Revitalizing Ethnographic Studies of Immigration and Crime

By Amarat Zaatut and Stephanie M. DiPietro  

Ethnographic studies of immigration and crime were prominent in the early decades of the twentieth century, yet contemporary scholarship has been dominated by quantitative approaches. In this review, we heed the call of those who have lamented the “collective amnesia” and “newness fetish” that characterize much of contemporary criminology and revisit classic ethnographies of immigration and crime, with an emphasis on the unique methodological contributions of this early work. Next, we synthesize the small but growing body of contemporary ethnographic research on immigration and crime, which includes the policing of immigrant communities in the age of “crimmigration;” the lived experiences inside contemporary deportation/ detention regimes; the integration experiences of Muslims, a highly marginalized but understudied population; and immigrants’ unique vulnerabilities to and experiences of victimization, to illustrate the value of qualitative approaches for capturing the nuances of immigrants’ experiences in the new age of immigration.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2023. 6:285–306