Immigration, Risk, and Security Under the Trump Administration

Book excerpt: This book explores the immigration policies and practices of the Trump administration, with a specific focus on Trump’s travel ban and the wall along the southern border with Mexico. Both were enacted shortly after Trump was elected President. It examines how the Trump administration defined and represented immigration as an issue of national security and why it sought to address the perceived security challenges posed by immigration through the specific forms of a travel ban and a wall along the southern border. The main argument advanced is that a logic of risk underpinned the Trump administration’s approach to immigration and national security. Employing the framework of riskisation, this book explores the embodied, racialised, and gendered construction and representation of risk, political and popular resistance to Trump’s wall and travel ban, and the social and political consequences of both.