When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families
Restrictive immigration laws are a source of increasing inequality.
What does it mean to be an illegal immigrant, or the child of immigrants, in this era of restrictive immigration laws in the United States? As lawmakers and others struggle to respond to the changing landscape of immigration, the effects of policies on people’s daily lives are all too often overlooked.
In Everyday Illegal, award-winning author Joanna Dreby recounts the stories of children and parents in eighty-one families to show what happens when a restrictive immigration system emphasizes deportation over legalization. Interweaving her own experiences, Dreby illustrates how bitter strains can arise in relationships when spouses have different legal status. She introduces us to “suddenly single mothers” who struggle to place food on the table and pay rent after their husbands have been deported. Taking us into the homes and schools of children living in increasingly vulnerable circumstances, she presents families that are divided internally, with some children having legal status while their siblings are undocumented. Even children who are U.S. citizens regularly associate immigration with illegality.
Everyday Illegal forces us to confront the devastating impacts of our immigration policies as seen through the eyes of children and their families. As legal status influences identity formation, alters the division of power within families, and affects the opportunities children have outside the home, it becomes a growing source of inequality that ultimately touches us all.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Acknowledgments
1
Introduction: Legal Status in Family Contexts
2
Nervios: On the Threat of Deportation
3
Stuck: Dependence in Intimate Relationships
4
It’s Not Fair: The Pecking Order in Immigrant Families
5
Stigma: Illegality in Different Immigrant Neighborhoods
6
Conclusion: Reframing Illegality
Appendix: Talking to Kids: Methodological Issues
Notes
References
Index
Winner
Latina/o Section Distinguished Contribution to Research Book Award from the American Sociological Association in 2017
Honorable Mention
2016 Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society
Reviews
★★★★★
“Thought provoking and deeply moving.”
— C. Bergstrom-Lynch CHOICE; Published On: 2015-09-01
★★★★★
“Eloquent and sharp… an important contribution to the literature on undocumented populations.”
— Harvard Educational Review; Published On: 2015-09-29
★★★★★
“Dreby’s work represents an important contribution to chronicling the impacts of policy on migrant lives, especially taking into account the perspective of children.“
― Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR)
★★★★★
“This beautifully written study forces us to recognize the impact of our inhumane policy and is a must-read for understanding the underbelly consequences of an immigration system that demands mass deportation and the criminalization of immigrants who want to work and provide a better life for their family in the United States.”
—Mary Romero, author of The Maid’s Daughter, Living Inside and Outside the American Dream
★★★★★
“Everyday Illegal is an urgent call to reframe immigrant illegality and reform a system that produces the very un-American reality of different classes of citizens.“
— Luis Argueta, director and producer of the immigration trilogy: abUSed: The Postville Raid (2010), ABRAZOS (2014), and The U-Turn (2015)
★★★★★
“Dreby deftly weaves rigorous research with her deeply personal stories to give us a glimpse into the workings of an immigration system that works far from public view. Her compelling account exposes the brutality of the current regime with an eye to policy solutions. This is a must-read for anyone who cares about immigrants or who wants to learn how the current immigration system is working.“
—Cecilia Menjívar, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala
★★★★★
“Everyday Illegal is a pioneering study of the effects of immigration law status on the lives of undocumented immigrants, their families, and their communities. Dreby paints an intimate portrait of the undocumented that is at once vivid and nuanced, while also poignant and heartbreaking. A combination of keen observation, analytical rigor, and compelling narrative, this remarkable book is essential reading—-rich with indispensable lessons about the costs that the US immigration system imposes, every day, on some of the most vulnerable members of our society.“
—-Hiroshi Motomura, author of Immigration Outside the Law
joannadreby 