Conclusion
The United States is a White supremacist capitalist patriarchy
and its systems of oppres-
sion shape the trajectories of immigrants, their children,
refugees, and deportees. They
determine the conditions that uproot them from their countries,
the labor market and
educational opportunities they encounter in the United States,
and their interactions
with the coercive arm of the state. Any analysis of their lives
that does not consider
White supremacist capitalist patriarchy would be incomplete.
This article has compared and contrasted the experiences of
three different women
with distinct backgrounds. U.S interventions abroad played a
role in the migration pat-
terns of all three women’s families. U.S. interest in spreading
capitalism and defeating
communism drove these interventions as the United States
sought to expand its market
for goods as well as the global market for cheap labor. These
women’s families’ struc-
tural positions as nationals of countries in the Global South that
became targets of U.S.
imperialism shaped their trajectories. Mao and Ana ultimately
reaped some of those
benefits of the U.S.’s structural position in the global

economy—and even Betty
avoided civil war in Guatemala, although it is difficult to be
confident, she lived a bet-
ter life in the United States than she would have had if she
stayed, given how difficult
her life has been. Race, class, and gender have shaped her
suffering, just as it has at
times thwarted Mao’s ability to reap the benefits of success in
the United States, and
will likely constrain Ana’s opportunities as well.
Integrating an understanding of the White supremacist capitalist
patriarchy into our
understanding of the stories of Betty, Ana, and Mao illuminates
the conditions they
have faced. It is an important new direction for immigration
research, revealing how
various intersecting forms of oppression condition movement,
settlement, and removal
of immigrants and their descendants. It is incumbent on scholars
to name the systems
of oppression which shape our lives and to include in our
analyses a discussion of how
these systems shape our lives. Previous research on migrants’
trajectories has addressed
pieces of this system, yet as we have shown, it is crucial to
consider how all three
systems shape the possibilities for everyone, and, especially for
migrants.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: The research for this article
was partially funded by the
University of California, Merced.
Notes
1. The names of participants in this article are pseudonyms.
2. See https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/05/30/in-central-valley-
many-immigrants-but-few-
immigration-lawyers/
3. See http://www.ppic.org/publication/undocumented-
immigrants-in-california/
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Yosso, T. J., & Solorzano, D. (2005). Conceptualizing a critical
race theory in sociology.
In M. Romero & E. Margolis (Eds.), The Blackwell companion
to social inequalities
(pp. 117-146). New York, NY: John Wiley.
Zhao, X. (2016). Immigration to the United States after 1945. In
Oxford research encyclope-
dia of American history. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press. Retrieved from http://
oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/97801993
29175.001.0001/acrefore-
9780199329175-e-72?print=pdf

Zhou, M., & Bankston, C. L., III. (1998). Growing up
American: How Vietnamese children
adapt to life in the United States. New York, NY: Russell Sage
Foundation.
Zolberg, A., Suhrke, A., & Aguayo, S. (1989). Escape from
violence: Conflict and the refugee
crisis in the developing world. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Author Biographies
Tanya Golash-Boza is a professor of Sociology at the University
of California, Merced. She
has published several books on race and immigration including:
Deported: Immigrant Policing,
Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism (NYU 2016), Forced
out Fenced In: Immigration
Tales from the Field (Oxford 2018), and Immigration Nation:
Raids, Detentions, and
Deportations in Post 9/11 America (Routledge 2015).
Maria D. Duenas is a PhD candidate and National Science
Foundation AGEP California
Hispanic Serving Institutions Alliance Fellow at the University
of California, Merced. She stud-
ies racialization, racial and ethnic discourses, and racial and
ethnic identity formation of
Latina/o/xs through a critical race theory and intersectional
feminist perspective.
Chia Xiong is a PhD candidate and UC President’s Dissertation
Fellow at the University of
California, Merced. Her research focuses on refugee
racialization and sense of belonging
through intersectional and critical refugee approaches.

