Systemic devaluation of immigrant lives in state violence: How racialized bias distorts accountability in policing across Western democracies
Original framing: “Study finds police violence judged less severe when victim has immigrant background” — Phys.org
The original framing omits the historical roots of immigrant criminalization in colonial policing models, the role of media in sensationalizing immigrant crime, and the structural economic drivers (e.g., labor precarity, housing discrimination) that make immigrant communities vulnerable to state violence. It also ignores the resistance of immigrant-led movements and the knowledge of affected communities in documenting and challenging police violence. Indigenous and Global South perspectives on state violence and racial capitalism are entirely absent.
High structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The narrative is produced by Western academic institutions (e.g., Harvard Dataverse) and disseminated via platforms like Phys.org, which cater to a predominantly English-speaking, Global North audience. The framing serves to reinforce liberal critiques of policing while avoiding direct confrontation with systemic state violence or the complicity of academic institutions in legitimizing carceral logics. It obscures the role of media in amplifying racialized fears and the economic interests driving immigrant criminalization.
The criminalization of immigrants has roots in 19th-century eugenics and early 20th-century 'alien' laws, which framed newcomers as threats to racial purity and economic stability. Colonial policing models—such as the British 'divide and rule' strategy—were later exported to settler colonies and adapted in Western democracies to control marginalized populations. The modern securitization of immigration mirrors Cold War-era tactics, where state violence against 'foreign threats' was normalized under the guise of national security.
The study’s findings reflect a long-standing pattern in Western democracies where immigrant bodies are racialized as threats to national security, a legacy of colonial policing and eugenicist thought that persists in modern securitization policies.