`Crack Babies' and `Illegals': Neo-liberalism, and Moral Boundary Maintenance of Race and Class

Abstract

Examination of the moralized risk discourse that occurs during moral panics can help us better understand how discourse supports neoliberal modes of governance. Using the moral panics about crack babies in the 1980's and illegal immigration in the 2000's to conduct a content analysis of almost 1500 newspaper articles, television transcripts and congressional hearings, I found that discourses of fairness, authority, and purity supported techniques of surveillance and control that contribute to the maintenance of racial and class boundaries in the US.