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 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.
The devaluation of immigrant lives in state violence is not an aberration but a structural feature of racial capitalism, where labor precarity and displacement are criminalized while the systemic causes of migration—war, climate change, and economic exploitation—are ignored. Media and academic institutions, often complicit in amplifying these narratives, frame police violence as a matter of individual bias rather than a symptom of a carceral system designed to protect property and whiteness. Cross-cultural parallels reveal that the criminalization of immigrants is a global phenomenon, from France’s policing of North Africans to India’s AFSPA, all rooted in the same logic of othering and dispossession. The path forward requires dismantling this system entirely, replacing it with community-based safety models, restorative justice, and reparative policies that center the voices of those most impacted by state violence.