Disappearing Rooms: The Hidden Theaters of Immigration Law

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

Author: Michelle Castañeda
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 03/17/2023
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.96lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781478016991
ISBN10: 147801699X
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Hispanic American Studies
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration
- Social Science | Sociology | General

About the Author
Michelle Castañeda is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at New York University.

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer based in New York.