https://theconversation.com/agent-orange-exposed-how-u-s-
chemical-warfare-in-vietnam-unleashed-a-slow-moving-
disaster-84572
https://theconversation.com/agent-orange-exposed-how-u-s-
chemical-warfare-in-vietnam-unleashed-a-slow-moving-
disaster-84572
http://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/978
0199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-72?print=pdf
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE DOCUMENTATION
Prepared by Vanessa Weller, History WAC Fellow, 2011-2012
The aim of this workshop is to familiarize you with basic
Chicago Manual of Style citation formatting. We will cover
common secondary source citation formats—for both footnotes
and bibliographies—and will also briefly look at how to cite
some kinds of primary sources.
The discipline of History uses Chicago Style documentation for
citations. Chicago Style differs from MLA and APA in a
number of ways, and it is important to be diligent about using
the correct citation style as it is a hallmark of good scholarship.
In order for your work to be taken seriously, you need to be
able to comply with the standards of your discipline.
This guide will review both bibliographic and footnote citation
formats. Note the differences in these formats and be careful
not to confuse them. Unless your instructors direct you
otherwise, it is safe to assume that they will expect you to
submit both footnotes and a bibliography for a documented
essay or research paper assigned in a History course.

If you would like more information on Chicago Style
formatting, consult the Chicago Manual of Style online at http
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"://
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"www
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"chicagomanu
alofstyle
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"org
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"/
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"home
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html"html. The
printed Chicago Manual is also available in the Hunter Library
and for quick reference in the History Department office.

Why do we need to document our sources?
A sound historical argument will rely on authentic historical
(primary) sources to provide sound evidence of the author’s
allegations. Historical writing also needs to acknowledge other
research done in the field (historiographic, or secondary
sources) and to properly attribute that work to its author(s). If
historians fail to properly cite their sources they are libel for
plagiarism.
What is plagiarism?
Plagiarism takes many forms. Broadly, an author may commit
plagiarism when they make reference to another work without
properly giving credit to the author(s) that produced that work.
This may be done inadvertently or intentionally, but in either
case, the offense lies in the misrepresentation of someone else’s
work as your own. In order to avoid plagiarizing another’s
work, you must be diligent about citing your sources.
When do we need to document our sources?
It is important to be conscientious about documenting your
sources. Therefore, whenever you incorporate information from
another source, you should provide a citation for it. This does
not mean that you should footnote every sentence. On the
contrary, footnotes should only be used when you are providing
new information to a reader or when you are directly
referencing the work of another author. General knowledge—
information of which you might reasonably expect a reader to
already be aware—does not need to be cited. As a general rule
of thumb, the evidence you offer to substantiate your argument
should be footnoted. If you are confused about when to use a
footnote ask a writing tutor, a TA, a librarian or a teacher. And
err on the side of caution—it is better to have too many than too

few citations because, as you know, failing to properly attribute
credit to a source makes you libel for plagiarism.
How many citations is too many?
Of course, there is no set number of citations that you should
provide per essay. But, you should be aware of certain
techniques for combining or abridging citations, when
appropriate. For some of these techniques, see “Multiple
sources in one footnote,” “Repeated use of sources,” and “Ibid”
listed below.
What is a footnote?
A footnote is a way of providing the citation information for a
historical or historiographic source. They are required when a
source is quoted or paraphrased. A footnote provides both
publishing information and, sometimes, contextual information
to further explain the reference made in the body of the paper.
Footnotes are listed at the bottom of the page on which a source
is referenced and are marked with a superscript numeral in the
paragraph—usually at the end of the sentence—in which the
source is referenced.
How do I make a footnote?
Most word processing programs have a function that will
automatically insert the footnote number, provide space at the
bottom of the page for the citation, and keep track of the order
of your footnotes.
In Microsoft Word, place your cursor where you want the
number for the footnote to appear, after the text that you intend
to cite. Then click on the INSERT menu in the toolbar, and
then the FOOTNOTE option listed under INSERT, then your

