Social Movements & the Law

Dreams and Nightmares takes a critical look at the challenges and dilemmas of immigration policy and practice in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. The experiences of children and youth provide a prism through which the interwoven dynamics and consequences of immigration policy become apparent. Using a unique sociolegal perspective, authors Zatz and Rodriguez examine the mechanisms by which immigration policies and practices mitigate or exacerbate harm to vulnerable youth. They pay particular attention to prosecutorial discretion, assessing its potential and limitations for resolving issues involving parental detention and deportation, unaccompanied minors, and Dreamers who came to the United States as young children. The book demonstrates how these policies and practices offer a means of prioritizing immigration enforcement in ways that alleviate harm to children, and why they remain controversial and vulnerable to political challenges.

"Traveling across the country, journalist Karla Cornejo Villavicencio risked arrest at every turn to report the extraordinary stories of her fellow undocumented Americans. Her subjects have every reason to be wary around reporters, but Cornejo Villavicencio has unmatched access to their stories. Her work culminates in a stunning, essential read for our times. Born in Ecuador and brought to the United States when she was five years old, Cornejo Villavicencio has lived the American Dream. Raised on her father's deliveryman income, she later became one of the first undocumented students admitted into Harvard. She is now a doctoral candidate at Yale University and has written for The New York Times. She weaves her own story among those of the eleven million undocumented who have been thrust into the national conversation today as never before. Looking well beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMERS, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented as rarely seen in our daily headlines. In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited in the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami we enter the hidden botanicas, which offer witchcraft and homeopathy to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we witness how many live in fear as the government issues raids at grocery stores and demands identification before offering life-saving clean water. In her book, Undocumented America, Cornejo Villavicencio powerfully reveals the hidden corners of our nation of immigrants. She brings to light remarkable stories of hope and resilience, and through them we come to understand what it truly means to be American"--

"A timely and powerful chronicle of a generation's great civil rights battle as witnessed through the experiences of five young undocumented immigrants fighting to become Americans. We often call them DREAMers: young people who were brought or sent to the United States as children. They attend our local schools; work jobs that contribute to our economy. Some apply to attend university here, only to discover their immigration status when the time comes to fill out the paperwork. Without a clear path forward, and no place to return to, these young people have fought for decades to remain in the one place they call home--a nation increasingly divided over whether they should be allowed to stay. The Making of a Dream begins at the turn of the millennium, as the first of a series of "DREAM Act" proposals is introduced, and follows the efforts of policy makers, advocates, and five very different undocumented immigrant leaders to achieve some legislative reform--or at least some temporary protection. Their coming-of-age-in-America stories of love and loss intersect with the watershed political and economic events of the last two decades, including the Obama administration's landmark Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) order in 2012, and the abrupt announcement by President Trump of his plan to end it, throwing into turmoil the lives of nearly 800,000 immigrants and their families. The Making of a Dream charts the course of a social movement, with all its failures and successes, and allows us an intimate, very human view of the complexity of immigration in America. Heartbreaking and hopeful, maddening and uplifting, this ode to the legacy of the DREAM Act is a record of our times--and the definitive story of the young people of our nation who want nothing more than to be a part of it."--Jacket.

In June 2012 President Obama signed an executive order establishing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The President acted because the U.S. Congress had repeatedly failed to pass the "Dream Act" -- legislation protecting from deportation young undocumented immigrants who had been brought to the United States as children. USCIS received more than 740,000 requests from "Dreamers" applying for protection under the President's program through September 2014. Those who were approved received short-term relief from deportation, not permanent legal status. This volume is a scholarly attempt to address the question of why some age-eligible immigrants have applied for DACA status while many more -- nearly two-thirds of those estimated to be potentially eligible -- have not. The study devotes special attention to the geography of DACA -- how place of residence influences the likelihood of participation-- and the role of social networks in transmitting knowledge about the program. Qualitative interviews illuminate life after receiving DACA status. The interviewees report that DACA status has positively transformed their lives, especially in terms of educational and economic advancement. However, as a consequence of their tentative legal status, they continue to face significant limits and obstacles to full incorporation into the United States. They are eager to translate their three-year deferral of deportation into legal permanent residency, but Congress has not provided a path for doing so, and Obama's executive action can be reversed by a future President. The authors draw upon five different types of data collected for the study, including a large-scale, on-line survey of undocumented millennials; a national-level dataset on DACA applicants; survey interviews with residents of a high-emigration community in Oaxaca, Mexico and a random sample of Mexican-born persons now living in San ^Diego County; and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with undocumented youths in San Diego County who had applied for DACA. They propose fourteen policy recommendations, for increasing future participation in the DACA program and for enhancing the economic, social, and psychological integration of those who benefit from it.

