In Disappearing Rooms Michelle Castañeda lays bare the criminalization of race enacted every day in US immigration courts and detention centers. She uses a performance studies perspective to show how the theatrical concept of mise-en-scène offers new insights about immigration law and the absurdist dynamics of carceral space. Castañeda draws upon her experiences in immigration trials as an interpreter and courtroom companion to analyze the scenography-lighting, staging, framing, gesture, speech, and choreography-of specific rooms within the immigration enforcement system. Castañeda's ethnographies of proceedings in a "removal" office in New York City, a detention center courtroom in Texas, and an asylum office in the Northeast reveal the depersonalizing violence enacted in immigration law through its embodied, ritualistic, and affective components. She shows how the creative practices of detained and disappeared people living under acute duress imagine the abolition of detention and borders. Featuring original illustrations by artist-journalist Molly Crabapple, Disappearing Rooms shines a light into otherwise hidden spaces of law within the contemporary deportation regime.
Duke University of Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Removal Room: Disappearance and the Practice of Accompaniment 19
2. The Prison-Courtroom: No-Show Justice in Family Detention 56
3. Bring Me the Room: Tragic Recognition and the Right Not to Tell Your Story 91
Coda 129
Notes 135
References 159
Index 177
