Migration, immigration and emigration Books

Book SynopsisMigrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour investigates one of the most under-examined aspects of the great migration crisis of our time. As millions seek passage to Europe in order to escape conflicts, repressive governments and poverty, their movements are enabled and actively encouraged by professional criminal networks that earn billions of dollars. Many of these smugglers carry out their activities with little regard for human rights, which has led to a manifold increase in human suffering, not only in the Mediterranean Sea, but also along the overland smuggling routes that cross the Sahara, penetrate deep into the Balkans, and into hidden corners of Europe's capitals. But others are revered as saviours by those that they move, for it is they who deliver men, women and children to a safer place and better life. Disconcertingly, it is often criminals who help the most desperate among us when the international system turns them away. This book is a measured attempt, born of years of research and reporting in the field, to better understand how people-smuggling networks function, the ways in which they have evolved, and what they mean for peace and security in the future.Trade Review'The authors leap around, with vivid reporting from Niger, Libya, the Balkans, Turkey and Egypt, among other places ... The book's key contention that tighter rules inspire entrepreneurs to create new, more dangerous and criminal smuggling routes is persuasive.' -- The Economist; 'Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour argues that the world needs to understand how networks of traffickers function if it is to get to grips with this migration crisis. Co-authors Tinti and Reitano ... use a mixture of reportage, first-hand accounts from migrants and extensive research to uncover a series of complex transnational industries that exist to help migrants bypass barriers whether geographic, man-made or political for a profit.' --Financial Times; 'This is a fascinating, nuanced and highly necessary account of an underworld that is much discussed but little understood, written by two of the leading experts in the field. I highly recommend it.' --Patrick Kingsley, The Guardian; 'Powerful analysis, groundbreaking research, vividly and journalistically expressed. This is a must-read for policy makers and anyone who wants a more truthful approach to a defining story of our age.' --New Internationalist

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Book SynopsisDuring the last two decades, a decline in public investment has undermined some of the national values and institutions of Costa Rica. The resulting sense of dislocation and loss is usually projected onto Nicaraguan “immigrants.”Threatening

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Book SynopsisBorders harm all of us: they must be abolished.Borders divide workers and families, fuel racial division, and reinforce global disparities. They encourage the expansion of technologies of surveillance and control, which impact migrants and citizens both.Bradley and de Noronha tell what should by now be a simple truth: borders are not only at the edges of national territory, in airports, or at border walls. Borders are everyday and everywhere; they follow people around and get between us, and disrupt our collective safety, freedom and flourishing. is a passionate manifesto for border abolition, arguing that we must transform society and our relationships to one another, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move and to stay.Trade ReviewAgainst Borders demonstrates the clarifying power of applying abolitionist politics to the issue of borders. In doing so, it achieves a rare unity of theory and practice, combining profound analysis with pointers to radical action. -- Arun KundnaniThe arguments in this elegant and powerful book are entirely reasonable and pragmatic and yet utterly revolutionary, proposing an abolitionist political imagination and a horizon of liberation. -- Michael HardtA book that invites us to dream of a reconfigured world where the borders between nation states no longer control and define us. -- Stella DadzieA refreshing, well-argued and moving proposal for 'non-reformist reforms' that would demolish one of the cruellest components of the capitalist state, written with a non-sectarian openness and a utopian imagination -- Owen HatherleyAn accessible, detailed examination of how borders function. A must read for anyone who wants to get to grips with the case for border abolition. -- Maya Goodfellow, author of Hostile EnvironmentAn incisive exploration of how borders operate in the 21st century. -- Emily Kenway * openDemocracy *Against Borders: The Case for Abolition is a compelling and much-needed primer on abolishing borders. By de-bunking common myths, presenting historical analysis, and guiding readers through contemporary social movements, Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha passionately and accessibly lay out the vision and necessity for a world without borders. -- Harsha Walia, author Border and Rule & Undoing Border Imperialism

