Excited to see my review article on “the cultural study of law and social crisis” is now online—and open access www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

The Cultural Study of Law and Social Crisis

This article reviews cultural sociological approaches to law and considers how they may sharpen analysis of social crises. As the United States faces myriad law-related crises, such as rising authorit...

annualreviews.org

NEW in Ethnic & Racial Studies: we offer a framework for bridging conventional & critical perspectives on immigrant integration that specifies for whom, under what conditions, and why group boundaries enable or constrain access to resources and life chances. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

As of today, I'm an Associate Professor of Sociology--with tenure! While I don’t know every player involved since the tenure process is confidential, I am deeply grateful to the many people who have uplifted me along the way. www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

As of today, I am an Associate Professor of Sociology—with tenure! (For the non-academic folks: tenure is a major career milestone that grants permanent job security. It protects scholars from… | Asa...

As of today, I am an Associate Professor of Sociology—with tenure! (For the non-academic folks: tenure is a major career milestone that grants permanent job security. It protects scholars from politi...

linkedin.com

New article theorizing the relational mechanisms that reproduce criminal legal inequalities. Come for the theory; stay for the review of cutting-edge research showing how social closure, exploitation, and claims-making drive inequality under the law compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A Relational Theory of Inequality in the Criminal Legal System

This article outlines a relational theory of legal inequality through a review of recent studies of crime, law, and deviance. I argue that three relational mechanisms—claims-making, social closure, a...

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

NEW (and open access!) in @pnas.org: We find that Secure Communities triggered “preemptive” immigration enforcement, increasing detentions, transfers, & removals even before formal county activation. Joint with @cvargas100.bsky.social and @immigrationlab.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

Our February #LSAMemberSpotlight is Board Trustee @asadasad.bsky.social, @stanfordsoc.bsky.social Asst Professor and author of Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life. (@princetonupress.bsky.social) Learn more about Prof Asad here! bit.ly/LSAAsad

🗣️CHECK IT OUT🗣️ Read Daniel E. Martínez's review of @asadasad.bsky.social's, 'Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life.' Now available as part of #TheoreticalCrim's fourth and final issue of 2025: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

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journals.sagepub.com

ICE is seeking increasing amounts of data from localities. “We’re seeing more and more signs, especially in ‘sanctuary cities,’ where the federal government’s requests are getting bigger and bigger,” says an immigration law expert.

New Orleans May Hand Its Police Live Facial Recognition Tech. Critics Warn It’ll Help ICE.

The city says it won’t lend this tool to ICE for surveillance. But a state law requires that local officials assist ICE, and New Orleans also wants to end a court order restricting compliance.

boltsmag.org

Law is central to today’s social crises—from democratic backsliding to immigrant exclusion. This paper shows how cultural sociology offers rigorous explanations of, and insights into how to tackle, law-related crises. Hope it’s useful to law and society scholars and others osf.io/preprints/so...

W/ immigrant detention constantly in the news, I share my portfolio of peer-reviewed research on harms of this system. In @jamanetworkopen.com, we show alarmingly high prevalence of poor health, mental illness & PTSD for all, w/ esp high rates for those detained 6+mo. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Caitlin Patler@caitlinpatler.bsky.social · 2y ago

Another body of work studies the black box of US immigration detention. My co-authors & I shed light on disparities in use of solitary confinement & access to visitation, and link conditions of confinement to health harms (see this & next few posts). journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Reminder that this is illegal. The IRS has statutory rules that forbid them-except under very specific conditions-from sharing data. The reason is very practical-if people don't trust the IRS they will avoid 'voluntarily' paying taxes. The tax system falls apart otherwise.

Jesse Eisinger@jeisinger.bsky.social · last yr.

NEW: The IRS is building a vast effort to help the Trump Admin deportation apparatus. A Trump-appointed IRS official objected. Now he’s out. & the effort is going forward. @williamturton.bsky.social, @chrisbing.bsky.social & Avi Shapiro: www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Immigration enforcement *is* a public health crisis, and a longstanding one at that. It harms both physical and mental health, and its effects burden immigrants and the U.S. born alike.

Brian Allen@allenanalysis.bsky.social · last yr.

🚨BREAKING: Cal State LA just moved classes online and let faculty work remotely, not for a storm, not for COVID, but because ICE is in the area. Let that sink in, an entire university is treating immigration enforcement like a public health crisis.

