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The Immigrant as Victim: The Minimal Research

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The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology ((PSVV))

Abstract

Despite the common observation that immigrants are frequently victims of crimes, research on the topic has been limited in part due to the lack of good data and in part because claims makers have constructed the problem in other, more socially and politically compelling terms: “modern slaves;” trafficking victims; domestic violence; hate crime; child abuse and elder abuse. Another aspect of the problem is that the concept “immigrant” over-aggregates, lumping into one category people with widely differing characteristics. Victimologists have approached the subject from distinct traditions: the humanistic/human rights vs. the positivist or “conservative.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    M ukherjee (1999).

  2. 2.

    President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice (1967: 38).

  3. 3.

    Von H entig (1945).

  4. 4.

    None of the following major books on victims of crime address “immigrants” as victims—although some do address racial minorities (Karmen 1990; F attah 1991; Elias 1993; Sgarzi and McDevitt 2003; Kennedy and Sacco 1998; Shichor and Tibbetts 2002; Goodey 2005). But see Coston (2004). The problems of immigrants as victims have been featured in various numbers of the International Review of Victimology.

  5. 5.

    Of the 43 presenters only three addressed the victimization of “the foreign born and minorities.” In summarizing those presentations the rapporteurs wrote: “Alien persons in a society often suffer extraordinary degrees of victimization” (Geis et al. 1988: 199). The evidence presented amounted to nothing more than examples of misunderstanding and mistreatment of minorities; labor market exploitation; and the failure to translate legal concepts into the languages familiar to certain minorities.

  6. 6.

    V on Hentig (1948: 414).

  7. 7.

    S chafer (1981: 23).

  8. 8.

    A gozino (1996: 103).

  9. 9.

    Williams (2005).

  10. 10.

    Moseley (1998).

  11. 11.

    C ity Limits (2004).

  12. 12.

    Templeton and Maphumulo (2005).

  13. 13.

    G raglia (2006).

  14. 14.

    Quoted in Mukherjee (1999: 23).

  15. 15.

    Hagan and Palloni (1998: 382). One important exception is homicide data for immigrants available from death certificates (Sorenson and Shen 1996).

  16. 16.

    M ukherjee (1999).

  17. 17.

    A survey of the Member States of the European Union asked whether when registering racist crimes the police recorded the ethnicity and/or nationality (citizenship ) of victims and/or offenders. Twenty-two countries (Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany , Ireland , Italy , Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden) indicated that “nationality ” was recorded. In some cases, this was only for the victim, in others only for the offender. In most cases it seems that “nationality ” meant “citizenship status.” In a few countries the classification actually used was simply “citizen” or “foreigner” (Oakley 2005: 19). See also, for Germany (Albrecht 1987, 1997); Italy (Barbagli 1998; Barbagli and Colombo 2009); Netherlands (Junger-Tas 1994); Sweden (Martens 1997); and Switzerland (Killias 1997: 21).

  18. 18.

    Spector and Kitsuse (1977).

  19. 19.

    Baumann (1989).

  20. 20.

    Czajkoski (1992).

  21. 21.

    Best (1987).

  22. 22.

    Loseke (1991).

  23. 23.

    Cooke and Skogan (1990).

  24. 24.

    Elias (1993).

  25. 25.

    See, e.g., Abraham (2000), Raj et al. (2002).

  26. 26.

    Christie (1986: 18). For example , the ideal victim would be weak (sick, old, very young); carrying out a respectable activity where she could not be blamed for being (e.g., in a public sidewalk in daylight); and the offender is big, bad, and in no personal relationship to the victim.

  27. 27.

    P owers (1844).

  28. 28.

    McDonald (2004).

  29. 29.

    Mawby and Walklate (1994).

  30. 30.

    Victimology has a long tradition of defining the scope of its field well beyond violations of criminal law (Geis et al. 1988; M endelsohn 1963; F attah 1991). Cressey notes that this renders the field unmanageable and unscientific, albeit responsive to humanitarian and justice concerns (Cressey 1988).

  31. 31.

    C laghorn (1917).

  32. 32.

    Holdaway (2003), M ukherjee (1999: 112). V on Hentig would agree with Holdaway and Mukherjee that immigrants who have been the object of police prejudice are properly thought of as “victims.” He wrote: “One is not allowed to speak of delinquents as ‘victims’ of criminal justice, with one exception. If the treatment of many law-enforcing agencies is grossly discriminatory, concept and term are justified” (von H entig 1948: 417).

  33. 33.

    Jenks and Jenks (2004).

  34. 34.

    Jupp (2003).

  35. 35.

    Palidda (1996), A gozino (1996).

  36. 36.

    Hagen, Lisa. 2017. Democrats Groan as Trump Promotes New Immigration Crime Office. The Hill, February 28. http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/321717-democrats-groan-as-trump-promotes-new-immigration-crime-office. Accessed 6 Apr 2017.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    William F. McDonald

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McDonald, W.F. (2018). The Immigrant as Victim: The Minimal Research. In: The Criminal Victimization of Immigrants. Palgrave Studies in Victims and Victimology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69062-9_1

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