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Book SynopsisEconomist Neeraj Kaushal investigates the rising anxiety in host countries and tests common complaints against immigration. She finds that immigration, on balance, is beneficial. It is neither the volume nor pace of immigration, but the willingness of nations to accept, absorb, and manage new flows of immigration that is fueling disaffection.Trade Review[A] timely and informative book. * Foreign Affairs *A new book on the subject, Blaming Immigrants, by University of Columbia professor, Neeraj Kaushal, says it all. It pulls together most of the research so far done. -- Jonathan Power * NY Journal of Books *This is a well written book that draws on the wealth of literature from diverse disciplines, particularly economics, demography, and political science, to make a case that immigration has many positive consequences for the host society. * Population and Development Review *Highly recommended. * Choice *The great merit of Kaushal’s book is that it makes the case for policies based on facts and evidence, and shows the need for political leaders to explain different ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ in ways which are considered rather than indulging unjustified antipathies and anxieties about ‘others’. * Process North *The book is well written, accessible, and should be essential reading for undergraduate courses on global capitalism, politics of migration, and the status of refugees in contemporary times. * H-Emotions *This is an exciting and innovative book containing some provocative, offbeat ideas. In contrast to most other works on immigration, it deals with international migration and the reactions to it all over the world, not just in the United States or Europe. It emphasizes the complexity of the issues and avoids oversimplifying the problems in order to offer a ‘solution.’ Kaushal has an important, well-argued message, supported by convincing evidence. She recognizes that immigration hurts some groups of host-country natives who should be compensated, but provides evidence that it benefits the host societies overall. -- Cordelia Reimers, Hunter CollegeIn this comprehensive and carefully researched book, Kaushal provides a fresh and convincing analysis of the underlying reasons behind the antiimmigrant movement facing the world in recent years. This book is a must for anyone interested in understanding both the myths and realities surrounding immigration. -- Francisco L. Rivera-Batiz, author of International and Interregional Migration: Theory and EvidenceWhat could be more valuable at this time than Neeraj Kaushal’s learned, beautifully written examination of the validity of the populist critique of immigration? Blaming Immigrants provides deep, critical insights into migration and immigration systems globally and in the U.S.: their histories, successes, failures, and prospects for reform. This is a nuanced, brave, and incredibly helpful book. -- Michael Fix, senior fellow and former president, Migration Policy InstituteIn her well-reasoned, illuminating book, Neeraj Kaushal offers policy makers at all levels of government and the general public alike a timely opportunity to examine the dimensions of immigration concerns that have become highly charged, politically divisive issues in a growing number of nations in the global community. Her richly documented discussion pierces through the oftentimes emotion-laden, dismissive regard of immigrants and their impact on host communities and argues that we must view critically the underlying social, economic, and other forces that contribute towards a skewing in the direction of hostility to those “others” who ultimately may be essential to ensuring our vitality and competitiveness in the future. -- Jeanette C. Takamura, former assistant secretary for aging, U.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesNeeraj Kaushal’s “Blaming Immigrants” is a clear-eyed, clutter-free and passionate presentation of the contested domains of migration, and immigration amid rising nationalisms. Kaushal marshals economic, political and legal data to make a positive case for immigration. It is a convincing and needed argument and one that ought to resonate across political divides for its capacious and fair-minded approach. -- Manan Ahmed Asif, author of The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of IndiaTable of Contents1. Introduction: It’s Not a Crisis2. Causes of Discontent3. The Costs and Benefits of Restricting Immigration4. Is America’s Immigration System Broken?5. From Global to Local: Toward Integration or Exclusion?6. The Balance Sheet: Economic Costs and Benefits of Immigration7. Refugees and Discontent8. Crime, Terrorism, and Immigration9. Addressing the DiscontentNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTrying to Make It is R. V. Gundur''s journey from the US-Mexico border to America''s heartland, from America''s prisons to its streets, in search of the true story of the drug trade and the people who participate