Spectacles of immigration enforcement in the United States

Since January 2025, the second Trump administration has implemented an unprecedented array of dizzying and draconian changes to reduce the number of immigrants in the United States.

This talk will describe these changes and then focus on the deliberate spectacularisation of immigration enforcement, through the administration’s dissemination of videos depicting immigrants being deported – often set to music – and through mass enforcement operations in “blue” states.

We can see the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement as a theater of power. Yet immigration enforcement is also characterised by its hidden aspects, suggesting a complex relationship between state power and sight.

The Trump administration’s actions in immigration enforcement (as well as in other domains) raises many questions about what is happening to legality in the United States. Here Volpp will discuss the surge of contemporary interest in the United States in the concept of the “dual state.”

Light lunch will be served from 12:00 – all are welcome!

The seminar is organised by the Peder Saether project Native/Immigrant/Refugee: Movement Across Contested Grounds, a collaboration between UiB’s Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) and Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley.

Co-organisers are the ASYKNOW project at the Department of Social Anthropology and IMER Bergen.