Undocumented: Recommended Books

Based on interviews with lead activists, extensive archival research, and years of ethnographic study, Michael P. Young details the making of the DREAMer, the early organizing of undocumented youth on college campuses cooperating with nonprofit organizations, and the independent organizing of an online network of radical undocumented youth.

Features the stories of undocumented mothers who reunite with their children in the US years after fleeing violence at home Facing escalating chaos and violence in their home countries, many Central American mothers have found that a desperate flight to the north was their only choice. Many left their children behind in order to spare them the hardships of the journey. If they made it across the border without getting locked up or deported, they entered a country increasingly unwilling to recognize claims of asylum.

Guía completa y actualizada para ayudarte a obtener tu residencia legal y permanente en los Estados Unidos.

Sin Padres, Ni Papeles illuminates how unaccompanied teens who grow up as undocumented low-wage workers navigate unthinkable material and emotional hardship, find the agency and hope that is required to survive, and discover what it means to be successful during the transition to adulthood in the United States.

The authors examine how students of immigrant origin experience the road to, through, and beyond higher education, while, simultaneously, speaking to evidence-based implications for policy, research, and practice.

Ways of Belonging examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K-12 schools in Canada and are rendered invisible to the education system. Canadian law doesn't mention the existence of undocumented children, and thus their access to education rests on discretionary practices and is often denied altogether.

A funny and poignant memoir about how as a teenager, TV writer Rafael Agustin (Jane The Virgin) accidentally discovered he was undocumented and how that revelation turned everything he thought he knew about himself and his family upside down.

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this "gripping memoir" (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family.

In the first picture book written by a DACA Dreamer, Areli Morales tells her own powerful and vibrant immigration story.

One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

Offers lessons with a decolonized bilingual sustaining pedagogy approach: a culturally sustaining topic having to do with language practices, literacies, and power texts that show different ways we engage with language practices translanguaging (using all of one's linguistic repertoire, this includes different features of named languages such as Spanish and English) as the way bilingual students communicate.

In June 2018, Donald Trump's most notorious decision as president had secretly been in effect--the deliberate separation of migrant parents and children at U.S. border facilities. Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose this reality.

In Socially Undocumented, Reed-Sandoval challenges the "legalistic understanding" by arguing that being socially undocumented is to possess a real, visible, and embodied social identity that does not always track one's legal status.

Told through heart-wrenching testimonies, photographs, and artwork of refugees fleeing their homelands, Desperately Seeking Asylum describes firsthand accounts of the harrowing and dangerous journey immigrants are willing to endure knowing that they might not even make it onto US soil.

Legal Passing offers a nuanced look at how the lives of undocumented Mexicans in the US are constantly shaped by federal, state, and local immigration laws. Angela S. García compares restrictive and accommodating immigration measures in various cities and states to show that place-based inclusion and exclusion unfold in seemingly contradictory ways.

Over the last thirty years, the federal and state governments have increasingly incarcerated people accused of violating immigration laws. As a result, almost 400,000 people annually now spend some time locked up pending the result of a civil or criminal immigration proceeding. Garcia Hernandez takes a hard look at the immigration prison system's origins and how it currently operates.

Solito, Solita, ("Alone, Alone"), is a Voice of Witness collection of oral histories that tell the stories of youth refugees fleeing their home countries and traveling for hundreds of miles seeking safety and protection in the United States.

Unauthorized: Portraits of Latino Immigrants takes readers inside the diverse contemporary worlds of undocumented Latino immigrants in the United States, exploring the myths and realities of education, health care, work, deportation, and more.

The book interrogates the role such self-representations have played not only in constructing undocumented migrant identities, but also in shaping social borders.

Undocumented Storytellers offers a critical exploration of the ways undocumented immigrant activists harness the power of storytelling to mitigate the fear and uncertainty of life without legal status and to advocate for immigration reform.

Dreams Derailed delves into the economic, political, and social factors that inform the public conversation about immigration, making a clear case for the many benefits of inclusive policies and the protection of undocumented youths.

Research on funds of knowledge has become a standard reference to signal a sociocultural orientation in education that seeks to build strategically on the experiences, resources, and knowledge of families and children, especially those from low-income communities of color. This book challenges existing deficit thinking in the field.

The authors show how immigration policies, ICE enforcement, and societal attitudes affect undocumented students and how teachers and school leaders can recognize these influences on the students' day-to-day lives and learning.

In Learning to Lead, Jennifer R. Nájera explores the intersections of education and activism among undocumented students at the University of California, Riverside. Taking an expansive view of education, Nájera shows how students' experiences in college--both in and out of the classroom--can affect their activism and advocacy work.

Rodriguez highlights how different members of the same mixed-status families mediate undocumented statuses while maintaining the collective whole of a family. For many young adults, this may mean negotiating the sponsorship of their immigrant parents, and for the parents, planning for the emotional, physical, and financial well-being of their children in case of deportation.

Illustrates how the children of immigrants use art to grapple with issues of citizenship, state violence, and belonging. Young immigrant children often do not have the words to express how their lives are shaped by issues of immigration, legal status, and state-sanctioned violence. Yet they are able to communicate its effects on them using art. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children as young as six years old in Arizona and California and featuring an analysis of three hundred drawings, theater performances, and family interviews Silvia Rodriguez Vega provides accounts of children's challenges with deportation and family separation during the Obama and Trump administrations.

In a world of border walls and obstacles to migration, a lottery where winners can gain permanent residency in the United States sounds too good to be true. Just as unlikely is the idea that the United States would make such visas available to foster diversity within a country where systemic racism endures. But in 1990, the United States Diversity Visa Lottery was created to do just that. Dreamland tells the surprising story of this unlikely government program and its role in American life as well as the global story of migration.

Through stories and thoughtful analysis, this book shows how migration and U.S. immigration detention harms the future of immigrant children and their parents. For decades, the United States has used detention to control immigration. Through Iceboxes and Kennels traces the rise of family migration from Central America and why the U.S. incarcerated and separated thousands of children and parents.

In the struggles for prison abolition, global anti-imperialism, immigrant rights, affordable housing, environmental justice, fair labor, and more, twenty-first-century Asian American activists are speaking out and standing up to systems of oppression. Chapter four is about race, education, and being undocumented.

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this "gripping memoir" (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family.

Millions of students of noncitizen status or with undocumented family members experience financial, cultural, and socioemotional hardships that can result in profoundly adverse effects upon their academic performances and emotional well-being.

Background information on the political, social, and economic forces driving undocumented immigration into America; explains the policies and records of both the Obama and Trump administrations on immigration, deportation, and border security; summarizes current laws and regulations governing U.S. border and immigration policies.

In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales introduces us to two groups: the college-goers, like Ricardo, who was propelled into higher education, only to land in a factory job, and the early-exiters, like Gabriel, who started navigating dead-end jobs, immigration checkpoints, and a world narrowly circumscribed by legal limitations.

Contains two chapters specifically on undocumented students: "Undocumented Students at the Community College: Creating Institutional Capacity" and "Why Are Undocumented Students an Equity Issue?"

In 2014, the arrest and detention of thousands of desperate young migrants at the southwest border of the United States exposed the U.S. government's shadowy juvenile detention system. This book tells the story of six Central American and Mexican children who are driven from their homes by violence and deprivation, and who embark alone, risking their lives, on the perilous journey north.