in it. The book begins in the Paso del Norte area, encompassing the sister cities of Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, which has been in the public eye as calls for securing the border persist. From there, it moves on to Phoenix, which was infamously associated with the drug trade through a series of kidnappings. Finally, the book goes on to Chicago, which has been a lightning rod of criticism for its gangs and violence. Gundur highlights the similarities and differences that exist in the American drug trade within the three sites and how they relate to current drug trade narratives in the US. At each stop, the reader is transported to the city''s historical and contemporary contexts of the drug trade and introduced to the individuals who have lived the

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Book SynopsisConnects global migration with urban marginalization, exploring how “race” maps onto place across the globe, state, and streetIn this richly observed account of migrant shopkeepers in five cities in the United Kingdom, Suzanne Hall examines the brutal contradictions of sovereignty and capitalism in the formation of street livelihoods in the urban margins. Hall locates The Migrant’s Paradox on streets in the far-flung parts of de-industrialized peripheries, where jobs are hard to come by and the impacts of historic state underinvestment are deeply felt. Drawing on hundreds of in-person interviews on streets in Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, London, and Manchester, Hall brings together histories of colonization with current forms of coloniality. Her six-year project spans the combined impacts of the 2008 financial crisis, austerity governance, punitive immigration laws and the Brexit Referendum, and processes of state-sanctioned regeneration. She incorporates the spaces of shops, conference halls, and planning offices to capture how official border talk overlaps with everyday formations of work and belonging on the street.Original and ambitious, Hall’s work complicates understandings of migrants, demonstrating how migrant journeys and claims to space illuminate the relations between global displacement and urban emplacement. In articulating “a citizenship of the edge” as an adaptive and audacious mode of belonging, she shows how sovereignty and inequality are maintained and refuted. Trade Review "The Migrant’s Paradox is an exploration of the interweaving of citizenship, neoliberal capitalism and the day-to-day lives and livelihoods of migration. It examines how the street itself may become a site of subversion and resistance to wider systems of power... Definitions of who a migrant is, particularly the “migrant entrepreneur” are challenged and complicated by this book. It works well at layering the day-to-day with UK policy, and global levels of social change. Importantly, the stories of the streets and those who work there themselves are the heart of this book. This book would be very useful for those interested in areas such as the politics, geography and sociologies of global migration within cities as well as the possibilities of grassroots everyday resistance, migrant solidarities and social change. From a methodological perspective, it is a useful example of creative ethnographies within streets, and presenting multi-layered research."—Ethnic and Racial Studies "The author effectively unpacks how the city excludes, pushing edges further outward, creating an insecure life for migrants and producing their own ‘contested urban economy’. This perspective allows us to understand the UK’s colonial history as it intersects with global displacement and creates urban marginalization... Throughout The Migrant’s Paradox, the author ‘writes the street as world’ through walking, looking, listening and talking in the streets of Birmingham, Manchester, London, Bristol and Leicester. Hall invites the reader to enter into the world of migrants and residents of edge territories."—LSE Review of Books "Hall develops a compelling and original methodological framework for exploring life and space available to migrants by writing the street as world. She does this through extensive ethnographic research accompanied by beautiful architectural drawings of five different streets in deindustrialized cities in England (Birmingham, Bristol, Leicester, London and Manchester)... Hall’s is an eloquently written book that powerfully channels anger at Britain’s hostile environment and its degradation of humanity. Given a tumultuous period over the past six years, it offers a useful, if dismaying, reminder of the political context in Britain – three general elections, the 2008 financial crash and austerity, Brexit, COVID-19... A particular skill in the book is the clear-sighted way in which Hall draws the postcolonial urban politics of the treatment of migrants, such as where the state systematically destroyed documentation that confirmed arrival status of those from former colonies. As Hall argues convincingly, and extending the field in Sociology and Geography, these are racialised politics that mean for some citizenship is always marginal and called into question."