“Few topics in contemporary society have more sociological significance and public policy salience than the study of immigration, crime, and border enforcement,” reads the syllabus for Sociology 443.
Michael Light, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, began teaching “Immigration, Crime, and Enforcement” in 2017 after transferring from Purdue University. An instant success, the class has full enrollment each semester, which Light said demonstrates its relevance in today’s political climate.
“The nice thing about this class is I would be doing this work anyway, which makes it fun to teach,” Light told The Daily Cardinal.
Light's curriculum looks to examine the intersection of immigration and crime enforcement, known as “crimination.” The course allows students to analyze immigration trends, crime measurement methods, patterns of undocumented immigration and enforcement through peer-reviewed articles, personal anecdotes and breaking news stories.
A distinct characteristic of Light’s class is the continual need to update lecture information, sometimes lecturing on news so new his students don’t even know about it yet.
With each passing year, the class has adapted to both local and federal changes, amending its curriculum on pace with new federal and local developments ranging from a post-mortem on Biden’s immigration policies to analyzing whether foreign nationals have the same rights as citizens in the wake of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last month.
“Since I've been teaching this, we've now had three different administrations,” he said. “The ground is shifting under our feet year-to-year.”
Studying immigration in a ‘purple state’
Students in the course spend significant time analyzing the developing differences between California’s and Texas’ approach to “crimination” — the term he used to refer to the growing entanglement of immigration enforcement with the criminal justice system — to highlight the different forms immigration enforcement and criminal justice can take throughout the U.S.
Light said “crimination” is most evident in the collaboration of local law enforcement agencies and ICE in raids. This partnership merges local and federal law enforcement to create a relatively new policing unit, Light said, leading to “day-by-day” developments for his students to analyze.
California started enacting laws to “decouple the link” between federal ICE enforcement and local police officers as far back as 2017, while Texas has taken steps to integrate ICE into its local law enforcement.
Wisconsin holds a unique position between California and Texas, Light said. Using the divided state Legislature as a backdrop, Light said students this semester were able to analyze both pro- and anti-immigration bills coming out of the state Capitol and research the effects of such legislation on Wisconsin.
“We can't just shrug our shoulders and say, ‘well, I don't know what [this legislation] will do,’ because we absolutely have seen this happen in other states. We have the information to see its impact,” Light said.
Because of these factors, he views Wisconsin as the ideal location to teach immigration theory, saying the “purple state” acts as a semi-disconnected bubble from which to observe.
“Even with dramatic, stepped-up border enforcement, that's not going to hit Wisconsin extremely hard, not in the same way it would in a place like California or Texas,” Light said, citing Wisconsin’s lower immigrant population and relative distance from the southern border.
Immigration research, understanding remains crucial
Most recently, Light visited Texas to analyze the effects of immigration enforcement on border populations for a research paper. Research — even his own — is the crux of a class like this. Nearly half of students’ grades are dedicated to evaluating peer-reviewed articles and conducting their own data analysis.
Regardless of his students’ political standing, Light wants his students to grapple with research findings that are “inconvenient for all parties.”
Students often come into class with “preconceived notions” about immigration, Light said. Through pure statistical analysis, he works to give students the truth about immigration and its enforcement, no matter whose political ideology it benefits.
“If we can't talk about controversial issues here, then where can we talk about them?” Light said.
Light said his students have been nothing but respectful in discussions. With a mix of political beliefs in class, students are more likely to challenge topics, which allows Light to facilitate debates around research during lecture time. Because of this, many students have come up to Light throughout the years saying they found the class “extremely helpful” or that he influenced their career going forward.
For Light, Sociology 443 has been a way to introduce students to the research and work he has formed his life around, while still being able to have fun working with students.
“If nothing else, people need to have a very solid empirical understanding of what is happening — what the reality of undocumented immigration is and the reality of immigration enforcement,” he said.
