Abstract
Neoliberal policies generated the conditions for the Great Recession, an economic downturn that hit the housing and construction industries particularly hard, disproportionately impacting the foreign-born and the undocumented populations in the US. The recession also created new openings for states and localities to criminalize and make visible the unauthorized where they live, work, and move about in their everyday lives. This increasing criminalization of the undocumented in both labor markets and civil society creates new risks and vulnerabilities to deportation, making it more difficult and dangerous for the unauthorized to continue to live in and work in the shadows of the global cities, rural farms, and slaughterhouses of the United States.