—Sociology "Hall asks us to look ‘both from the outside in and the inside out’, to look again and pay attention to the often ordinary and banal spaces that make up cities. In reading and writing these streets—and the spaces connected to them—Hall draws out the complex layers of dispossession and wide geographies of entanglement that mark and define these edge territories."—The Architectural Review "Each page of this book resounds with incisive and clearly formulated insights, exemplifying movements across concepts, scales, histories, and geographies that exceed conventional boundaries... In so thoroughly accounting for the ways in which streets as worlds are composed, Hall is able to offer concrete possibilities of incipience, the ways in which these streets offer the basis, the glimmer of new urbanities."—Contemporary Sociology "Hall’s excellent book rewires the current and divisive logic around the UK and European migration systems. In a Glissantian sense, Hall proposes us to think of borders not as demarcations of cit-/denizens based on racial discrimination, but as a space of multiplicities marked by shared responsibilities and permissions for different ways of living and working across borders."—Anthropology of Work Review "A joy to read... Hall combines geography, ethnography, and architectural observations to bring these streets to life and uses powerful illustrations to capture their complexity from the global scale of the journeys that led the shopkeepers to a particular street, to the micro-scale of shop subdivisions that enable the emergence of flexible, low-threshold businesses."—Sociological Forum "Suzanne M. Hall is our Alvin Ailey of urbanism, and this book is an intricate and fiery choreography of the street as an intersection of edge economies, paradoxical injunctions, moving borders, collective ingenuity, and apparatuses of racial control. Street becomes world becomes street, and these inversions bear down hard on those that embody them but who nonetheless materialize fundamental openings in narrowing nationalisms, making their way toward more judicious and generative forms of belonging."—AbdouMaliq Simone, The Urban Institute, University of Sheffield "Suzanne M. Hall's much-anticipated book adopts a wholly original and refreshing perspective on otherwise well-worn topics such as migrant entrepreneurship and ‘ethnic enclave’ economies, repurposing these areas of study into fascinating sites through which to understand momentous global/postcolonial concerns around migration, borders, citizenship, racial capitalism, and the reconfiguration of labor under conditions of postindustrial neoliberal austerity. The Migrant's Paradox radically unsettles the assimilationist complacencies and parochializing conventions that ordinarily surround the customary ways in which migrant entrepreneurs have been studied or conceptualized, and Hall delivers a sensitive ethnographic portrayal in a remarkably eloquent and intelligent voice that makes it a delight to read."—Nicholas De Genova, editor of The Borders of “Europe”: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering "Combining thick ethnographic description and striking visual images, Suzanne M. Hall animates differential public infrastructural investments in local thoroughfares and the rich multicultures and transnational associations that spill out of them."—Yasmin Gunaratnam, Goldsmiths University, and Hannah Jones, University of Warwick "Through a multi-scalar ethnography, The Migrant’s Paradox explores streets as relational edge territories defined by their creativity and ongoing “durable precarity.” Hall reminds us that entrepreneurs working in these urban margins must absorb ongoing and sustained economic and political violence."—Huda Tayob, University of Cape Town "As opposed to the endless extolling of the business ethos of (certain) migrant diasporas—an extolling that helps stage newer iterations of the always tired, but always effective, good/bad migrant dichotomy—Hall captures the more solemn reality that scores the migrant, race and small-business interface."—Sivamohan Valluvan, University of Warwick Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction: The Migrant’s Paradox1. The Scale of the Migrant2. Edge Territories3. Edge Economies4. Unheroic Resistance5. A Citizenship of the EdgeAppendixAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisTimely and timeless, An American Family is an intensely personal immigrant story. Khizr Khan traces his remarkable journey from humble beginnings as one of ten children born on a farm in rural Pakistan, his grandfather reading Rumi beneath the moonlight and instilling in young Khizr a yearning for education that ultimately leads him to Harvard Law. A moving love story builds between Khizr and Ghazala when they meet at University, as he tries to get the girl who is out of his league. Always helping others with the little they have, the Khans move to Texas and become citizens as they build a humble, family-focused life in a place thataffords them freedom and dignity. Having instilled the same ideals that brought him to America in the first place, Khan relates the heroic and tragic story of his middle son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who is killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq, and the ways in which their undying pride in him and hissacrifice have helped them endur

