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Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy: The Immigration and
Naturalization Service at the Mexico-United States Border
Josiah McC. Heyman
Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 2. (Apr., 1995), pp. 261-287.
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CURRENTNTHROPOLOGYolume 36 Number
2
April 1995
99
by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rlghts reserved
O O I I - ~ ~ ~ ~ / ~ ~ / ~ ~ O ~ - O O O I ~ . S O
Putting Power
in
the Anthropology
of Bureaucracy
The Immigration and
Naturalization Service at the
Mexico United States Border1
by Josiah McC. Heyman
The anthropology of bureaucracy should address the role of or-
ganized power in orchestrating complex and unequal societies.
This artic le reviews the development of bureaucracy studies,
focusing on the thinking done by bureaucrats i n their efforts
to control the actions of others. Then the central concept of
thought-work is placed within a series of queries about levels
and relationships of power, with particular at tention to the en-
compassing classifications and assumpt ions embodied i n organi-
zational worldviews. Th e worldviews of officers of the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service, examined as a
case study, are found to give cohesion to a contradictory policy
that balances publicly visible arrests and invisible but effective
perpetuation of undocumented labor migration. Huma n rights
abuses and avoidance of abuses are both explainable as outcomes
of these thought-work routines. A stronger theoretical approach
to organized power enhances applied anthropology's abi lity to ad-
dress the behavior of st ate and private bureaucracies with respect
to the rights and interes ts of nonbureaucrats.
JO S IA H
M C C. HEYMAN
is Associate P~ O ~ ~ S S O If Anthropology
in the Department of Social Sciences of Michigan Technological
University 1400 Townsend Dr., Houghton, Mich. 4993 1-1295,
U.S.A. [[email protected]]).Born in 1958, he was educated at
The Johns Hopkins University (B.A., 1980) and the City Univer-
sity of New York Graduate School (Ph.D., 1989). His research
interests are the Mexico-U.S. border, immigration and drug law
I .
The research was supported grants the
Frank
Guggenheim Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for An-
thropological Research. Previous versions of this paper were pre-
sented to the Departmen ts of Anthropology of t he University of
Arizona, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Columbia Univer-
sity, the University of Michigan, and Michigan State University.
For comments and conversations I thank Merlyn Heyman, Eric
Wolf, Sidney Mintz, Carlos VClez-Ibabez, Jim Greenberg, James
Carrier, Michael Kearney, Raul Fernandez, Leo Chavez, Peter Na-
bokov, my colleagues at Michigan Tech, attendees at the various
presentations, and anonymous referees. I thank many interviewees
inside and outside the INS who cannot be named. Friends in Agua
Prieta, Sonora, and Douglas, Arizona, continue to teach me about
border affairs.All responsibility for errors of fact or interpretation
remains my own.
enforcement, bureaucracies and power, and industrial working
classes. His publications include Li fe and Labor on the Border:
Wor king People of North eastern Sonora, Mexico, 1886-1986
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 19911, The Emergence of
the Waged Life Course on the United States-Mexico Border
Ame rican Ethnologis t
I
7:348-5 91, The Organizational Logic of
Capitalist Consumption on the Mexico-United States Border
Re s e ar c h i n Ec o n o mi c An t h r o p o l o g y
I
175-2381, and In the
Shadow of the Smokestacks: Labor and Environmental Conflict
in a Company-Dominated Town, in
Art icula t ing Hidden His to-
r ies: Anthropology , His tory , and the In f luence o f Eric R. W ol f ,
edited by Jane Schneider and Rayna Rapp (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1994). The present
paper was submitted in final form 3 v 94.
The aim of an anthropology of bureaucracy should be
to analyze complex and unequal societies, all of which
contain bureaucracies. Concrete organizations employ
techniques of power for specific ends in contexts wider
than the bureaucracv itself. The analvsis of these tech-
niques is not, however, simply a matter of examining
explicit policy and other products of power holders, for
all too often official goals mystify the real application
of organized power. Techniques of power inhere in the
routines of bureaucratic workers and their relationships
with the persons they attempt to control. We thus
face a difficult but ideally thought-provoking interplay
between two levels of inquiry: directly observed bu-
reaucratic labors-the quintessential ly organizational
aspects of bureaucratized society-and the grand ques-
tions of societal constitution. The most revealing: con-
nections come from an examination of the bureaucratic
production process itself; here I propose that we study
bureaucratic thought-work-the routine production of
thoughts about and consequent actions aimed at the
control of the slippery, sometimes resistant, recipients
of organizational orders.
In order to show how the concept of thought-work
can be used to reveal organizational power, I here exam-
ine the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service (INS)at the Mexico-United States border. The
INS is engaged in probably the world's largest effort to
control human movement. It arrests over I million per-
sons a year, yet paradoxically it facilitates the entry of
undocumented immigrant laborers into the U.S. econ-
omy. Precisely because U.S. immigration policy is con-
tradictory, it ' requires subtle p id an ce and coherent
thought-work. I therefore focus on the most fundamen-
tal level of thought-work~ NS officer worldviews-the
basic, organizationally shared assumptions about rela-
tionships between self and various others. Since INS
worldviews undergird the attitudes toward im-
they
inform
us
the Occurrence and
avoidance of human rights abuses on the Mexico-U.S.
border. Worldviews neither encompass every feature of
INS
thought-work nor engage all the questions relevant
to explaining immigration law enforcementin advanced
capitalist societies, but they do const itute a challenging
and revealing topic of inquiry.
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262
C U R R E N T A N T H R O P O L O G Y
Volume
36,
Number
2
pril
995
Toward an Anthropology of Bureaucracies
The complexity of complex societies has posed difficult
though fruitful problems for cultural anthropologists
and archaeologists. One response has been to widen the
range of relevant processes to include global history,
economy, and polity while retaining the perspective of
the local setting. We might call this the local-contextual
view. Bureaucracies, however, interest us precisely be-
cause they orchestrate numerous local contexts at once
(Wolf 1990). Power makes context st ick, and bureaucra-
cies are the preeminent technology of power in th e con-
temporary world. There is no better place to witness the
applications and limits of power than th e US.-Mexico
border. At this boundary, for example, the media-visible
INS legally distinguishes mostly Spanish-speaking un-
documented immigrants from the imagined community
of U.S. citizens (see Chavez 19oz:16-zol. It is therefore
fundamental to 'th e creation i ethnic iontexts in the
United States today. Anthropological attention to bu-
reaucratic Dower, then, redirects the debates between
introspection and the study of others toward the study
of social orders that bind differentiated wholes together.2
Max Weber shaped the study of bureaucracies by pos-
iting a series of characteristics of an ideal rational
bureaucracy-a firmly ordered hierarchy of offices,
delimited jurisdictions for those offices, exclusion of ir-
relevant tasks and interests, and so forth (Gerth and
Mills 1946: 196-204). Weber's typology of rational ad-
ministration is taken to stand by itself, but it should not
be: it was Dart of his discussion of the modernization
of societal power. Although he recognized bureaucratic
elements in precapitalist or non-Western societies, he
used the perfection of rat ional bureaucracy to demon-
strate the shift from indirect rule by elites, whether pat-
rimonial or prebendal, toward capitalism and mass party
polities (pp.204-16). For example, he distinguished rule
by notables, compromised by their many roles in soci-
ety, from rule by disinterested bureaucrats (pp,210-1 I .
The point here is not whether Weber's assertions are
adequate but tha t he focused on internal aspects of bu-
reaucracy within a very broad context.
Weber's typology set the stage, however, for a nar-
rowing of the study of organizations. Becoming an issue
in itself, it joined the still more restrictive managerial
interest in diagnosing administrative forms in order to
control them (see Fischer and Sirianni 1984). will forgo
a review of the vast sociology of bureaucracy (see Per-
row 1986). I note, however, tha t in sociology very so-
~histicatedand fine-grained studies of bureaucracies
emerged-in a sense making the best of a bad situa-
tion-from thi s problematic narrowing of focus, ad-
dressing, for example, social systems within (and often
resistant to) rational work structure (Gouldner 1954) or
the experiential consequences of laboring in a bureau-
cracy (Crozier 1971, Jackal1 1978).A few works, such as
z I have been much influenced in this passage by the contributors
to Fox [ r g g r ) ,especially on the question how anthropology might
escape what Troui llot 1991) calls the primitive slot.
Perrow's (1984) study of normal accidents and Jack-
all's (1988) study of major corporate managers' moral
rules-in-use, link the internal forms and relations of
bureaucracy with societal issues of the first order. How-
ever, as Perrow (1986:5)writes, societal scientis ts have,
unt il recently, avoided the 'big' question of unregulated
and unperceived power through bureaucratic organiza-
tions, even though the research that has been done
points in this direction.
