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Cited by 414

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 72 of the 72 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Why Border Enforcement Backfired

Open access
Massey, Douglas S., Durand, Jorge, Pren, Karen A.·2016·American Journal of Sociology

Abstract

In this article we undertake a systematic analysis of why border enforcement backfired as a strategy of immigration control in the United States. We argue theoretically that border enforcement emerged as a policy response to a moral panic about the perceived threat of Latino immigration to the United States propounded by self-interested bureaucrats, politicians, and pundits who sought to mobilize political and material resources for their own benefit. The end result was a self-perpetuating cycle of rising enforcement and increased apprehensions that resulted in the militarization of the border in a way that was disconnected from the actual size of the undocumented flow. Using an instrumental variable approach, we show how border militarization affected the behavior of unauthorized migrants and border outcomes to transform undocumented Mexican migration from a circular flow of male workers going to three states into an eleven-million person population of settled families living in 50 states.

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Crossref · 10.1086/684200

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Metadata

Authors
Massey, D. S., Durand, J., & Pren, K. A.
Venue
American Journal of Sociology
Published
2016-03
Volume
121
Issue
5
Pages
1557-1600
ISSN
  • 0002-9602 (ISSN-L)
  • 1537-5390
OpenAlex
W2294663883
Cited by
414
References
72
FWCI
106.71
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why Border Enforcement Backfired. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/684200
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Massey, D. S., Durand, J., & Pren, K. A. (2016). Why Border Enforcement Backfired. American Journal of Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1086/684200

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.