cursor will automatically be moved to a space at the bottom of
the page in which you can type the citation information. In
some versions of MS Word you will need to click on
REFERNCES under the INSERT menu before you click
FOOTNOTE. In other versions there will be a REFERENCES
menu in the toolbar. Familiarize yourself with the word
processing program that you are using so that you are
comfortable doing this. DO NOT simply write a number at the
end of the sentence and insert the citation as a “FOOTER”.
This will make the citation appear on every page of your essay
and will confuse your reader.
What information is included in a footnote?
According to the Chicago Manual of Style, section 14.15,
“Basic Structure of a Note”:
“A footnote or an endnote generally lists the author, title, and
facts of publication, in that order. Elements are separated by
commas; the facts of publication are enclosed in parentheses.
Authors’ names are presented in standard order (first name
first). Titles are capitalized headline-style (see 8.157), unless
they are in a foreign language (see 11.3). Titles of larger works
(e.g., books and journals) are italicized; titles of smaller works
(e.g., chapters, articles) or unpublished works are presented in
roman and enclosed in quotation marks (see 8.161). Such terms
as editor/edited by, translator/translated by, volume, and edition
are abbreviated.“
What information is included in a bibliographic entry? As per
Chicago Manual of Style, section 14.16, “Basic structure of a
bibliography entry”:
“In a bibliography entry the elements are separated by periods
rather than by commas; the facts of publication are not enclosed
in parentheses; and the first-listed author’s name, according to
which the entry is alphabetized in the bibliography, is usually

inverted (last name first). As in a note, titles are capitalized
headline-style unless they are in a foreign language; titles of
larger works (e.g., books and journals) are italicized; and titles
of smaller works (e.g., chapters, articles) or unpublished works
are presented in roman and enclosed in quotation marks. Noun
forms such as editor, translator, volume, and edition are
abbreviated, but verb forms such as edited by and translated
by—abbreviated in a note—are spelled out in a bibliography.
(Cf. 14.15.)”
Where do I find “publication information”?
For a book, the editor or author’s name and the title of the book
can be found on the front cover and on an interior title page in
the first few pages of the book. The date and place of
publication and the name of the publisher can be found on the
copyright page, usually on the backside of the title page in the
first few pages of the book.
For an article, the publication information is usually provided
by the search engine that you used to locate the article, or on a
cover page for the article.
Multiple Sources in One Footnote
You may want or need to reference several sources in one
footnote. This is warranted in the case that your prose
incorporates work from several sources. In many cases multiple
sources can be listed like so:
1 Steven F. Lawson, “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The
Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement,” American
Historical Review 96 (Apr., 1991): 462; Jacqueline Dowd Hall,
“The Long Civil Rights Movement,” JAH, 91, No. 4 (Mar.,
2004): 1259; Eric Arnesen, “Reconsidering the Long Civil
Rights Movement,” Historically Speaking 10, No. 2 (Apr.,

2009): 33; Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The
Long Movement as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in
Recent Black Freedom Studies,” Journal of African American
History 92, No. 2 (Spring 2007): 272.
Repeated Use of Sources
If you refer to a particular source for a second time you may
truncate the publication information in your second and
subsequent footnotes. Generally, you may provide only the
author’s last name and the main portion of the title of their
work (i.e., you may omit the sub-heading—the portion of a title
that comes after a colon) and appropriate page numbers. It
might look something like this:
1 Coleman, Death is a Social Disease, 79.
Ibid
If you refer to the same source—and only that source—several
times in a row, you may further truncate the footnote. The first
footnote should provide the full publication information; the
second footnote may follow the abbreviated format shown
above; the third and any immediately subsequent footnotes may
use simply read “Ibid” and the appropriate page numbers. It
might look something like this:
1 David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order
and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971),
45.
2 Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum, 90.
3 Ibid, 191.
Note: You may ONLY use “Ibid” if your repeated references to
one source appear in direct succession. If you refer to the same
source again later, you must use the abbreviated format shown
in “Repeated Use of Sources”. Also, be wary of using “Ibid”
too frequently. If you have several references to the same