Anthropology has arrived late on the scene in the
study of bureaucracies. Th e main motivation for anthro-
pologists to study bureaucracy seems to be the micro-
scopic or ethnographic encounter. The other major
tradition in anthropology, the broad sweep of human
history and its component social orders, seems relatively
isolated from the ethnographic impulse of anthropolo-
gists to observe bureaucracies at work. The program de-
veloped by Britan and Cohen (1980:14-20), for example,
inverts Weber's Eurocentric modernism, favoring an-
thropology's role in cross-cultural studies of bureaucracy
or, within the core, in the study of the informal and
interstitial. Britan and Cohen (1980:23, 26) intermit-
tently mention power and inequality, but they never in-
tegrate them into the comparative research agendae3
Schwartzman (1993) develops a stronger ethnographic
approach to th e interior life of organizations. Drawing
on recent work in sociology and social psychology, she
discards the idea that the charted organization is in some
way distinct from and prior to the interactions of per-
sons in the organizational work process; she argues that
the interactions are the organization and emphasizes
conflict, negotiation, and change. However, she goes on
to define a troublesome direction of inquiry for the eth -
nography of bureaucracies (p. 7 I ) :
Meetings have generally been the background struc-
ture for examining and assessing what are assumed
to be the
really
important matters of organizational
life, for example, power, decisions, ideology, and con-
flict. In this book [Schwartzman 19891 these con-
cepts become the background structures for exam-
ining the significance of specific meetings at th e
Center, and these meetings are used in tu rn to cri-
tique these standard concepts.
Although she calls for macro-micro linkage (pp. 37, 71),
she lacks a strategic conception of how to forge such
connections. Ultimately (p. 45) she dismisses t he frus-
trating macro-micro dichotomy in favor of a call for in-
quiry into the small cultural worlds of the powerful and
the powerless. What would the end product of such a
study be? Despite the quotation's final qualifying clause,
Schwartzman's program points to a portrait of an organi-
zational lifeway as isolated as th e most isolated ethnog-
raphy.
Handelman (1981)and Herzfeld (1992)write about bu-
reaucracy in the anthropological tradit ion of analyzing
broad orders of conceptualization rather than adopting
3
This is particularly disappointing in view of Cohen's anthropo-
logical interest in the broad sweep of human history and politics.
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H E Y M N
the narrower post-Weberian focus on organizational
work. Each in his way views bureaucracy as the enact-
me nt of a particular mode of tho ught. Han delm an (1981:
6-11) considers sys tem atic taxo nom izatio n (d ivisio n of
complex w holes int o exclusive categories) and t he rank-
ing of taxa e ssent ial features of bureau cracy an d sees
this m anne r of th ough t as distinctive of t he Renaissance
and modern Wes t. Herz fe ld ( ~ g g z :~ g - z o ) bu -roots
reaucracy in a symbolic distinction he perceives as Ju-
deo-Christian or Indo-European: persons are reduced to
essential categories of insider versus outsider, and the
latter are excluded from norm s of ho spitality. ( Th is ex-
clusion accoun ts for bureaucratic rudeness, wh ich Herz-
feld labels indifference. )
Bureaucratic thought, however, emerges in a particu-
lar institutional work context. Taxonomy, hierarchy,
and reduction of complex ity to essences are widely
shared features of hu m an tho ught. T he question is how
they are generated in bureaucratic workers' minds
with in a particular job setting-what th e political and
econom ic rationale is for having large masses of workers
think in such formats about concrete topics such as
rights to entry and citizenship. Although Handelman
and Herzfeld qualify their stanc e wit h calls for the stud y
of b ureaucratic power i n operation (see Handelm an and
Leyton 1978))both ultimately see bureaucratic institu-
tions a nd societies as arising from a Hegelian idea play-
ing itself o ut throug h history. I advocate asking instead
how characteristic ideas are produced and reproduced in
societal-historical contexts.
The attribution of bureaucratic thought to Western
cultural history is likewise troublesome; Chinese reli-
gion, for example, very clearly demonstrates bureau-
cratic ideas (Ahern 1981) in keeping wi th the actual bu-
reaucratic organization of th e Chin ese state. Herzfeld
seeks to avoid dividing ideal-typic rational bureaucracy
from th e rest of symbolically negotiated life, but i n so
doing he reifies Western culture in a man ner that Carrier
(1992) has perceptively term ed Occidentalism. Th e
history of states clearly demonstrates tha t bureaucracy
is often found in highly centralized economies, militar-
ies, and polities.
I seek to synthesize bureaucratic thought and bureau-
cratic work in approaching bureaucracies as an object
of study. However, we m us t no t confuse th e mean s of
our study, bureaucracy as
object
with the agenda for
the study. There may be times wh en understanding one
organization or se t of or ganiz ation s is sufficient as an
objective
of s tu dy in a larger resea rch pro cess. If w e are
to understand how bureaucracies help orchestrate com-
plex and unequal societies, we must retain a sense of
mo vem ent from the interior of organizations to what
Perrow calls th e 'big' question of unregulated and un -
perceived power (als osee Nader 972, 198 0)~nd there-
fore I employ a discovery framework that begins with
the unification of w ork and th ough t on th e job and pro-
ceeds to a n exam ination of a series of conte xts to high-
light likely power relationships.
Bureaucracies are hierarchical organizations designed
to force the production of thoughts as a work duty.
Putting Power in the Anthropology of Bureaucracy
263
Thought-work occurs under regulated and monitored
circumstancesi it is distinct from the au tonomous con-
templation, memorization, or recitation involved in
other systems of conceptual p ro d ~ c ti o n .~hought-work
is required of an y atte m pt t o contro l th e behavior of
other hum an beings because those h um an beings have
their own wills and motiv ations and the ir responses can-
not be entirely an ticipated by instruc tions (Lipsky 1980:
I S ) . However, no t all control relations are bureaucratic.
Bureaucratic thought-work occurs when a detailed divi-
sion of labor partia lly routin izes the man ufact ure of
thoughts. In turn, this detailed division of labor occurs
only when the bureaucrat encounters the controlled
party in a single-stranded vertical relationship, thou gh
in practice th e addition of stra nds is of in tere st. Bureau-
cracy, as Weber pointed out, works differently from
multistranded vertical relationships between, say, re-
gional elites and local populaces.5 State workers, such
as police, social benefits workers, or immigration in-
spectors, atte mp t to control persons outside of th e orga-
nization. Other bureaucrats, for example, in production
corporations or universities, attempt to control organi-
zation members w ho work directly at th e point of pro-
duction (just as teaching faculty, adjuncts, and teaching
assistants do when they meet courses and produce
grade^ .^ Furthermore, bureaucrats are required to con-
trol other bureaucrats. Bureaucratic thought-work thus
locates an inevitable struggle: bureaucratic workers
mu st thi nk for themselves because of th e nature of the ir
tasks, yet they must be controlled as thinkers in order
to ensure th e regular production of control duties .
Th e notio n of th ough t-wo rk gives a Marxian slant,
then, to a Weberian theme. It emphasizes that social
relationships have to be produced. It suggests that inte r-
nal characteristics such as Schwartzman's negotiations
or Handelman's taxa reveal much about the external
relationships between controllers and the controlled.
Thought-work is th us m ore pointed th an organizational
processes or organizational cultures. Bringing the con-
cept of power t o stud ies of bureauc racies is and und oub t-
4. Eickelman (1978)discusses traditional Islamic learning in a m an-
ner that usefully contrasts with bureaucratic thought-work. He
likewise employ s th e idea tha t specific modes of thoug ht-work, in
this case the ability to converse in quotations from the Koran,
produce social relation ships of a partic ular order.
5
Here, of course, I follow Weber's distinc tion betw een bureau -
cratic auth ority and patrimonial or othe r types of auth ority.
Whereas Weber tends to characterize bureaucracy in term s of its
intern al characteristics, however, I emphasize the relationship be-
tween th e bureaucrat and the recipient of control. I am much in-
fluenced by Elliot Leyton's (H and elma n and Leyton 1978) descrip-
tion of th e incongruities of patronage and bureau cratic power in
Newfoundland.
I
draw my vocabulary from Wolf (1966:89-91),
who addresses the changing relationship of peasant classes to the
larger social order, including bureaucratization as a vertical and
single-stranded relationship.
6 My idea of tho ugh t-work draws inspiratio n from th e radical liter-
atu re on workplaces, esp ecially Buraw oy's (197 9) analy sis of bu-
reaucratic control arising in manufacturing situations where w ork-
ers retain, within limits, skill and pace discretion.
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264 CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY
Volume 36 Number
2
April
1995
edly will c ontin ue to be mo re challenging th an bringing
th e concept of cu lture to them .'
The first inquiry involves the thought process itself.
