People
Luis E. Banegas
ERI/PS2 Public Research Fellow
Luis E. Banegas is a PhD student in Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, studying the relationship between immigration, law, and gender. His current project examines how immigration courts interpret violence against male asylum seekers — particularly in cases involving forceful gang recruitment — and whether they see (or don’t) this coercion as gender-based persecution meriting protection. Luis is a 2026 ERI/PS2 Summer Fellow.
Are boys and men who are subject to forced gang recruitment victims of gender-based violence? This is the question I asked multiple scholars this summer. From immigration lawyers to gender scholars to community organizers and sociologists, the answer I got was pretty much the same: I don’t know. I told them that in Central America gangs primarily recruit young males for coerced labor exploitation. That research shows that being male is the primary reason why someone in a marginalized urban sector may be recruited to a gang. That this recruitment isn’t “voluntary” but coercive, exploitative, and, when not complied with, life-threatening. But even then, people were extremely hesitant to categorize what for me is a legitimate gendered issue as gender-based violence. “Is it because they are men?” I began to wonder.
To show how forced gang recruitment is a gender-based issue that primarily affects boys and men, I realized that I needed to show how immigrant men are disadvantaged across the US immigration system as a whole. With the support from the ERI/PS2 fellowship summer, I was able to conduct extensive legal case analysis. In doing so, however, my research guided me in a different route. I began to notice other gender patterns outside the asylum system. Through statistical analysis of recent ICE arrest data, I found similar patterns where Central American immigrant men are equally disproportionately affected at almost every stage of contact with immigration enforcement. They are more likely to be arrested, deported, and criminalized. And even though the immigration system is a deeply gendered institution, scholars frequently disregard how gender itself — or perhaps how people’s perceptions of marginalized gendered people — contributes to their negative interaction with the immigration system.
In my dissertation, I will return to my original question: Is forced gang recruitment gender-based violence against boys and men? This summer showed me that how people understand gender is deeply shaped by ingrained stereotypes — by beliefs about what they think a particular gender is, what that gender can do, and what types of violence that gender can experience. And these understandings have serious consequences for how institutions respond, recognize, and condemn violence.