source in a row it is an indication that you are relying to heavily
on this source, which may be a symptom of an imbalanced
argument (i.e., that you are not weighing the evidence of
multiple sources against each other) or that you are
relinquishing your own voice as a narrator to that of your
sources.
Bibliography/Works Cited Formatting
In addition to your footnotes, you will often be required to
provide a list of all of your sources at the end of your paper, in
either a bibliography of works cited page. Bibliographic
citations are formatted slightly differently from footnotes. The
major differences are that in contrast to footnotes, bibliographic
entries list an author’s last name before their first and use
different punctuation (periods instead of commas between the
author’s name and the title of the item, as well as between the
title of the item and the publication information, and
bibliographic entries do not use parentheses). See the list of
“Commonly Cited Sources” at the end of this handout for
examples.
Note that bibliographies must be alphabetized by author’s last
name.
Multiple sources by the same author
You may use two or more source written by the same author, in
which case you can use an abbreviation in your bibliography,
replacing the author’s name with five dashes as follows:
Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-
1787. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: North Carolina University
Press, 1998.
-----. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York:
Vintage Books, 1991.

Commonly Cited Sources:
Books with one author
F: Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History
of Four Meals (New York: Penguin, 2006), 99–100.
B: Pollan, Michael. The Ominvore’s Dilemma: A Natural
History of Four Meals. New York: Penguin, 2006.
Books with more than one author
F: Lesley Doyal and Imogen Pennell, The Political Economy of
Health (London: Pluto Press, 1979), 86.
B: Doyal, Lesley and Imogen Pennell. The Political Economy of
Health. London: Pluto Press, 1979.
Books with an editor
F: Sue-Ellen Jacobs, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang, eds.,
Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality,
and Spirituality (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 32.
B: Jacobs, Sue-Ellen, Wesley Thomas, and Sabine Lang, eds.
Two-Spirit People: Native American Gender Identity, Sexuality,
and Spirituality. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.
Chapter in an edited book
F: Dana Alston and Nicole Brown, “Global Threats to People of
Color” in Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the
Grassroots, ed. Robert D. Bullard (Boston: South End Press,
1993):187.
B: Alston, Dana and Nicole Brown. “Global Threats to People
of Color.” In Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from
the Grassroots, 179-194. Edited by Robert D. Bullard. Boston:
South End Press, 1993.

Reprinted Editions
F1: Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, 3rd ed.
(London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1986; Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin Books, 1987), 26.
F2: Jacques Barzun, Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers,
rev. ed. (1985; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1994), 152–53.
B1: Bernhardt, Peter. The Rose’s Kiss: A Natural History of
Flowers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. First
published 1999 by Island Press.
B2: Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Nature. 1836. Facsimile of the first
edition, with an introduction by Jaroslav Pelikan. Boston:
Beacon, 1985.
B3: Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Scribner,
1925. Reprinted with preface and notes by Matthew J. Bruccoli.
New York: Collier Books, 1992.
Edition other than the first
F: William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White, The Elements of Style,
4th ed. (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000).
B: Strunk, William, Jr., and E. B. White. The Elements of Style.
4th ed. New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000.
Article in an academic journal
F: Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement
and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History
91, No. 4 (Mar., 2004): 1233-63.

B: Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd. “The Long Civil Rights Movement
and the Political Uses of the Past.” Journal of American History
91, No. 4 (Mar., 2004): 1233-63.
Article in a newspaper or magazine
F: Daniel Mendelsohn, “But Enough about Me,” New Yorker,
January 25, 2010, 68.
B: Mendelsohn, Daniel. “But Enough about Me.” New Yorker,
January 25, 2010. 68.
Article in an online newspaper or magazine
F: Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Robert Pear, “Wary Centrists Posing
Challenge in Health Care Vote,” New York Times, February 27,
2010, accessed February 28, 2010, http
HYPERLINK
"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/us/politics/28health.html"
://
HYPERLINK
www
HYPERLINK
.
HYPERLINK
nytimes
HYPERLINK
.

