In this article published in Sociology Compass, Mary Romero and Gabriella Sanchez assess the impact and potential of critical race theory as a framework for understanding immigration in the United States. They argue that mainstream immigration scholarship has been limited by frameworks that treat race as peripheral rather than central to the organization of immigration law, enforcement, and public discourse.
The authors demonstrate how CRT’s core concepts — including the social construction of race, interest convergence, and counter-storytelling — can illuminate aspects of the immigration experience that conventional sociological approaches overlook: the racial logic embedded in immigration categories, the differential enforcement that targets some communities while leaving others untouched, and the ways immigrants of color navigate a system structured by racial hierarchy.
Romero and Sanchez review the emerging body of scholarship that applies CRT to immigration studies and identify areas where further research is needed, including the intersections of race with gender, class, and citizenship status in shaping immigrant experiences.
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Cite This Work
Mary Romero and Jeremiah Chin (2010). Critical Race Theory. Sociology Compass, 4(9).
