Maya Guatemalans Seeking Asylum: Race and Gender in a Continuum of State Control

Central Americans historically have been denied U.S. asylum. From the moment they arrive, they become entangled in a punitive system that criminalizes them through an intricate network of social control sustained by state and private companies. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Kansas between 2016 and 2020 and interviews with Maya Guatemalan women and men asylum seekers, we examine the race and gender power dynamics reproduced through the asylum process that mimics the penal system. We examine three encounters with the asylum system: (1) the credible fear interview, (2) cash bonds, and (3) alternatives to detention programs. The asylum process (re)produces a continuum of state control that reflects the punishing tactics of the carceral state, leaving women and men embedded in the system and perpetually indebted. Maya Guatemalan women’s and men’s experiences navigating the asylum process underscore the intersecting mechanisms of race and gender at the center of the carceral state within the asylum system. Given the expansion of the punitive U.S. asylum bureaucracy, our findings will be relevant beyond our case study.