HYPERLINK
com
HYPERLINK
/2010/02/28/
HYPERLINK
us
HYPERLINK
/
HYPERLINK
politics
HYPERLINK
/28
HYPERLINK
health
HYPERLINK
.
HYPERLINK
html.

B: Stolberg, Sheryl Gay and Robert Pear. “Wary Centrists
Posing Challenge in Health Care Vote.” NYT February, 27,
2010. Accessed February 28, 2010, http
HYPERLINK
://
HYPERLINK
www
HYPERLINK
.
HYPERLINK
nytimes
HYPERLINK
.
HYPERLINK
com
HYPERLINK
/2010/02/28/
HYPERLINK
us

HYPERLINK
/
HYPERLINK
politics
HYPERLINK
/28
HYPERLINK
health
HYPERLINK
.
HYPERLINK
html.
Website
F: “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s
Corporation, accessed July 19, 2008,
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"http
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"://
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"www

HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html".
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"mcdona
lds
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"com
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"/
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"corp
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"about
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"factshe
ets
HYPERLINK

HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"html.
B: “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts.” McDonald’s
Corporation. Accessed July 19, 2008,
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"http
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"://
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"www
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"mcdona
lds
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"com
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"corp
HYPERLINK

HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"about
HYPERLINK
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"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"factshe
ets
HYPERLINK
HYPERLINK
"http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html"html.
Film or documentary
F: Style Wars: the Origin of Hip Hop, directed by Tony Silver
and Henry Chalfant (1983; New York: Plexifilm, 2003), DVD,
69 min.
B: Style Wars: the Origin of Hip Hop. Directed by Tony Silver
and Henry Chalfant. 1983, original release. New York:
Plexifilm, 2003. DVD, 69 minutes.
Books Downloaded from a Library or Bookseller
F: Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin
Classics, 2008), Microsoft Reader e-book, chap. 23.
B: Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Penguin
Classics, 2008. Microsoft Reader e-book, chap. 23.
PAGE

2
S26 Current Anthropology Volume 60, Supplement 19, February
2019
Militarized Global Apartheid
by Catherine Besteman
Cath
polog
0410
17, a
q 201
New regimes of labor and mobility control are taking shape
across the global north in a militarized form that mimics
South Africa’s history of apartheid. Apartheid was a South
African system of influx and labor control that attempted
to manage the “threat” posed by black people by incarcerating
them in zones of containment while also enabling the
control and policed exploitation of black people as workers, on
which the country was dependent. The paper argues,
first, that the rise of a system of global apartheid has created a
racialized world order and a hierarchical labor market
dependent on differential access to mobility; second, that the
expansion of systems of resource plunder primarily by
agents of the global north into the global south renders
localities in the global south unsustainable for ordinary life;
and, third, that in response, the global north is massively
investing in militarized border regimes to manage the
northern movement of people from the global south. The paper
argues that “global apartheid” might replace terms
such as “transnationalism,” “multiculturalism,” and
“cosmopolitanism” in order to name the structures of control
that se-

curitize the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the
north and imprison the south, and that create a new mili-
tarized form of apartheid on a global level.
1. As of this writing, the closure decision has been suspended.
2. This paper is a highly abbreviated version of a book project
that
develops the arguments, theoretical concepts, and ethnographic
exam-
ples in much greater detail, including the cases of India, East
Asia, and
In May 2016, Kenya announced its intention to close Dadaab,
the world’s largest refugee camp, as well as Kakuma, another
camp. Together the camps housed about 500,000 people, mostly
Somalis who episodically arrived in the camps over the previous
25 years, fleeing from periodic violence compounded by famine
in their homeland. Beginning with the collapse of the US-
backed
dictator’s government in 1991, Somalis fled genocidal violence
by warring militias competing for territory during the 1990s, an
era followed by another calamitous explosion of violence in
2006
that destroyed a brief period of relative calm when Ethiopia,
with
US military support, invaded to overthrow the nascent Islamic
Courts Union government. The foreign invasion precipitated the
emergence of Al Shabaab, a militant Islamic fundamentalist
movement labeled as terrorists by the rest of the world, whose
predations against civilians have persistently sent people escap-
ing across the border into refugee camps during the past decade.
Many in the camps have no homes to which they can return and
no communities in Somalia where they are safe, a reality com-
pounded by the fact that many camp residents arrived as babies
or were born in the camps and have never even visited Somalia.
With Kenya’s announcement about the camps’ imminent clo-
sure, Somalis throughout the diaspora began scrambling to try
to

