Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Drawing on Calavita’s (2005) important work on the legal, economic, and ideological mechanisms that serve to both include and exclude immigrant workers in the contemporary global economy, our analysis focuses on the complexities of the recent move to criminalize immigrants in the U.S. at increasingly more local levels. Specifically, we investigate the conditions and contradictions surrounding the passage of an extremely punitive anti-immigration ordinance in the small Pennsylvania city of Hazelton; a law that galvanized similar initiatives in many other municipalities from across the U.S. Through an investigation of a variety of eclectic data sources, our case study documents the ever pervasive role Community Development Corporations (CDCs) play in both supporting locally owned immigrant businesses (i.e., increasing the local customer base) and, to a far greater extent, fostering shadow immigrant economies and thus the conditions for anti-immigrant backlash in small U.S. cities. With the fall of Hazelton's coal industry, massive loss of manufacturing jobs, and stubbornly high levels of unemployment that continue into the present, Hazelton's most influential CDC, Can Do, Inc. has in recent years attracted a number of anti-labor corporations that rely heavily on undocumented labor (i.e., Cargill Meat Solutions). But Can Do, Inc.’s role in inflaming the immigration problem in the city (i.e., housing shortages) remains largely obscured from public debate. Indeed, they are never once mentioned in official or popular sources as part of a situation the city’s mayor has labeled as akin to an ‘alien invasion.’ To the contrary, Can Do, Inc. is divorced from any dialogue concerning immigration issues in the city. We argue that the spread of neoliberal economic policies in the U.S. that encourage anti-labor practices and the exploitation of immigrant labor must be seen as part of a dramatic transformation of the meaning of “community development” in the U.S. more broadly. Indeed, under present economic conditions in the U.S., CDCs may increasingly be seen as ‘neoliberal conduits’ for deepening racial hostilities between locals and immigrant newcomers, for the local governance of immigration through crime, and for the entrenchment of increasingly exploitative, anti-worker employers into the post-industrial economies of many small U.S. cities today.