The bureaucracy literature is replete with perceptive
studies on, for example, th e processual approach to case
and rule interpretation (Handelm an and Leyton
I
978),
th e concept of organiza tional horizons to tho ught (E mer-
son and Paley 19 92) ~nd political learning by experience
and subsequent anticipatory decision making (Gilboy
1991, 1992).These and o ther studies have demonstrated
that thought-wo rk is rarely th e mechanical application
of rules but rather consists of learning and pattern-
following conducted sim ultaneously a t mu ltiple levels.
( Ishall focus on th e mo st com prehensive level, organiza-
tional worldviews.) Th e fact that bureaucratic thoug ht
proves richly contextual rather than abstractly rational
turns our attention to the context itself, the organiza-
tional workplace. Furthermore, thought-work is more
tha n purely functional, since t he tools of bureaucracy
are sentient persons who develop logical elaborations,
rationales, and critiques rooted in job struggles. Obser-
vations on thought, then, can be used to characterize the
society, polity, and econom y th at have produced specific
thinking situations.
Thought-work, secondly, draws our attention to the
existence and actions of thought-wo rkers in a m anner
that bureaucracy as reified conceptualization does not.
Lipsky (1980)delineates, for example, the layer of str eet -
level bureaucrats-teach ers, casework ers, and police of-
ficers-who deal directly w ith th e nonbureauc ratic sub-
ject population (as opposed to those bureaucrats w ho
address th e contro l of th e tie r of burea ucra tic producers
below them ).He demonstra tes that the d is t inct ive work
routines an d interes ts of street-leve l bureaucrats ca use
workplace conflicts both w ith m anagers and with non-
bureaucrats. It therefore behooves us to place street-
level bureaucrats in a disti nctiv e sequence of power rela-
tions.
Street-level bureaucrats struggle wi th th eir managers
in terms of power through the organization, yet they
also share much with their managers. Many managers
climb up through the ranks and share thought frame-
works w ith the people they supervise. Manager-worker
relations are inher ently conflictive, but, as Lipsky (1980:
2 5 ) says, managers depend an their subordinates to im -
plement policies in such a way as to reward them or at
least not draw negative attentio n; managers and workers
therefore reach a ten se balance of int ere sts .
I
follow
Schwa rtzman in noticing th e conversation of argu me nts
and agreements between street-level INS workers and
managers represented in th e INS thought framew ork.
Yet power inside the organization is not enough. We
sense the play of power ab ove th e bureaucracies th at we
study. The literature on states debates who controls
st ate agencies-specific power elites, broader coali tions
7. Baba (198 9) effectively reviews th e possibilities and limita tions
of th e concept of o rganizational cu lture and po ints to the role of
power, especially in recasting official organizationa l cultures as
manag erial ideologies.
in the political economy, or autonomous interests in
th e upper reaches of th e state. Thi s literature reflects,
however, an awareness that a distinctly political layer
sets major agendas for bureaucracy, in Weber's te rm s the
ins tru me nt of power (G erth and Mills 1946:228; Wright
1978:181-22s Foley and Yambert 1989). Th us it is less
important for bureaucracy studies tha t w e resolve this
debate than that we induce from subtle, even hidden,
evidence the operation of politics and th e predetermina-
tion of t he work do ne by bureaucracies by funda me ntal
decisions, emphases, and budgets. Exploring wh at a bu-
reaucracy does rather than explicit policy is a valuable
way of le arnin g abou t power holders, wh o rarely reveal
their hands. Lipsky, for example, organizes his book
around the idea that street-level bureaucrats frustrate
overt public goals in response to work conditions such
as over wh elm ing caseloads, shorta ge of resources, an d
th e need for self-protection and protection of labor-
m a r k e t p o s i t i o n ( 1 9 8 0 : ~ ~ ) .owever, as Perrow (1986:
263) writes, we should always exam ine th e possibility
tha t organizational m asters prefer unofficial goals over
official ones and may even m ake sure th at official goals
are not achieved.
Street-level bureaucrats attem pt to carry o ut power
decisions in th e fac e of nonbureaucratic populations.
The assum ption of a control bureaucracy is tha t the sub-
ject popu lation is subord inate, th e recip ient of actions,
but anthropologists have found th at nonbureaucrats of-
ten take the initiative by pursuing goals that bypass of-
ficial control (Skalnik 1989). Street-level bureaucrats
and nonbureaucrats struggle using complex thoug ht pro-
cesses about ea ch other. The se models of o pposition and
relationship, unli ke th ose deployed inside organizations,
may invo lve radically differing assum ption s about social
action and legitimacy (Handelm an and Leyton 1978).
However partial their control and incomplete their un -
derstanding of nonbureaucrats, street-level bureaucrats
retain th e effective force of th e sta te or private employ er
to mak e their thoughts i nto realities.
If
thoug ht-w ork is t he core of a production process,
then w hat is bureaucracies ' product? Simply posing this
question forces us to co nfront bureaucratic power in so-
ciety. Bureaucracies operate on two levels. Street-level
bureaucrats perform actual functions. Yet bureaucracy
as a form projects an au ra of fina lity, completenes s, and
inhum an objectivity (w hat Philip Abrams [1988] term s
th e state idea ) over empirically complex and often
highly biased
result^ ^
Ethnography shatters the hard
8
Th e illusion of bureau cratic perfection and t he ideology of ratio-
nality m ay emerge in part as a by-product of bureauc ratic work
processes, especially through the brief glimpses that nonbureau-
crats receive whe n they ob tain th e end products of th e organiza-
tion's work. Bureaucratic work is internally conflictive but ap-
pears, in the single-stranded relationship to the exterior, to be
definitive (since t is the final result, not th e midpoint, of struggles
and routines) and rational (since any position in the struggles and
routines will always utilize one among many possible modes of
linkage to explicit w ritte n con trol rules.) The re are, of course,
many other ways in which recent societies try to inculcate the
bureaucratic state idea. Th is one, however, con trasts remarkably
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H E Y M N
Putting Power in the nthropology o f Bureaucracy
2 6 5
surface of officiality; indeed , for all th e recent q ues-
tioning of ethnography,
I
can hardly think of a metho d
more inclined to penetrate formalism in the study of
power.
Th e notion of th oug ht-w ork is no t simply a way of
saying that bureaucrats do conceptual chores on behalf
of e xplicit and official mand ates ( no m atte r how awa re
of in terest a nd power w e ma y be). Because of i ts my s-
tifying qualities, societal production can be discerned
only when we tack b etween inte rnal work struggles and
external work accomplishments, seeking the power re-
sults-the regularly recurring patte rns of actio n and in-
action-of specific bure auc racie s or clus ters of bur eau -
cracies. Does th e organization avoid certain issues while
routinely excelling with regard to others? Can we locate
this mo bilization of bias (Schattsch neider 1960, cited
in Lukes 1974:16) wit hin a patterned com bina tion of
overarching political decisions, resource levels, internal
organizational negotiations, and the resistances and ac-
quiescences of sub ject pop ulatio ns? Repe titious or m u -
tating power results are the building blocks for the ongo-
ing construction of unequal societies; identifying them
and their determinants is the central task for students
of bureaucracy.
Th e idea of t hou ght-w ork is no t helpful whe n reified
as an abstract de finition of bureaucracy. It is helpful
wh en it delinea tes a sequence of inqu iries following
from a view of bureaucracies as workplaces involved in
th e production of con trol, each inquiry being an open
box awaiting historical specification. T he though t-work
concept is thus amenable to contextualization for bu-
reaucracies of quit e different natures, places, and ti m e s9
I t i s a f ramework whose tes t i s i t s ut i l i ty rather than i ts
universality.
wit h the mode s of legitim ation and mystification required for
multistranded patrimonial or other control relationships in wh ich
the two parties know considerably more about each other.
9. I am qu ite concerned about th e portability of thi s framework,
especially from a well-funded agency of a core state whose c ontrol
operations are reasonably clear to b ureaucracies in weaker stat es.
In the latter, the nation-state bureaucracy form has been adopted,
but the a ctions of bureauc rats may differ radically from formal
objectives (Migdal 1988). Likewise, we w itness th e superimpo si-
tion of formal corporate forms o n family-based capitalism. I hope,
in fact, that my framework will guide us i n useful directions. If w e
can discover a real INS immigration policy only in the tho ught-
work-laden job struggles of INS em ployees, the same framework
may prove useful in situations wh ere the relationship of bureau-
cratic behavior an d formal goals is completely obscu re. We mu st,
however, abandon the idea tha t th e analytically informative power
results are th e overt power objectives of th e organiza tion or, if th e
organization fails to do wha t it sets out to do, that its bureaucrats
accomplish nothing. Among other factors, we mu st pay atte n-
tion to th e struggles of bureaucrats w ith non bureaucrats in specific
historical and cultura l contexts, to th e class position of bureau-
cratic workers in specific societies, to the a ctual co ntent of daily
work (looking into and going beyond observations on t he absence
of wo rk inside so me organizations), and to th e work process as a
thought-generator operating with culturally available knowledges
and modes of learning. Migdal's (1988238-58) discussion of the
real work of weak state implementors dem onstra tes man y of
these inquiries, while Eickelman 's (1988)study of th e Om ani intel-
ligence service traces a core state form in the real political world
of o ne Arab Gulf state .