figure out where their relatives in the camps should go.1
For the past decade I have worked with Somali refugees who
were resettled in the United States from Dadaab and Kakuma
(see Besteman 2016). Tracking their efforts to find safety over
the
past two and a half decades has made visible for me a structure
erine Besteman is Professor in the Department of Anthro-
y at Colby College (4702 Mayflower Drive, Waterville, Maine
1, USA [[email protected]]). This paper was submitted 17 XI
ccepted 15 VI 18, and electronically published 13 IX 18.
8 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research. All rights re
This content downloaded from 198.01
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms a
of global apartheid, backed by militaristic force, through which
people from the global south try to navigate the borders,
barriers,
and violences imposed on them by governments and multilateral
institutions based in the global north. Building from the experi-
ences of Somali refugees, this paper offers a broad-brush view
of
a world order in which race and mobility feature as primary
variables for which heightened security and militarization are
the
answer. This article attempts to sketch out some dimensions of
this new world order, a militarized form of global apartheid.2
Militarized global apartheid is a loosely integrated effort by
countries in the global north to protect themselves against the
mobility of people from the global south. The new apartheid
apparatus takes the form of militarized border technologies
and personnel, interdictions at sea, biometric tracking of the
mobile, detention centers, holding facilities, and the criminal-

ization of mobility. It extends deeply into many places from
which people are attempting to leave and pushes them back, it
tracks them to interrupt their mobility, stops them at certain
bor-
ders for detention and deportation, pushes them into the most
dangerous traveling routes, and creates new forms of
criminality.
It stretches across most of the globe, depends on an immense
China, which are not discussed here due to space limitations.
Further-
more, because the article condenses a broadly comparative and
nuanced
argument, I am aware that it may appear to reify categories like
the
“global north” and the “global south.” I hope readers will
understand
that these categories are, of course, internally complex and
diverse and
that my use of broad-brush tactics here is a heuristic necessity.
served. 0011-3204/2019/60S19-0004$10.00. DOI:
10.1086/699280
1.246.195 on June 15, 2019 15:29:19 PM
nd Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
KSLeon
Highlight
Besteman Global Apartheid S27
investment of capital, and feeds a new global security-industrial
complex. Because the new apartheid relies on and nurtures xe-
nophobic ideologies and racialized worldviews, it recasts the
termsofsovereignty,citizenship,community,belonging,justice,

refuge, and civil rights and requires the few who benefit to col-
lectively and knowingly demonize and ostracize the many who
are harmed. I begin my analysis with an explanation of the ter-
minology I utilize, followed by an overview of South Africa’s
signature system of apartheid, which provides the structure for
the subsequent elaboration of the emerging system of milita-
rized global apartheid.
On Vocabulary
Throughout this article I use “the global north” to mean the
United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zea-
land, Russia, the Gulf states, and East Asia. This list overlaps
considerably with the group of states identified by political
scientist and Pentagon consultant Thomas Barnett (2003) as
“the Functioning Core” interconnected through globalization
in his influential “The Pentagon’s New Map.”3 Barnett argues
that the Functioning Core should initiate US-led military oc-
cupations in the areas he identifies as “the Non-integrating
Gap,”
places outside of globalization that constitute the greatest secu-
rity threats in the world today: “the Caribbean rim, virtually all
of Africa, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle
East and Southwest Asia, and much of Southeast Asia.” Of addi-
tional concern to Barnett are the “Seam States”—Mexico,
Brazil,
South Africa, Morocco, Algeria, Greece, Turkey, Pakistan,
Thai-
land, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia—that buffer the
Non-integrating Gap from the Functioning Core. He promotes
a strong US military presence in the Seam States as a strategy
to control mobility and secure the Functioning Core against
terrorism.
From the vantage point of my Somali acquaintances who
live within Barnett’s Non-integrating Gap, the poverty and

