Jack Maguire

Jack is a 7th year Ph. D Candidate in the Global and Sociocultural Studies department researching how immigration policies and laws are impacting immigrant communities in Miami. Specifically, he is focused on how Legal Violence effects immigrant integration and how Legal Violence is mediated by race, human capital, and immigration status. Legal Violence is a theory developed by Cecilia Menjívar and Leisy Abrego that analyzes the harmful effects immigrants experience as a result of the melding of immigration law and criminal law in the United States. To investigate how race, human capital, immigration status, and Legal Violence interact, Jack is conducting a case study of Honduran and Venezuelan immigrants in Miami who are undocumented, who are in the asylum process, who have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), or who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Examples of Legal Violence include the pains of family separation caused by deportation or bureaucratic processes, the loss of wages due to exploitation and or discrimination, negative health outcomes due to the omnipresent fear of deportation or uncertainty regarding one’s immigration status, and other socioeconomic injuries. While not all harms conceptualized within Legal Violence’s theoretical framework are directly caused by immigration authorities, they are still considered Legal Violence because immigration laws and policies provide the sociolegal foundation from which these injuries occur. Prior to FIU, Jack received a bachelor’s degree in History and a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. During his undergraduate career he conducted research at the Isla Mujeres Ethnographic Field School in the Yucatan which explored religious ties between Cuba and Mexico. Furthermore, his research in Mexico investigated the smuggling of Cubans through Isla Mujeres to the US-Mexico border. He also served as a researcher at the community organization One 22 in his hometown of Jackson Hole Wyoming. During his time at One 22 Jack conducted research surrounding why vulnerable populations were not receiving government resources to which they were entitled. Those vulnerable populations tended to be immigrant populations from Mexico and Central America. Jack currently works as the Development Manager at the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) where he is applying his education to serve those part of various immigrant communities around the State.