Bureaucratic Worldviews Methods
of Approach
worldview is a set of fun dam ental assum ptions about
th e nature of being and com prehen sible forms of ac tion
and relationship in the human and physical universe
(Kearney 1984). It is pervasive rathe r th an narrow ly
applicable; it guides more specific understandings.
worldview is required for thought-work. The bureau-
cratic control of h um ans involves complexity and un -
predictabili ty that translate in to discretion on the part of
th e officer. While ex pert knowledge suffices for routine
tasks, the variab ility of s ituatio ns requires general
guidelines. Worldview directs thought-work such as
case interpretation. Therefore organizational worldview
fosters th e sub tle coheren ce of decisions over a wide
variety of cases.1
However, the intelle ctua l processes pf bureau crats in-
evitably transcend the purely functional. First, as Kear-
ney (1984) notes, w orldview s strain to ward logico-
structural integration; people tend to think them
through to completion. This may produce skepticism
with regard to contradictory elements in the bureau-
cratic work situation, but bureaucrats affirm organi-
zational assumptions as they launch their crit icisms.
Furthermore, much of what emerges during logical
contem plation is in fact second-order rationalization of
polit ically and economically ordered work routines.
This results in reflective sta tem ents that, wh ile not nec-
essarily l i teral truth, do reveal the settled end point
of k ey organ izational struggles from t he p erspective
of street-level wo rkers. Lipsky (198o :xiii) perceptively
write s of experienced bureau crats, Com prom ises in
work h abits and atti tudes are rationalized as reflecting
worke rs' greater ma turity , the ir appreciation of practical
and political realities, or their mo re realistic assessment
of th e na tur e of the ~ ro b le m . ut these rationalizations
only summ arize the prevailing structural constraints on
hum an service bureaucracies . They are not t rue in a n
absolute sense. Nevertheless, the contemplative and
second-order aspects of worldviews do influence a ction
on the world; the y reinforce the sta nce of street-level
bureaucrats when facing their managers and, especially,
nonbureaucratic populations.
Th e analysis of bu reaucratic w orldview s offered here
has tw o parts: analysis of individ ual interviews
10. Orga nizatio nal worldv iew is, of course, part of the broad soci -
etal worldviews from which members were recruited. This helps
explain struggles between dominant-group-origin bureaucrats and
subordinate populations of very different origins and t he disparity
between th e powerful assum ption s of societal worldview and the
realities of highly sup ervised and co nstrained b ureaucratic jobs.
11. Th e INS fieldwork was conducted from D ecember 1991 to Ju ne
199%.On e hundred and four intervie ws were carried out wi th offi-
cers and managers of sev en operational branches of t he INS in two
regions on th e Mexican border: San Diego County, California, the
highest-volume legal and undocumented crossing area, and south-
ern Arizona, a lower-volume entry zone but one deeply involved in
drug interdic tion. The selection of interviewees w as opportunistic;
however, the distribution of interviews closely matches the sex
and race comp osition of officers in th e INS Western Region, con-
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C U R R E N T
A N T H R O P O L O G Y
Volume
36,
Nu mb e r
2,
April
995
through worldview categorization and analysis of con-
tex ts of le arnin g. In categorizing worldview s, I use Kear-
ney's (1984) seven universals: self, ot her (s), elationship
and causality (a ssum ed direction of action, from self t o
other or other to self), i me , space (especially th e bound-
ary area), and classification (w ith emphas es on citizen-
ship, nationality, and la w) . Rather t han force artificial
consistency on individual conversations,
I
also utilize
Strauss's (1990) classification of mut ual ly con tradic tory
propositions in interviews.12 Th e co ntext s for learning
bureaucratic worldviews are identified in Leyton's study
of th e Workmen's Com pensation Board (WCB) n New-
foundland (quoted by Han delman and Leyton 1978:84):
The particular ideology which provides moral imper-
atives and constrains a ction on t he part of t he WCB
is a distinct ive blen d of a rigidly codified set of regu-
lati ons of a recog nition of th e finan cial resp onsi-
bility of t he WCB to indus try, of an uncoo rdina ted
melange of philosophical and po litical ideas garnered
during the l ifetim e of th e officials, and of th e morals
firmed by INS affirmative action statistics for the specific ranks.
Although I obtained INS permission to conduct interviews and in
some cases managers suggested interviewee names, th ere was little
deliberate managerial guidance of interviews; several times
I
was
directed to speak w ith artic ulate in-hou se critics, and remarks were
remarkably candid thro ughou t. In addition, I observed routine INS
operations, including those remarked on by informants here, and
interviewed persons outside the INS including lawyers and other
immigration advocates in order to double-check statemen ts made
by INS employees.
Interviews had a uniform structure: they included inquiries on
personal background, recruitment into the INS, training, and a
chronological career history with questions about work settings
and job duties. T his interv iew form at allowed, however, for open-
ended elaboration and questioning as the exchange developed.
In-
terviews were hand-recorded nearly verbatim at th e time of th e
interview. The interview was closed by asking all informants to
free-associate on terms intended to reveal concepts of self and
other: INS, aliens, Mexico, Am erican public, Ame rican
politicians, accomplishm ents, and frustrations. The inter-
views were then coded in terms of worldview universals drawn
from Keamey (19841, read quali tatively for the particular conte nt
of th e universals and their gestalt, and summ arized . Rather tha n
aggregate these summaries, I here present selected interviews at
sufficient length to develop the personal conte xts and gestalts of
individuals. I have c hosen no t to represent a fictitious average INS
agent by selecting examples that seem to support my overall im-
pression; rather, I have deliberately selected intervie ws for diver-
sity of worldview gestalts and political opinions and the n looked
for commonalities. In selec ting interviews I have also represented
the div ersity of gender, race, rank, and INS career-sta rting date.
Because of the m ulti tude of work d uties in t he INS, I have re-
stricted m yself to describing two major c ont ext s of law enforce-
me nt at th e Mexican boundary itself: Border Patrol line watch and
port-of-entry inspection.
2 Strauss (1990) ontrasts learned ideological propositions, which
take the form of conte xt-inva riant, formulaic statem ents, with
more loosely linked thoughts arising from the contemplation of
particu lar con texts. Inform ants m ove towa rd one of thr ee types of
resolutions: vertical containment choosing a n ideological schema
over implicit alternatives;
horizontal containment
isolating con-
tradictory alternatives; and integration a nested resolution of all
layers of thou ght. Th e different types of resolutio n result i n more
rigid or more conte xtual thought-guides to action, a con sideration
of great importa nce for a stud y of burea ucratic conflic ts wi th non-
bureaucratic populations.
learned from the exchange of difficult or illustrativ e
cases betwee n officials. The WCB bureaucrat learns
these ideological cons traint s in no particularly pro-
grammed fashion; rather, he brings to the WCB his
personal ideas, reads th e Act u ntil its stipulations
are clear to him, and then absorbs as much as he can
of
WCB
philosophy and case histories as he moves
through th e organization.
The contexts to which Leyton points can be summa-
rized as re cruitm ent, traini ng (or reading), and organiza-
tional socialization. More imp ortant, he indicates tha t
bureaucrats learn and test subtle compromises with the
political economy.
The INS: Servant of Decisions from Above
To perceive power above the INS, we m us t contrast its
formal missions with the real policies it implements.
The INS, a long with the State Department and the De-
partm ent of Labor, issues visas to new legal immig rants
and nonimmigrant visitors. It inspects all persons-
citizens, imm igrants, and visitors-for admission at air,
sea, and land ports of entry. Enforcement of the immi-
gration laws is it s responsibility. Th e Border Patrol, its
uniformed police branch, prevents undocu mented entry
along the land border be tween p orts of e ntry, Inspections
polices th e ports of e ntry, an d several INS branche s oper-
ate in th e interior of the country and enforce laws such
as those against hiring undocumented aliens or aliens
working outsid e the terms of the ir visas. Arrestees may
be deported after an administrative trial in which the
INS serves as initial bond setter, jailer, and prosecutor
before an immigration judge who belongs to a separate
branch of t he D eparm ent of Justice, the Executive Office
of Im migration Review. Tho se denied admission at ports
of e ntry or detained at sea go through an adm inistra tive
hearing called exclusion involving yet narrower proce-
dural rights. The assump tion of the law is that deporta-
tion or exclusion will be enforced uniformly against
equivalent violators whatever their nationality; since
th e INS has never been given the budgets or mandates to
permit this, unstated policies guide actual enforcement
choices.