insecurity of the Gap look like an intentional creation of the
Functioning Core—a series of militarized borders, imprisoning
refugee camps, detention centers, tightly policed and danger-
ous border crossing zones, violent interventions by militaries
and agents of the global north, and regions made unsafe by the
rise of terrorist organizations in response to those interven-
tions. While Barnett, much like Thomas Friedman (1999) be-
fore him, defines the Gap as globally disconnected—which for
Barnett is a condition to be remedied through US-led military
3. First circulated as a PowerPoint slide, the argument later
became the
basis for an Esquire article and then a book of the same name
(Barnett 2004).
Barnett also includes in the Functioning Core some of South
America, as well
as India and China. I do not include the latter two states as part
of the global
north because of their status as migrant-sending states. India, in
fact, was the
country of origin of the largest number of migrants in the world
in 2017, at
17 million people (UN Department of Economic and Social
Affairs 2017).
Barnett does not include the Gulf states, which are presumably
lumped into
the Middle East, placed within the Non-integrating Gap.
This content downloaded from 198.01
All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms a
intervention—those who live within the Gap might see its in-
security as produced by a combination of militarized inter-
ventions by the global north (in support of friendly dictators, to
overthrow unfriendly dictators, for the Global War on Terror,
for resource extraction, and for other corporate interests of the
global north) and militarized containment (closed borders,
refugee camps, deportations and detentions of unauthorized

border crossers) designed to thwart the border-crossing mo-
bility strategies of residents forced out of the Gap by such in-
terventions.
Life in many places within the so-called Gap is undeniably
insecure. Returning to the experience of Somalis, every one of
my Somali acquaintances in the United States had to leave
behind in the refugee camps precious family members re-
jected from the official resettlement process managed by the
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the US
State Department. Everyone I know sends monthly remit-
tances and worries constantly about their relatives still living
in insecure refugee camps and in the dangerous regions of So-
malia subject to US drone and air attacks, famine, and attacks
by Al Shabaab.4 My friends’ remittances flow through indig-
enous banking networks that are always under threat of be-
ing shut down by the US government for security reasons.
Their remittances buy things obtained through informal long-
distance trade networks interrupted by insecurity. Their rela-
tives flee Al Shabaab into Kenya but are then forced to move
from the camps when insecurities flare or their refugee statuses
are revoked; they move between Nairobi and the refugee camps
when xenophobic ethnic cleansings sweep Nairobi; they make
their way north to get on leaky boats in attempts to cross the
Mediterranean; or they make their way south to South Africa,
where they face periodic xenophobic violence that leaves them
maimed or dead (Steinberg 2015). Their search for security is
hardly unique; the global south houses the vast majority of the
world’s refugees and displaced people—those threatened by
climate change, disease, poverty, and war. Barnett’s under-
standing of the Non-integrating Gap, much like Friedman’s
earlier definition of “turtles” (e.g., those countries that resist
joining capitalist globalization), mistakenly presumes that the
poverty and insecurity in these regions is due to their global
disconnections. But the view from the south reveals this to be a
myopic argument that ignores global connections that pervade