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Book SynopsisUEmit Kurt explores causes and effects of the Armenian genocide in his hometown of Gaziantep, Turkey. He finds that local gentry and ordinary Turks were heavily motivated by the prospect of financial gain as Armenians were dispossessed. Newly enriched Turks then financed the young republic, elevating themselves to the status of a political elite.Trade ReviewKurt's superb reconstruction of how Ottoman Armenians were plundered of their homes and businesses shows that everyone was in on it: from greedy locals to opportunistic regional officials to ruthless central leaders. Sealed in stone as well as blood, their criminal bargain forms the shaky foundations of Turkish society-as such bargains do in many countries. -- A. Dirk Moses, author of The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression A unique contribution and a brilliant crystallization of insights from recent scholarship on the Armenian genocide. Kurt methodically excavates and reconstructs the case of the Armenians of Aintab as a microcosm for the empire before, during, and after the catastrophic events of 1915. The result is a clear, straightforward, and powerful narrative history as illuminating as it is disturbing. Parts of this tale take one's breath away. -- Christine M. Philliou, author of Turkey: A Past Against History A major contribution to our understanding of the Armenian Genocide that will be of great interest to those studying not only the genocide itself but also the role of property expropriation in genocide generally. As Kurt convincingly shows, the Armenian Genocide and its redistribution of wealth to local Turkish and other Muslim groups helped 'nationalize' the economy and create new, local elites. I highly recommend this book. -- Stefan Ihrig, author of Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler In a perfect illustration of a local story yielding broad historical insights, Kurt illuminates the Armenian Question in all its dimensions. In examining the elimination of the Armenians of Aintab by local Muslim elites, he follows the birth of family fortunes built on the looting of Armenian property, and often the murder of neighbors. His book is a prime example of the work of a new generation of Ottoman Empire historians who fearlessly tackle taboo subjects and utilize sources well beyond official archives. -- Raymond H. Kevorkian, author of The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History This important, well-written book sheds much-needed light on the late Ottoman state and the Armenian genocide. Kurt shows that genocide is for the perpetrators a creative as much as a destructive endeavor. As well as eradicating the Armenian community, deportation was also a means of reorienting the Muslim population to a new ideological identity. Plunder was a way of creating a Turkic-Muslim bourgeoisie as a driver of national modernization in a Darwinian world of struggle. -- Donald Bloxham, author of The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians A beautifully written, richly sourced exploration of the expulsion and destruction of the Armenian community of Aintab. Enduring family fortunes were built on state-sanctioned expulsions and theft of assets, a story that could, and should, be told about other post-Ottoman peoples and lands. This is an exemplary late Ottoman social history of a prosperous, but also deeply traumatized, provincial town, and probably the best book ever published about Antep. -- Michael Provence, author of The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the factors affecting the health and wellbeing of young people as they transition to adulthood under the shadow of migration control. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, it illuminates how they conceptualize wellbeing for themselves and others in contexts of prolonged and politically induced uncertainty. The authors offer an in-depth analysis of the experiences of over one hundred unaccompanied young migrants, primarily from Afghanistan, Albania and Eritrea. They show the lengths these young people will go to in pursuit of safety, security and the futures they aspire to. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book champions a new political economy analysis of wellbeing in the context of migration and demonstrates the urgent need for policy reform.Table of ContentsIntroduction Conceptualizing Wellbeing in the Context of Migration and Youth Transitions Capturing Wellbeing in Transition: An Alternative Approach ‘Iron Rod’ or ‘Colander’? Welfare Regimes in England and Italy The Pursuit of Safety and Freedom Legal Integrity and Recognition Identity and Belonging Constructing Viable Futures as ‘Adults’ Emotional and Mental Wellbeing Friendships, Connections and Relationships Transnational Family and Connections Conclusion