The INS implements three tacit policies. Voluntary
departure is an alternative to formal deportation, em-
ployed especially at the Mexican border, whereby ar-
rested aliens are perm itted (ind eed, encouraged) o waive
their rights to a deportation hearing and return to Mex-
ico without lengthy detention, expensive bonding, and
trial (seeWest and Moore 1989).In 1989 th e INS released
87% of those apprehended, 830,s
6
persons, for volun-
tary departure. Three percent of im mig ration offenders
were deportedj the remainder entered the legal process
but did not leave the coun try (U.S. INS 19go:1I
I .
Most
enforcement is directed against Mexicans rather than
other undocum ented entr ants. Ninety -one percent of de-
portable aliens apprehended by the INS in 1989 were
Mexicans
U.S.
INS 19go:11z), although approximately
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H E Y M N Puttin g Power in th e Anthropology of Bureaucracy 267
42% of und ocum ented aliens in the Unite d States are
non-M exican (Woodrow and Passel 1990:48). Since these
undocumented aliens are released into Mexico at the
U.S. border, they can and do repeat their attempts to
evade border enforcement until they finally succeed in
entering (E spenshade 1990). In accordance w ith this pol-
icy the U.S. government at once arrests many persons,
thereby reinforcing the s tate idea of bounded citizenship
(em phas izing sym bols of border control ) for med ia
sale and consu mp tion (see Fernandez and Pedroza 1982,
Cornel ius 1982)~nd negates the effectiveness of these
arrests, thu s perm itting labor migration in numbe rs well
beyond tho se permitted by law (se e Bustam ante 1978).13
This combination of formal and tacit policies will be
called the voluntary-departure complex.
Differentiation by nationality is the second tacit pol-
icy. Th e principal me chan ism of th is is unequal as ylum
admissions rooted i n U.S. foreign policy history (S tepick
1982, Loescher and Scanlan 986) . Pedraza-Bailey (1985)
demonstrates that easy undocumented entry for Mexi-
cans contributes t o their placemen t i n th e proletariat of
the U.S. West, whereas asylum admission and subsidies
for Cubans have aided their upward m obility. Differenti-
ation by nationality on th e U.S.-Mexico border involves
primarily Mexicans and Central Americans, the latter
being discouraged from filing asylum papers by lengthy
detention, pressure t o depart voluntarily ( th us abandon-
ing the possibi lity of a syl um ), and, if a pplica tions are
made, low success rates (Koulish 1992).
Finally, th e INS has entered t he heavily funded realm
of narcotics law enforceme nt. Th e Border Patrol has pri-
mary respo nsibility for the in terdic tion of land border
smuggling between ports of entry ; at such ports, Cus-
tom s has primary responsibility, b ut INS inspectors are
cross-designated as C ust om s officers. INS Inve stigations
is deeply involved in inter-federal-agency operations
involving narcotics. The INS actively seeks and de-
ports permanent-resident and undocumented-alien fel-
ons finishing jail senten ces (Kesselbrenner and Rosen-
berg 1991).
Questions for the
NS
Worldview
It is not difficult to dem onstra te the role of regional and
sectoral economic interest s in the creation of a permis-
sive policy tow ard M exican labor (Portes and W alton
198 I: 5 3-5 8). Th e idea of thoug ht-w ork perm its us to
probe how t his policy is implem ented i n th e face of os-
tensibly contrary purposes.14 INS budgets benefit from
13. I cannot d iscuss at leng th th e politics of d e facto U.S. undocu -
mented im migration policy, but generally I locate it in the sim ulta-
neous prod uction of appearance an d reality as described here; see,
for example, Calavita's (1990) application of th e notion of sym-
bolic law to INS enforcemen t of employer sanctions.
14. Calavita (19 92)shows how economic interests have penetrated
th eIN S but only for the bracero contract-labor period prior to 1965.
Harwood (19 86) provides a reliable survey of INS en forcement in
the undocumented immigration period, but it is written from a
politically conservative viewpoint that does not unde rtake to ex-
plore this issue.
low-cost, ineffectual but politically visible arrests of
Mexicans near t he border. INS managers therefore need
to implement this strategy despite the fact that their
subordinates believe i n enforcing th e im migration law
effectively, which means going after higher-cost offend-
ers such as alien smugglers. Th e result of this struggle
with in the rank s of t he INS is, as we sh all see, the pro-
ductio n of th e voluntary-departure com plex on a daily
basis. A coheren t worldview renders de facto policy con-
trollable and predictable; it s tenets can be taught to co-
horts of new officers with out overtly contradicting offi-
cial statem ents.
In this process, of course , INS officers intera ct wit h an
undocumented immigrant population that deliberately
tries to avoid and defy state auth ority. Recently, narcot-
ics law enforcement has increased the firepower avail-
able to INS officers and altered th e calcu lation of risks .
How do INS officers deal with defiance and frustration
in terms of their worldviews' as sum ption s about the na-
ture of social action and th e characteristics of im mi -
grants as others ? What do INS worldviews tell u s about
abusive and abuse-avoiding behaviors (Am erican Friends
Service Committee 1990, 1992; Americas Watch 1992,
1993; Petition to the Inter-American Commission
1992)?15
INS
Worldviews
ORG NIZ T ION L SOCI L IZ T ION
Most IN S officers and all officers wh o begin careers in
th e Border Patrol undergo rigorous training at t he federal
law enforcement training cam p in Glynco, Georgia. Th e
course, in addition to physical training, consists of rote
learn ing of Spanish and innu me rab le provisions of im -
migration and naturalization (citizenship) law.
Rote
memorization makes INS training ideal for inculcating
worldview messages. This training routine took shape
during a formative period in t he p olitical econom y of
the INS. In the late 1940s and early 1950s~major em-
ployers of undocumented Mexican immigrants inter-
vened in detail in INS operations and repeatedly at-
tacked the agency in Congress. The INS became
demoralized and was almost destroyed. In 1954 a new
director, G eneral Joseph Swing, forged a subtle political
compromise that eliminated direct intervention in the
INS by employ ers and rebuilt th e organization around a
dominant Border Patrol at the M exican boundary (C ala-
vita 1992). Border Patrol training and careers became
central to th e INS. The comprom ise forged by Swing dis-
appeared with th e end of th e bracero (c ontra ct labor)
program in 1965, when the recent period of Mexican-
IS . I t is worth emphasizing the relative infrequency of h um an
rights abuses by th e INS and framing th e issue in term s of abuse-
avoiding as well as abusive tendencies. The most comprehensive
report (American Friends Service Co mm itte e 1992:19) cites an an-
nual average of 425 abuses (thou gh othe rs may rema in unreported),
while the INS performs over million annual apprehensions and
roughly 400 million inspections, th e vast majority on th e Mexican
border.
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CURRENT
ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36 Number 2 pril 1995
border undocumented entry took shape, but th e organi-
zatio nal pat ter ns of th e Swing era-the boundary focus,
the voluntary-departure complex, atte ntion to the w ork
behavior of Mexicans-serve th e INS in the current po-
litical climate. The messages in INS training thus do
not stand alone, a peculiar organizational tradition;
rather, they represent a vital link between the organiza-
tion as it unfolds and critical mom ents in th e political
economy.
INS training produces specialization in Spanish-
speaking immigrants. Neophyte Border Patrol officers
know th at failing Spanish will end thei r careers.16Three
editio ns of th e Spanish textb ook , spann ing 45 years (U.S.
INS 1943, 1972, 988), are impressiv ely similar in con-
tent; th e 1972 and 1988 editions are identical. Th e latest
edition, under wh ich m ost of th e officers I interviewed
were trained, refers to Mexicans or locations on the
Mexican border 53 times and to non-Mexicans 4 times.
(T he latter are tellingly referred to, in IN S jargon, as
OTMs, other-than-Me xicans.) Mexicans are under-
stood to be laborers; immigrants are mentioned in the
cont ext of l ow -wa ge jobs
5 5
times. An alternative read-
ing th at migh t emphas ize drugs, guns, knives, and crimi-
nal activities occurs less frequently, 18 times, mostly
in isolation rather tha n i n descriptions of actions by
Mexicans. The book does mention the crime of alien
smuggling 24 times, for obvious reasons. Thirty-four
sentences, including a series of major dialogues and
translation paragraphs at the end of t he text, express
disapproval for defiant behavior by immigrants ( Why
do you always lie ? [U.S. INS 1988:35]) or describe hu -
mility, remorse, and desire to seek entry throug h proper
channels. The Spanish textbook prepares the INS offi-
cers to think about a one-dimensional other: a Mexican,
in m ost cases seeking work, who in on e sense is engaged
in a covert activity, crossing the border, lying, possibly
being smuggled but in another sense can be persuaded
to be humble, truthful, and above all passive. I do not
argue tha t this is in fact th e only type of o ther embodied
in th e INS worldview; by delineating one type of proper
Mexican behavior, the Border Patrol's Spanish text
allows precisely for the creation, among INS workers
themselves, of a n inverted and negative image, an other
made of equal parts of defiance and nonhum ble wo rk
(e.g., drug sm uggling). If the former is expected, th e la t-
ter is to be censured, with important implications for
hum an rights in everyday INS work.