the global south through transnational emigration and diaspo-
ras as well as myriad global military, corporate, and nongov-
ernmental organization interventions.5
The life strategies pursued by my Somali acquaintances
demonstrate how the available scholarly vocabulary fails to
adequately capture the encounters through which people from
the Non-integrating Gap engage the rest of the world. For the
4. According to the New America Foundation (n.d.), the United
States launched 41 raids and drone strikes in Somalia between
March
2003 and January 2017, killing an estimated 348–415 people.
5. For anthropological critiques of Thomas Friedman’s The
Lexus and
the Olive Tree, see Haugerud (2005) and Nordstrom (2005).
1.246.195 on June 15, 2019 15:29:19 PM
nd Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c).
6. In South Africa, “Black” has historically been used to include
people
defined as ethnically Black African, Indian, and Coloured, a
legal category
created for everyone else who did not qualify as white (such as
people with
Khoi, Malay, Chinese, and mixed race ancestry). The set of
policies that
came to constitute apartheid in South Africa did not appear in
1948 as a
newly designed model of social order; rather, they reflected and
persistently
expanded colonial era practices of racial identification and
segregation, the

restriction of voting rights to White people, divide-and-rule
governance
practices for Black people, and the exploitation of Black
workers—all
fundamental components of colonial intervention and control in
South
Africa that preceded the rise of the apartheid state under the
National Party
(Frederickson 1981; Wolpe 1972; see also Mamdani 1996;
Pierre 2013).
S28 Current Anthropology Volume 60, Supplement 19, February
2019
Somali diaspora, “transnational” is inadequate because their
connections are not necessarily made between and through
national entities or frames but are made, for example, between
refugees incarcerated in camps in Kenya and people living in
stateless southern Somalia, between refugees living with no
civil
rights in South Africa and refugees in UNHCR refugee camps,
between refugees in camps in Kenya and refugees in camps in
Yemen. The nationalist frame is almost completely irrelevant in
the lives of Somalis except for the fact that national govern-
ments from the global north, in the name of their own security,
regularly intervene in Somalia or to contain Somalis, either
through attempts to impose new governmental structures that
continually prove irrelevant to people living in Somalia or to
impose new security regimes through proxy armies, alliances
with warlords, or drone attacks. And one of the primary ways
in which the nationalist frame is made consistently relevant for
Somalis seeking security is through militarized border controls
that other nations wield against their ability to move, in effect
incarcerating them in zones of profound and enduring inse-
curity. The central argument of this article is that the milita-
rized border controls that constrain the movement of Somalis
and others from the global south constitute a racialized global

form that warrants the use of the term “apartheid.”
Somaliais but one example ofthe effectofpolicies in the global
north that incarcerate and traumatize people in the global south
in the name of security and profit in the global north. In the
globalized contemporary, the emergence of a system of milita-
rized apartheid used by wealthy and powerful countries in the
global north against people from the global south is the
signature
form of globalized structural violence of our era. Other scholars
have used the phrase “global apartheid” to describe the historic
and current world order, arguing that from the age of explora-
tion to the age of imperialism, to the colonial era, to the age of
the
Cold War, to the age of neoliberalism and the Washington Con-
sensus,tothecurrentmoment,theglobalnorthhasbeenengaged
in projects of racialization, segregation, political intervention,
mobility controls, capitalist plunder, and labor exploitation of
people in the global south (Booker and Minter 2001; Hage 2016;
Harrison 2002, 2008; Jacobs and Soske 2015; Marable 2008;
Mills 1997; Mullings 2009; Nevins 2008; Richmond 1994).
While
termslike“imperialism,”“globalization,”and“transnationalism”
havebeenhelpfulforhighlightingmanyimportantdimensionsof
these global processes, the term “apartheid” shifts the frame to
capturetheuseofraceandnativistlanguagetostructuremobility,
belonging,elimination,andextermination,aswellastherelevance
of border controls and the hierarchical modes of excluding or
incorporating racially delineated people into a polity for labor
exploitation. My argument builds on this perspective by
acknowl-
edging the significance for this emergent world order of new
forms of militaristic border security and containment.
After reviewing the basic dimensions of how apartheid was
implemented and regulated in South Africa, I turn to a consid-

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