November 13, 2025
Exclusion By Design: Migrant Racialization and Temporary Legal Status
11.13.2025 | 12 - 1:30 PM | 691 Social Sciences Building (CRG Conference Room)
with CRG Visiting Scholar (Summer + Fall 2025)
Ming H. Chen, Professor of Law, Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair, and Faculty Director, Center for Race, Immigration, Citizenship & Equality (RICE), UC Law SF
along with respondents
Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology
and
Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice and Director of the Center for Race & Gender
Migrants arrive in the United States on temporary visas ten times more often than on green cards, and more than half come from countries whose emigrants would be classified as non-White in the United States. Even so, immigration scholarship gives short shrift to temporary visas and treats them as race-neutral. This article contributes to the growing body of critical migration studies by demonstrating how immigration law assigns meaning to the race and legal status of temporary migrants. We find that temporary legal statuses are designed in ways that unnecessarily foster social exclusion through a process of racialization and hierarchical sorting by skills. Our empirical study of the distinctive experiences of three temporary worker categories deepens existing understandings of exclusion and racial subordination in the United States.
Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology
and
Leti Volpp, Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professor of Law in Access to Justice and Director of the Center for Race & Gender
Migrants arrive in the United States on temporary visas ten times more often than on green cards, and more than half come from countries whose emigrants would be classified as non-White in the United States. Even so, immigration scholarship gives short shrift to temporary visas and treats them as race-neutral. This article contributes to the growing body of critical migration studies by demonstrating how immigration law assigns meaning to the race and legal status of temporary migrants. We find that temporary legal statuses are designed in ways that unnecessarily foster social exclusion through a process of racialization and hierarchical sorting by skills. Our empirical study of the distinctive experiences of three temporary worker categories deepens existing understandings of exclusion and racial subordination in the United States.