Th e other m ajor hurdle for prospective INS officers is
the m emorization of long charts detailing who is and
who is no t a U.S. citizen and other mi nutiae of immigra-
tion and naturalization law. Thi s knowledge is inter-
16
The key Spanish test in the probationary year after training
includes not only grammar and vocabulary but also a conversa-
tional component that serves as an attitude test, rewarding neo-
phyte officers for conforming to group norms of active rather th an
~a ss iv ework.
7
For this material
I
draw on an INS extension course with study
material and ex ams, includi ng a detailed outline of the Border Pa-
trol Academy syllabus [U.S. INS n.d.).
mitte ntly used by inspectors and may be draw n on occa-
sionally by Border Patrol officers. How ever, me morizing
it affects neo phyte INS officers long after they have for-
gotten, for example, the citizenship of persons born in
Puerto
Rico in 1890 or in Guam in 1890 to Spanish-
peninsular parents (U.S. INS n.d., lesson 2 3 : 7 The pan-
oply of ways of obta ining residen tial rights in th e Un ited
States reinforces an inc hoate se t of ideas in th e minds
of INS officers about th e U.S. polity of w hich th ey th em -
selves must be citizens. Modern citizenship delineates
a set of individuals, each in a person-to -state relation-
ship that conveys inalienable political, property, and
legal rights. Furthermore, citizenship has proven an im-
portant a rena of struggle with in capitalism, cou nterpos-
ing shared rights to resources redistributed by govern-
me nt and corporation to th e impersonality and inequity
of th e m arket (Barbalet 1988). Since INS officers are al-
ready rooted in social and cultural contex ts that assume
th e history of U.S. citizenship rights, cons titutio nal and
redistributive, they can see in t he elaborate opportuni-
ties to become a legal U.S. resident an d then a citizen a
way to reject, or set aside as others, persons wh o enter
the United States with no right to be part of the charmed
circle. An INS officer told me that the legalization of
formerly undocum ented U.S. residents mandated in t he
1986 Imm igration Reform an d Con trol Act offended hi m
because there are so ma ny ways to become a citizen.
INS trainees also mem orize lengthy lists of ex clusion
categories that moralize legal judgments (on e can be ex-
cluded for certain types of m oral turp itude w ith out be-
ing convict ed of a felony or even of a cri m e) . N S training
is usually th e employee's first and only encounter w ith
the sys tem atizat ion of capitalist and const itution al jus-
tice. It crystallizes mo re loosely formed understandin gs
about t he even-handed, written-rule-based, and citizen-
right-focused natur e of their job. Th is bot h se ts INS of-
ficers apart from the human complexities and needs of
the noncitizens with whom they deal and causes them
endless frustration and introspection as they contem-
plate th e fact tha t the U nited States, through its volun-
tary-departure complex, tolerates undocu mented work-
ers.
MANAGERS
District directors are powerful figures in the INS, pos-
sessed of considerable legal discre tion a nd i n charge of
all INS operations except th e Border Patrol for areas of-
ten encompassing several states. A director to whom
I spoke identified implicitly with the INS by reciting
career acco mp lishm ents and identified others in ways
that corresponded to the position's responsibilities.
Whereas specific persons were singled ou t in conn ection
wi th the netw orks of regional Am erican politics, aliens
appeared as an anonymous liquid flow that constantly
threatened to seep through holes in INS dikes and pour
into the interior of the United States:
I take im migrants b oth seriously and skeptically. I
am aware of some entrants wh o lie, who would do
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H E Y M A N
Putting Power in th e nthropology o f Bureaucracy 269
mo st anythin g to get into th e U.S., but th e overall
big picture is th at t he U.S. is a count ry tha t a lot of
people in th e world wan t to be in. Th e global lines
of i t keep gett ing reinforced . I read newsp apers differ-
ently than mo st people-we all do, all of us in the
Service-if there's a flood or fam ine, a coup , i t af-
fects us, and m oving up the ladder it just gets more
SO.
This perspective has a function al basis in the realities
facing an INS executive. The INS risks being over-
whelm ed w ith persons-running ou t of dete ntio n space,
exceeding budgets. Therefore INS decision makers opt
to treat immigrants with potential r ights as logistical
problems, to be discouraged from legal options or
quickly returned.18 In an ironic inversion, undocu-
mented entrants w ho can be processed quickly become
a valuab le resource.
Th e Border Patrol operates separately within the INS;
the chief patrol agent is roughly equivalent to a district
director, while patro l ag ents in charge (PA ICs) of sta-
tions supervise daily operations. One PAIC frames self
and other in term s of the metap hor of war :
Military tactics says that you w ant t he high ground,
you wa nt to be able to observe, to work downhill-
truth fully it 's a military ty pe of s etting . We are be-
ing invaded, and the army that 's coming has thou -
sands of perso nnel. It's a nonv iolent invasion , and
the tactics to interdict i t have to be a nonviolent re-
sponse-it 's mu ch easier to shoot than to catch a
runner, arrest, and deliver him at the end .
Th e warfare or invasion me taph or was used deliber-
a te ly w i th m e a s i n t e r l o c ~ t o r ' ~o justify in the face of
subordinate and lateral criticism this PAIC's policy of
pressuring street-level officers to incre ase arrests in or-
der to generate increased funding. The PAIC intermit-
tently co ntemp lated th e futility of catching and releas-
ing hund reds of thou sand s of undo cum ented entr ants.
He mentioned alternative possibilit ies ( Nationally, I
have to rely on creating employm ent in a foreign co un-
try ) but retreated from such thoughts, using a spatial
metaphor to contain the m ( My world is very small-to
convince the chief patrol agent that I need resources
here-and I do th at w ith arrest statistic s ). Street-level
officers divide alien others into docile job seekers and
bad guysu-smugglers, guides, drivers, and others. Th is
PAIC promoted the arrest of simple entrants with out
inspection, whose processing takes minu tes; he explic-
itly places less emphasis on smuggling arrests. The bad
guys cost organizational time, up to three officer-hours
each for the preparation of crim inal charges. I shall argue
tha t th e tacit struggle of preferences ends in a compro -
18 Th is distri ct director had a policy of refusing to parole exclus ion
cases out of d etentio n and justified this precisely as a deterrent to
a feared greater flow.
19
ere
th e pronoun you initially drew me, the questioner, into
the conce rns of a Border Patrol manager while th e shift to the
rhetorically more powerful we heightened identification with
th e defense of th e U.S. citizen ry.
mise in w hich street-level officers furnish mass produc-
tion of qu iet arrests wh ile informally punishing p ersons
they perceive as bad guys or defiant arrestees.
The mil i ta ry-minded PAIC (wh o was himself not a
veteran) should no t be taken as representative. Ano ther
PAIC who operated under the same sector priorities
noted tha t und ocumented entrants moved and changed
tactics before the Border Patrol shifted agents to plug
flows. According to him, it was the imm igrants wh o
were proactive1'-governmental jargon used here w it h
great subtlety to express skepticism, since one is sup-
posed to be proactive, creative, decisive. His INS self
was passive while the other was active, the inverse of
th e U.S. worldview. H e described the task of his agen ts
as maintain ing a steady number of apprehensions with
the realistic assumption t hat i t would n ot always be pos-
sible to initiate or control the situation. Thus, he dis-
cussed th e managerial need to prevent or con tain embar-
rassing inciden ts of abuse, an issu e hardly raised by his
more aggressive counterpart. Yet this mo re relaxed atti -
tude was deeply painful for the PAIC himself. He ex-
pressed this by besieging his self ( The public perception
of the Border Patrol is that we are all bad: no o ne com -
ments on the compassionate acts ) and by distancing
the American public as an other through ideological
schemas of Mexican immigration ( The American pub-
lic is very gullible, uninformed, unconcerned; I would
like them to be concerned w ith th e high influx of il legal
immigrants ) .