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Book Synopsis**A SUNDAY TIMES MUST-READ**''Riveting and vitally important'' - Steven Pinker''A gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change'' - Anjana Ahuja, New StatesmanEmpty Planet offers a radical, provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political and economic landscape.For half a century, statisticians, pundits and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth''s resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we''re thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourseTrade ReviewA fascinating study -- David Goodhart * Sunday Times *A bold thesis, but the authors are convincing . . . this briskly readable book demands urgent attention -- Sarah Ditum * Mail on Sunday *The "everything you know is wrong" genre has become tedious, but this book is riveting and vitally important. With eye-opening data and lively writing, Bricker and Ibbitson show that the world is radically changing in a way that few people appreciate -- Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and Enlightenment Now[Bricker and Ibbitson] have written a sparkling and enlightening guide to the contemporary world of fertility as small family sizes and plunging rates of child-bearing go global. -- Paul Morland * Globe and Mail *Bricker and Ibbitson work their way around the globe in pacey, sometimes breathless journalistic prose, although their argument is refreshingly clear and well balanced . . . -- Robert Mayhew * Literary Review *The authors combine a mastery of social-science research with enough journalistic flair to convince fair-minded readers of a simple fact: fertility is falling faster than most experts can readily explain, driven by persistent forces . . . Empty Planet succeeds as a long-overdue skewering of population-explosion fearmongers -- Lyman Stone * Wall Street Journal *A highly readable, controversial insight into a world rarely thought about - a world of depopulation under ubiquitous urbanisation -- George Magnus, author of The Age of Aging and Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in JeopardyWhile the global population is swelling well over 7.5 billion people today, birth rates have nonetheless already begun dropping around the world. Past population declines have historically been driven by natural disasters or disease - the Toba supervolcano, Black Death or Spanish Flu - but this coming slump will be of our own demographic making. In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Bricker and Ibbitson compellingly argue why by the end of this century the problem won't be overpopulation but a rapidly shrinking global populace, and how we might have to adapt -- Professor Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World from ScratchTo get the future right we must challenge our assumptions, and the biggest assumption so many of us make is that populations will keep growing. Bricker and Ibbitson deliver a mind-opening challenge that should be taken seriously by anyone who cares about the long-term future - which, I hope, is all of us -- Dan Gardner, author of Risk and co-author of SuperforecastingThanks to the authors' painstaking fact-finding and cogent analysis, [Empty Planet] offers ample and persuasive arguments for a re-evaluation of conventional wisdom * Booklist *Warnings of catastrophic world overpopulation have filled the media since the 1960s, so this expert, well-researched explanation that it's not happening will surprise many readers . . . delightfully stimulating * Kirkus Reviews *Arresting . . . lucid, trenchant and very readable . . . a stimulating challenge to conventional wisdom * Publishers Weekly *A riveting travelogue that covers some of the most interesting places across the world -- Jinoy Josep * Business Line *The beauty of this book is that it links hard-to-grasp global trends to the easy to-understand individual choices being made all over the world today . . . a gripping narrative of a world on the cusp of profound change -- Anjana Ahuja * New Statesman *An ambitious reimagining of our demographic future -- Doug Bock Clark * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisSpanning a period of over three hundred years and twenty-five countries, The Penguin Book of Migration Literature is a wide-ranging anthology that brings together well-known authors such as Mohsin Hamid, Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie alongside emerging writers like Deepak Unnikrishnan, Warsan Shire and Djamila Ibrahim.A compelling and original collection of migration writings, this is a unique work that conveys the intricacies of worldwide migration patterns and the diversity of immigrant experiences.Trade Review“Well-curated collection… The breadth of Ahmad's selections is impressive… This is a first-rate starting point for exploring migration literature and is almost certain to be taught in schools in the near future. Don't miss the ‘Suggestions for Further Reading and Viewing’ at the back of the text, which is also excellently curated…A welcome, pocket-sized introduction to migration literature.”