The White House has ordered the US Dept. of Justice to prioritize denaturalization: voiding the citizenship of US citizens. Who will it denaturalize? "Any" case that it "determines to be sufficiently important". Point 10 leaves the criteria opaque and arbitrary. substack.com/redirect/169...

Listen to the Ideas #Podcast with Asad L. Asad and @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social Network editor, Caleb Zakarin. They discuss how undocumented immigrants in the United States navigate surveillance and punishment, providing an extraordinary portrait of fear and hope on the margins. hubs.ly/Q03sKGLP0

It's publication day for Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing, available in paper & free .epub! It traces a century of struggle over Los Angeles' periphery, culminating in the use of policing to expel and repress Black tenants. Here's a look at its chapters:

For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other items has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel. Aid groups are running out of food to distribute. Markets are nearly bare. Palestinian families are left struggling to feed their children.

For nearly 60 days, Israel has blocked food from Gaza. Palestinians struggle to feed their families

For nearly 60 days, no food, fuel, medicine or other item has entered the Gaza Strip, blocked by Israel.

bit.ly

New article theorizing the “spatial burdens” of state institutions. Drawing on 125 interviews and over 400 hours of observations among court-involved people in the Bay Area, we show how space shapes poverty governance and institutional inequality. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

Some commentary is focusing on how the Supreme Court order last night seems to indicate a vibe shift among some justices on whether courts can rely on representations made by Trump administration lawyers.

Volokh Conspiracy@volokhc.bsky.social · last yr.

‘If I die, I want a loud death’: Gaza photojournalist killed by Israeli airstrike

‘If I die, I want a loud death’: Gaza photojournalist killed by Israeli airstrike

Fatima Hassouna, who had been documenting war in Gaza for 18 months and was subject of new documentary, killed along with 10 members of her family As a young photojournalist living in Gaza, Fatima Hassouna knew that death was always at her doorstep. As she spent the past 18 months of war documenting airstrikes, the demolition of her home, the endless displacement and the killing of 11 family members, all she demanded was that she not be allowed to go quietly. “If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna wrote on social media. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.” Continue reading...

theguardian.com

Trump is Quietly Building a Deportation Army out of State and Local Agencies Enrollment in the 287(g) program, which deputizes local police to do federal immigration enforcement, has exploded in recent weeks. austinkocher.substack.com/p/trump-is-q...

Trump is Quietly Building a Deportation Army out of State and Local Agencies

Enrollment in the 287(g) program, which deputizes local police to do federal immigration enforcement, has exploded in recent weeks—but the administration has been surprisingly silent.

austinkocher.substack.com

I have joined several dozen scholars across the social sciences in signing on to an amicus brief supporting both immigration and birthright citizenship in State of Washington v. Trump. Read the brief here: www.courtlistener.com/docket/69621...

This is a wrongheaded move that will simultaneously sever noncitizens’ relationship to state institutions, threaten the well-being of immigrant families, and deprive Social Security beneficiaries of a tax base that has allowed the program to remain solvent. Shame. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/u...

I.R.S. Agrees to Share Migrants’ Tax Information with ICE

The agreement is a major departure from the Internal Revenue Service’s efforts to gain the trust of migrants and encourage them to file their taxes.

nytimes.com

NEW in Law & Society Review: U.S. Latinos are less likely to report institutional involvement as immigration policing intensifies—but those involved don’t spend less time. Spatial & temporal variation in formal control shapes system involvement. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The Eastern Sociological Society has named @asadasad.bsky.social's book Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life the Winner of the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award! Learn more about this groundbreaking book: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Thanks to @erikaandiola.bsky.social, @nicoleramos.bsky.social, and @daralind.bsky.social for joining us! Read more about the discussion here: stanforddaily.com/2025/02/10/i...

Asad L. Asad@asadasad.bsky.social · last yr.

Honored to welcome @daralind.bsky.social, @erikaandiola.bsky.social, & @nicoleramos.bsky.social to Stanford today to reflect on what immigration advocacy and reform will look like over the next few years—and where it might go thereafter. Grateful for the chance to learn from these inspiring leaders.

1/8. This week I had a few different conversations with scholars who, in the face of the attacks on science and institutions of learning in the U.S., are wondering what to do. One suggestion I have is: keep doing your work. It matters in and of itself. Why do I say that? A few reasons.

Honored to welcome @daralind.bsky.social, @erikaandiola.bsky.social, & @nicoleramos.bsky.social to Stanford today to reflect on what immigration advocacy and reform will look like over the next few years—and where it might go thereafter. Grateful for the chance to learn from these inspiring leaders.

TRAC is back. tracreports.org