Managers develop complex worldviews from their as-
cent through the ranks, their increasing command of
political m etaphors (undo cume nted aliens as invaders),
and their recognition of w ork situations th at present
specific pitfalls. They try to sell metaphors upward as
rationales for resource requests and downward as justi-
fications for orders, engaging both t he co mplex
U.S. pol-
ity and their ow n subordinates, who, working nightly on
highways or near the boundary fence, retain substantial
autonomy.
B O R D E R PATROL AGENTS
Aggression and reaction frame the impossible task of
Border Patrol agents. Here I examine two young men
thru st on to th e 20-mile boundary sou th of San Diego,
where nearly half of all imm igrat ion arrests are mad e
and where the potential for frustration and conflict is
g re ate st. R ick ~ i l l e r , ~ '9, is an Anglo American and
grew up in metropolitan Phoenix. He distances immi-
grants as others with impersonal terms, for example,
they. Wh en asked to free-associate on Mexico, he
replied, Tonks-that's ou r vers ion of a Me xican; it's a
derogatory word for an alien. Tonk in Border Patrol
slang derives from t he sou nd of a flashlight hit tin g a
person's head.
1 spite of his ability to belittle th e other, ~ i l l ~
20. This and all subs equen t names are pseudonyms. Som e personal
details have been altered to p revent identification.
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270 URRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 36 Number 2 April
995
sense of ac com plish men t is severely wound ed by the
voluntary-departure complex. Asked to free-associate on
accomp lishments, he responds,
I
have hampered
smuggling in this area; I have not deterred the aliens
from crossing here. I have not deterred the smuggling,
just hamp ered it. 21 Asked about frustrations, h e says,
The feeling that our accomp lishments are so small tha t
it
is not effective. If t he service an d cou ntr y provided a
means to put an end to this I would feel more accom-
plishment in my job. Miller follows imm ediately wi th
a key Border Patrol concept, fun, th at compensates for
th e ~ a l ~ a b l eutility of the iob:
So wh at w e have t o go on is fun. I enjoy my job, I
have fun-since it is a gam e of tag and catch-I see
if I can ca tch mo re tha n anybody else, or how I
catch the m come up on a group on a trail, scare
them half to death, that's fun and satisfaction. Seiz-
ing a smuggler's car -$~ ,oo o, $2,000 car-and you
take it away from him . Different aspects of th e
job become a game to en tertain you w hile you per-
form the duty .
To Miller, undocumented aliens, rather than being fully
motivated hu m an beings, vary on one dim ension only:
they are either docile (runn ing is docile behavior) or de-
fiant. The assumption is that entrants understand that
the interaction between agent and alien is governed by
the voluntary-departure com plex (w hich is often true
but which does not allow for disorientation on the part
of aliens ). Mil ler calls th is the game :
If they run, they're illegal they know th e game,
they're docile if caught. They're delayed eight hours
and then they do
it
over again. Tha t's all we basi-
cally do, delay them . Aliens who aren't docile when
they'r e caught-well, I'm 6-4 and
25
pounds, I take
charge. My m ethods might be too harsh, but I use
th e force and m eans necessary to control people. If
we establish force firsthand, we're not going to have
problems. It's th e mor e docile agents who get as-
saulted. I do push people to th e ground, tackle them,
yell a t th em as I demand them to do what I want
them to do like sit down, put their hands on their
heads.
Seeking fun amidst frustrating work may, for some
individuals, provide t he pre mises for excessive force and
abusive language. The th ough t-wo rk involved in Border
Patrol line watch on th e international boundary is rela-
tively simp le (street, highway, or workplace questionin g
may invo lve greater complexities of citizenship and resi-
dential status) . People w ho ru n are very likely to be un-
documented; the more passive ones understand the
game. Tho se wh o physically resist, throw rocks, ru n
after being caught, etc., are treated not only as poten-
tially weapon-bearing threats-which, realistically, they
21. source of frustration here is not just voluntary departure but
also the INS officer's sense that U.S. attorneys rarely prosecute
small-scale alien smuggling and that sentences are short, some-
time s limited t o tim e already served (see Tone y 1977).
ma y be-but also as possible mem ber s of a very different
category of un doc um ent ed alien, variously called bad
boys, dirt-bags, scum-bags, etc . Border Patro l offi-
cers assume that they resist because they have some-
thing to hide; th ey ma y be previously deported felons or
face prosecution as smugglers or guides. Th is is selective
realism on the part of
INS
agents-the crim inal alien
deportation program has indeed created a new return
cycle from Mexico and Cen tral America-but overlooks
the fact that aliens may act from fear or confusion or
may be defending their ow n standards of justice and
worldviews of control over the border.22
Thrown rocks are one physically threatening act of
defiance that scares and angers Border Patrol agents. An-
drew Wells evidences the response often glossed in the
INS as comm on sense. Wells, wh o entered th e Border
Patrol in 1986, is an Anglo American from a sm all town
in southern New Mexico-an origin to which one might
impute potential anti-Mexican prejudice. Yet he mani-
fests empathy for the alien as hu ma n other: I hope they
don't go out on th e freeway; th at makes m e madder than
anything, especially if they hav e litt le children, because
wh at they are doing isn't wo rth risking their lives for.
He premises his brief sym pathy for undocum ented im -
migrants o n the futility of th e voluntary-departure com-
plex. Asked What is frustr ating? he answers,
First, it 's th e sam e ones over and over again; second,
you don 't get [i.e., you m iss] lots of people; an d you
try th e best you can, but it's n ot good enough really.
You reach a po int w here you say, 1'11 ca tch wh at I
can, and 1/11 et th e rest go by. You try to tell this
to th e new guys; at first they're fired up, they try to
get every alien in sig ht, and it's just no t possible to
do that.
Wells repeats the relaxation reminder even in connec-
tion with circumstances in which he was harmed by an
aggressive other : I've got a scar on the forehead from a
rock. It m akes m e pretty angry, especially w hen they're
throw n from the s out h side of t he fence, because there
is no t a thing you can do except get out of there. Wells's
i 'commonsensell stance is particularly important be-
cause he is a firearms instructor, which involves shoo t/
don't-shoot scenarios.
Relaxation, though ultimately a healthy response,
fundam entally discourages Wells, since t he passive self
is untenab le in t he U.S. worldview. He finds occasional
solace in acti vity in areas inside th e border fence where
immigrants stage before they run north, viewing this
limi nal terrain (Chavez 1992:46) as an open field for a
contest for spatial control: We push them back to the
fence because i t show s we still have control, plus i t gives
22. There is a glaring need for ethnography on M exican and C entral
American ideas of t he INS, in particular of just and unjust a ctions
by INS officers and of low-level or emoti onally m otivate d resis-
tance su ch as rock throw ing and insults (see Heym an 1991:18).
One crucial nexus at which this could be studied is the intersection
of individual migrant narratives with collective representations of
the anonymous
INS
in Mexican popular culture and folklore.
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HEYMAN Putting Power in th e nthropology of Bureaucracy
271
us a little breather because we can retreat back north
and i t takes
a
little while for them to filter back
UD.
In the absence of real com mu nicatio n, attackin g space
normally accorded to immigrants also transmits INS
standards of behavior: Usually we get frustrated or we
get rocked somewhere so we decide to go in an d retake
their area. Yet, fundam entally, Wells alienates himself
spatially from U.S. society, speaking from down here
close to the struggle with the immigrants rather than
identifying th e self w ith t he bounded space of t he U.S.
state (a s in Kearney 1991): The INS is a paper tiger
which doesn't have public and congressional support;
from th e way I see it dow n here, no one cares.
Border Patrol worldviews are second-order rationaliza-
tions of dutie s wi thin th e voluntary-departure complex.
Rec ruits begin wi th t he civ ilian U.S. idea of policing,
reinforced by their detailed paper training in immigra-
tion an d natio nality law, as active arrest of all violators
of objective rules. They soon learn tha t undocum ented
entrants initiate the entry and determine the flow of
events and, furthermore, that management and polity
favor meaningless voluntary departure over punish-
ment. The rationalizations have three consequences.
First, they undergird both abusive and abuse-avoiding
behaviors. The critical acceptance of voluntary depar-
ture rationalizes relaxation i n th e face of alien defiance
of th e law. It is a mech anism for coping, inevitably in-
sufficiently ( in view of th e responses of a varie ty of i n-
dividual personalities), with what I surmise is severe
stress, a passive excitement i n which neither active ini-
tiation (fight)nor flight i s possible.23 How ever, t he B or-
der Patrol worldview also rationalizes informal pu nish-
me nt of defiant and morally reprehensible persons wh en
work routines do not permit time to process them for
formal legal charges. Secondly, an organization in w hich
many officers admirably adhere to abuse-avoiding rou-
tines tolerates abusive officers for lengthy periods of
time. Finally, Border Patrol officers rationalize work
mandates that favor easy arrest and rapid processing
by categorizing many Mexican others as docile work
or family seekers. Undocumented labor-force renewal
through cyclical migration is facilitated (tho ugh not de-
monstrably caused) by this choice and smuggling only
weakly impeded.