The first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) In 1982, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented children had the right to attend public schools without charge or impediment, regardless of their immigration status. The ruling raised a question: what if undocumented students, after graduating from the public school system, wanted to attend college? Perchance to DREAM is the first comprehensive history of the DREAM Act, which made its initial congressional appearance in 2001, and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the discretionary program established by President Obama in 2012 out of Congressional failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. Michael A. Olivas relates the history of the DREAM Act and DACA over the course of two decades. With the Trump Administration challenging the legality of DACA and pursuing its elimination in 2017, the fate of DACA is uncertain. Perchance to DREAM follows the political participation of DREAMers, who have been taken hostage as pawns in a cruel game as the White House continues to advocate anti-immigrant policies. Perchance to DREAM brings to light the many twists and turns that the legislation has taken, suggests why it has not gained the required traction, and offers hopeful pathways that could turn this darkness to dawn.

Meet nine courageous young adults who have lived in the United States with a secret for much of their lives: they are not U.S. citizens. They came from Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Independent Samoa, and Korea. They came seeking education, fleeing violence, and escaping poverty. All have heartbreaking and hopeful stories about leaving their homelands and starting a new life in America. And all are weary of living in the shadows.

"WE ARE NOT DREAMERS is a collection of ten auto-ethnographic essays by undocumented, DACAmented, and formerly undocumented scholars in California who relay their experiences of illegality, as well as insights into their broader research on migration. Co-editors Leisy Abrego and Genevieve Negron-Gonzales intentionally center these voices to intervene within a field that theorizes the experiences of undocumented people without truly giving the undocumented people a space to be knowledge-producers themselves. These scholars face particular challenges--personally, politically, and in their research--and are uniquely positioned to provide nuanced insights on illegality, citizenship, education, and belonging that have the potential to grow the field of undocumented studies, shift understandings, and remake the bodies of literature which speak to their experiences. Moreover, their scholarship resists the harmful "Dreamer" narrative perpetuated by non-profits, DC lobbying groups, journalists, researchers, and the government, ultimately challenging notions of the American Dream and the "good immigrant" narrative to push for more inclusive practices within the academy and more comprehensive immigration policies on the national stage. The first half of the book explores the connection between identity, illegality, and resistance as a way to critically analyze how undocumented migrants have been 'made' through these processes. In chapter 2, Grecia Mondragon highlights the pressures and expectations that students are forced to navigate within higher education while carrying the weight of the Dreamer narrative. In chapter 5, Gabriela Garcia Cruz focuses on the political engagement of older undocumented women activists and how this activism reshapes lived experiences of citizenship and dignity. The second half of the book centers quotidian life to imagine what an intersectional analysis of undocumented status looks like by grappling with the structures of relationships, family, and identity. Audrey Silvestre, in chapter 8, centers the everyday experiences of undocumented trans women and the ways in which they have reclaimed spaces of joy amidst violent hate crimes. Chapter 9 by Lucy Leon emphasizes the insidious effects of immigration policy that determine how people must represent their love to one another and to the state. The book significantly contributes to how we understand the ways undocumented actors move through the spaces of daily life and in doing so, remake those spaces. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in Latinx and Chicanx studies, sociology, anthropology, studies of social movements, and studies of the experiences of undocumented people in the United States"--Provided by publisher.

"In the wake of post-9/11 xenophobia, Obama's record-level deportations, Trump's immigration policies, and the 2020 uprisings for racial justice, the US remains entrenched in a circular discourse regarding migrant justice. As organizer Silky Shah argues in Unbuild Walls, we must move beyond building nicer cages or advocating for comprehensive immigration reform. Our only hope for creating a liberated society for all, she insists, is abolition. Unbuild Walls dives into US immigration policy and its relationship to mass incarceration, from the last forty years up to the present, showing how the prison-industrial complex and immigration enforcement are intertwined systems of repression. Incorporating historical and legal analyses, Shah's personal experience as an organizer, as well as stories of people, campaigns, organizations, and localities that have resisted detention and deportation, Shah assesses the movement's strategies, challenges, successes, and shortcomings. Featuring a foreword by Amna A. Akbar, Unbuild Walls is an expansive and radical intervention, bridging the gaps between movements for immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition." --

‎Education · 2020

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