Progress Notes Week 9:
I remember reading the book, Are Prisons Obsolete, Angela Davis, explains the concept gendering of state punishment, like routinized legal strip searches by prison guards who sexually assault women but because of the state power bestowed upon them this non-consensual sexual activity is legal (Angela Davis, 2003). Similarly, I plan on arguing in my paper that the gendering of state punishment also extends to ICE agents and medical professionals at U.S. immigration detention centers, who violate women’s human rights. I argue that the U.S. immigration detention operates as an extension of the prison industrial complex system. I plan on explaining how the gendering of state punishment is used as another way to control and discipline women’s bodies.
Book: Prison Are Obsolete, Angela Y. Davis
How have the data you have collected this week changed/progressed you’re thinking about your research project?
After my meeting with Professor Greene, it allowed me to think more critically about the factors that contribute to their oppression within these detention centers. In this meeting, I realized that the human right violations at the women’s detention centers are an example of the ethnic genocide of Latina women, which is something I also plan on proving in my research through scholarly works. I draw a link between Latina women living in immigration detention centers in the U.S. as an example of ethnic genocide because of what’s happening to the Uighur Muslims in China. They are forced to denounce their religion, separate families and force women to sleep with Han Chinese men, and put men in detention centers where they physically torture them. What is happening in the immigration detention centers is an egregious form of state violence on women’s bodies.
In addition, I plan on using investigative journalist articles as a part of my paper to include the voices of survivors and the nurse whistleblower, who spoke up to the injustices happening inside the detention centers. By including these investigative journalist articles in my research, it would provide me with a more nuanced perspective than my scholarly journals because I am using their experiences instead of relying on statistics and numbers.
Link: ICE whistleblower: Nurse alleges ‘hysterectomies on immigrant women in US’
Link: ICE sterilizations in Georgia evoke tragic chapters in South’s history by Dakota Hall
https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/11/ice-sterilizations-georgia-evoke-tragic-chapters-souths-history
What challenges did you encounter while collecting the data?
One main challenge that I am still experiencing is condensing my research because there are so many valuable topics and sub-points that I would like to include in my paper. However, I am hopeful that I can condense and hone my main argument.