INSPECTORS
INS inspectors admit or deny admission to persons at
international p orts of entry su ch as the crossing points
23
Joey Corrales, a first-line supervisor working south of San
Diego, described passive stress: Yes,
I
have cautioned somebody.
You see an individual agent who is very emotional because of t he
position they are assigned, for example the [Tijuana River] levee
where you are in very close proximity to the aliens. When they
are not in control of t he levee, they feel very stressed, excited,
short-tempered. I talk to the agent at the scene, let the agent go
work somewhere else or leave the area, relax. It's stressful to catch
a lot of aliens, and even more to see a lot get away, so the first one
you catch, that one gets all your anxiety. Agent
X
is particularly
bothered by seeing aliens get away, so I don't assign him to those
positions.
linking U.S. and Mexican border cities. They m us t com-
mand
a
wide variety of legal and regulatory knowledge,
and they make fine judgments about the truthfulness
and applicability of verbal and do cum entary claims
made by persons seeking admission. Yet they make
these judgments under extreme time pressure and ap-
palling wo rk
condition^;^^
at on e major border port I ob-
served, inspectors work in billowing automobile ex-
haust four hour s per shift on the primary (front ) ine,
posing questions to irascible strangers wh ile under ma n-
agerial pressure to clear cars through a t an average rate
of 45 seconds per inspection. Inspections though t-wo rk
is thu s rich i n patterned expertise, routines, and rules of
thum b (see Gilboy 1991). These conditions give rise not
only to taxonomies at a lower level, however, but also
to overarching ideas about the inspecting self and the
inspected others.
The Inspections worldview adapts to th e spatial and
legal pecu liaritie s of port s of en try. First and foremo st,
INS inspectors at ports of entry represent the sover-
eignty of th e U.S. state; they hold significantly un-
checked rights to de tain, search, and interrogate all per-
sons, citizens or not, who must surrender themselves
for inspection before they acquire permission to enter
the country-and more complete rights there (Hu ll
1985 5 3-54). In primary inspection, the inspector in-
vades, with quick, probing looks and questions, the
space of pedestrians or m otorist s and quickly classifies
them by behavior and responses. Secondary inspection
requires interrogation, a carefully aggressive process of
mentally controlling the e ntrant, wh o is already under
physical control, in order to determine admissibility.
One might surmise tha t the power of inspectors is com-
pletely unchecked, but th is is not the case.
International ports of e ntr y are sensitive political en-
viron me nts. Th e cond uct of inspecti ons of Mexican citi-
zens and the flow of persons across the inte rnatio nal
boundary inevitably involve relations between the two
nation-states, represented by U.S. port directors and
Mexican consuls. Furthermore, U.S. local politics over
issues su ch as t he sp eed of traffic flow an d th e loss of
access to undocum ented domestics blunt th e
INS'S abil-
ity to tig hten en try control (Gilboy 1992:301-3). Gilboy
has demonstrated how subtle political considerations
penetrate IN S operations through th e thought-w ork in-
volved in learning to anticipate and avoid politically
sens itive denia ls of adm ission . Conversely , I observed
tha t port insp ectors are criticized for insufficient aggres-
sion if th ey ad mit a person w ho is later arrested by police
or other INS officers. This particularly worries INS offi-
cers on the Mexican border, where they double as anti-
narcotics customs inspectors.
T he contrad ictory realitie s of border ports of en try are
played out between INS managers and inspectors. Man-
agers (po rt directors and supervisory inspectors) demand
simultaneous aggression and political tact from front-
24
Work conditions are appalling through no faul t of t he INS man-
agers; they are a result of the enormous volume of pedestrian and
vehicular traffic at the Mexico-U.S. border.
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7
CURRENT
ANTHRO POLOGY
Volume 36 Number
2
April
995
line employees through formulaic statements about
proper deportment; inspectors interpret this organiza-
tional doctrine within their own life experiences. In-
spections is one of t he tw o points of career entry in t he
INS, the other being the Border Patrol. In contrast t o th e
Border Patrol, Inspections recruits and assigns locally.
T he maj ority of officers are Latinos (of Mexica n an ces-
try) from border c ~ m m u n i t i e s . ~ ~hey inspect a popula-
tion that is largely of Mexican origin. They therefore
distinguish self from others w ithi n a c omplex sph ere of
loyalties, legal prerogatives, and the contradictory dia-
logues of pol itically sen sitive wor k.
Francisco Encinas, a supervisory inspector, grew up in
a cross-border family. He lived in Mexico but had U.S.
citizenship and attend ed school on t hat side. He phrases
his expe ctations of subordinates as follows:
A good inspector goes wi th t he flow of fraud and le-
gitimate cases. The problem inspector manifests au -
thority in a hard voice ( iAdbnde vas? Where are
you going?]) n th e tz [informal pronoun] form, gruff,
with no greeting. A good inspector is able to show
auth ority in relaxed, cool voice. In Latin culture, au-
thori ty is strongest if it is calm , cool, very courte-
ous, and formal.
Encinas represents the tension between aggression and
tact through a claim about generalized Latino culture.
He essentializes his own highly distinctive cross-border
experience in order to ma ndate a certain patte rn of be-
havior for the inspectors he supervises.
For all that Encinas partakes of border interchange,
characteristically for the INS h e remains capable of dis-
tancing himself from law-defying others. Using a Mexi-
can metaphor, he envisions himself saying to a docu-
mentary violator, This is the doorway to our house.
Would you let me in the doorway to your house when
vou catch m e in a lie? Furthermore, as he moves from
the local to the political economy, more fixed ideologi-
cal schemas emerge that force a contrast between ne-
glected law enforcer and too-liberal American im migra-
tion policy. Encinas com plains, as so ma ny INS officers
do, that th e 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act
legalized lawbreakers (persons in th e Un ited States
without legal status continuously since January I, 1982,
among others).
Maria Alicia Carbajal defines herself by pride in inter -
rogation. Carbajal was born i n th e United States and is
2 5 .
Of my interviewees, 8% started their INS careers in the Border
Patrol and 28% in inspections. Only 14 started in any other
branch. These two paths, then, likely strongly influence INS
worldviews as a whole. My interviewees as a whole were 32%
Latino; 3 6% of th e Border Patrol
officerslmanagers and 71% of
the inspectors/managers were Latino. The Border Patrol tends to
separate Mexican-border Latinos and Anglos from their local up-
bringing and instill a borderwide organizational culture; 56% of
Border Patrol officers grew up i n proximity to th e border, but only
8% were working near their original homes, and these had all
been reassigned from distant locations on the border. In contrast,
Inspections hiring is done by th e port of en try and thu s tends to
be local; 89% of inspecto rs were from the border zone, and
5 9 %
were working in their hom etowns.
thu s a U.S. citizen, but she grew up in T ijuana, Mexico,
returning t o th e United States at the age of IS . After z
years of college and I S years as a health care worker,
Carbajal went to work as an inspector in 1989. She de-
fines her self through her skill in breaking lies in sec-
ondary inspection: They call m e to break. I love
fraud. I really like m y job-the line gets tiring, and
th e fumes-but
I
love fraud. We have a sixth sense; you
can tell they're lying. I am in this position because
I speak perfect Spanish, so it's easy to tell they're lying;
inspectors with out Spanish miss things. Thi s defini-
tio n of self is premised on a redu ctive view of th e othe r
as fraud ( they are lying ). Yet Carbajal's responses
are no t entirely con sisten t: whe n asked to free-associate
about aliens she said smuggling (a n enforcem ent
re s~ on se l, et for Mexico she said resident aliens.
boider cibsiersll (tw o legal ways of en tering the u ni te d
States).
Carbajal vertically contained ( in Strauss's ter ms ) th e
complexity of her work experiences when asked about
her acco mp lishm ents: I am proud-too bad we can't
do more things about lane 2 5 [inspector slang for the
illegal entries visible to the sides of th e port]-but I am
proud of sto ppin g illegal aliens on my lane, of stop ping
smuggling drugs. I take care of m y country, do som e-
thing to help my country. Thi s is an extraordinary re-
sponse. Carbajal has lived the im mig rant experience; her
schema uses the struggle for state control over the bor-
der to grasp her U.S. self. In so doing, she su bordinates
the sch ema of uncontrolled un docum ented en try to pre-
vent it from frustrating her as it does so many other INS
agents.
Mary C arrasco has lived her w hole life in a U.S. border
city; her parents and, indeed, gran dparents were U.S. cit-
izens of M exic an ancest ry. She comp leted tw o years of
college and the n worked in various pink-collar jobs to
support her ch ildren before joining ins
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