—Kirkus“The diversity of viewpoints and genres makes for an invaluable introduction to the personal dimensions of global immigration.”—Booklist “Migrant voices echo with wit, nostalgia and at times startling poignancy in The Penguin Book of Migration Literature … [Ahmad’s] introduction reads with a prophet’s passion and an academic’s sense of order…. The affecting power of The Penguin Book of Migration Literature … is in its intimacies and observations…”—Los Angeles Times“Editor Dohra Ahmad has curated a challenging and insightful collection that attempts to reveal the myriad ways of experiencing human movement—forced migration and exile are only a part of this story, albeit an important one (…) By presenting history as human stories, it acts as a gateway to empathy and understanding. The collection succeeds where politicians, international organizations, and even journalists sometimes fail because it reminds us of our common humanity. This thoughtful and provoking anthology from Penguin deserves its spot as the new cornerstone text for anyone interested in migration—indeed, the human condition—today.”—Words Without Borders, selected as a Favorite International Read from 2019

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“An engaging read, and a deeply moving memoir of coming of age with the odds stacked against you and not only forging a remarkable life for yourself, but becoming a voice for transformation and cultural change.” — San Francisco Chronicle “The moments when Vargas describes how profoundly alienated he feels from his own family ate the most candid and crushing parts of the book....Dear America is a potent rejoinder to those who tell Vargas he’s supposed to ‘get in line’ for citizenship, as if there were a line instead og a confounding jumble of vague statues and executive orders.” — New York Times “In Dear America, we get to know a young Vargas who was constantly told to stay in the shadows but whose tenacity and devotion had other plans for him.” — Los Angeles Magazine “Vargas writes with a newspaper reporter’s spare, forceful prose, but he’s searching and highly introspective.” — Mother Jones “[Dear America] is the voice of one man balancing between the poles of his identity. No matter one’s status, that’s something everyone can relate to.” — Providence Journal “[A] stirring, soulful, and ultimately damning autobiography.” — AV Club “A thought-provoking, moving, and highly personal memoir of Vargas’s struggle to belong. Recommended for all readers interested in immigration issues and American identity.” — Library Journal “Excruciatingly timely. . . .Vargas’ frank and fearless voice thoughtfully and intentionally challenges readers to confront the call for action at the heart of this book; the urgent need for “a new language around migration and the meaning of citizenship.” — Booklist (starred review) “A clarion call for humanity in a time of unprecedented focus on the 11 million people living in America without a clear path to citizenship. Vargas writes passionately about the undeniable intersection between race, class, and immigration and traces the bitter history of American immigratin policy.” — BookPage “Jose Antonio Vargas’s eloquent and emotional book bears witness to a basic truth: we should not be defined by our legal status, but by who we are...His voice is an important voice that needs to be heard by all Americans, whether they are Americans by birth or by choice.” — Sheryl Sandberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Option B and Lean In “This riveting, courageous memoir ought to be mandatory reading for every American...The pressing question from these pages isn’t whether Jose deserves to be a citizen but whether we, as a nation, deserve the bravery and generosity of spirit that he offers us with an open heart and mind.” — Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow “Dear America is a daring and honest book that perhaps so many undocumented citizens wish they could write, about what is gained and lost by living in the “shadows”...You may not know where he will be when you read this book, but his story will stay with you always.” — Edwidge Danticat, award-winning author of Brother, I’m Dying “[Dear America] couldn’t be more timely and more necessary...a deeply personal and multilayered story told so gently and with such affection and humor.” — Dave Eggers, New York Times bestselling author of What Is the What and The Monk of Mokha “This important book could not be more timely- Jose Antonio Vargas has put a human face on one of the most defining and polarizing issues of our time: immigration. Dear America is not a book about politics or policy; it is written from the very depths of the human heart.” — Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove and Beneath a Ruthless Sun “Read it, feel it at a gut level, and go beyond the noise of hate politics...This is a book about America. l cried reading this book, realizing more fully what my parents endured.” — Amy Tan, New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and Where the Past Begins “One of the most important immigration rights activists of our time, Vargas has, in this brief book, brilliantly elucidated one of our major political issues.” — Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University “Jose Antonio Vargas’s powerful memoir is among many things a celebration of the millions of Americans who make immigrants like us feel at home in their country, regardless of our legal status, regardless of how much daily hostility we face. May this book cause their ranks to swell.” — Imbolo Mbue, New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers

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Book SynopsisSon of Mine is a beautiful, multi-layered account of what it means to be a family. Peter Papathanasiou successfully intertwines two life journeys – his own and his mother’s – over the course of nearly a hundred years, to tell the story of an astonishing act of kindness, and an incredible secret kept hidden for two decades. This exceptional memoir sensitively documents the migrant experience, both from the unfamiliar perspective of first-generation migrants and the tension felt by the second-generation trapped between two cultures. At its core, Son of Mine is about the search for identity – for what it means to be who you are when everything is torn down and questioned, and the wisdom we can pass on to the next generation.Son of Mine is a compelling account of unknown heritage, of life gifts and losses, and the reclamations of parenting. It is dramatic, poignant and uplifting. But above all, it is a memoir of shock, discovery and reconciliation, all delivered in exquisite prose.Trade ReviewAged 24, Peter Papathanasiou was summoned to his mother’s bedroom and told he was adopted. This kickstarts a search for identity that echoes across decades and continents as the author moves between his mother’s life in Greece and Australia. Though this is a unique family history, there’s something universal about this affecting memoir, particularly when Papathanasiou becomes a parent himself. The writing is graceful but never portentous, filling this debut with heart and meaning. -- Ben East * Observer *

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Book Synopsis'Marvellously engaging' The Times'Brisk, informative and eye-opening' Daily TelegraphIn the 1600s, vast numbers of people left England for the Americas. Crossing the Atlantic was a major undertaking, the voyage long and treacherous. Why did they go?Emigrants casts vivid new light on the population shift which underpins the rise of modern America. Using contemporary sources including diaries, court hearings and letters, James Evans brings us the extraordinary personal stories of the men and women who made the journey of a lifetime.Trade ReviewJames Evans has written a marvellously engaging and comprehensive account of this ambitious undertaking and the men and women who accomplished it, often with the odds stacked against them. Here he tells the exciting, sometimes heartbreaking stories of the pioneers and explains what kind of world they dreamt of creating. It was one in which individual liberty and freedom was cherished: both became part of the modern American mindset -- Lawrence James * THE TIMES *Otto von Bismarck was once asked to identify the pre-eminent fact in modern world history. That America spoke English, he replied. In Emigrants, James Evans attempts to explain how and why that happened ... Evans' book is an eloquent testimony to the fact that the commodity America has always traded in, above all others, is hope -- Mathew Lyons * FINANCIAL TIMES *What led a person in 17th-century England to get on a ship bound for the Americas? James Evans attempts to answer that question by exploring both the push and pull factors involved ... His descriptions are vivid ... and he relates in a readable style the lives of people who chose to make the journey -- Katrina Gulliver * THE SPECTATOR *Engaging ... Evans is vivid on the risks of going to a land that, for a good portion of the century, had little to recommend it ... Brisk, informative and ... eye-opening ... A fascinating book that gives real insight into the age that birthed the modern West -- Tim Smith-Lang * DAILY TELEGRAPH *A vivid and thoughtful take on the ways that the hopes and concerns of many, often ordinary, English people contributed to their burgeoning empire -- Misha Ewen * HISTORY TODAY *With great vigour, Evans transports us back to this time of America's earliest immigrants. Many had already migrated across England, before landing in London and then heading off in search of a fresh start across the ocean. In this thought-provoking book, Evans uses contemporary sources, such as diaries, court records and letters, to cast vivid new light on a historic population shift, bringing to life the stories of English emigrants and their colonisation of the New World. All proving, perhaps, that mass migration is nothing new * FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE *Why this book is such a gripping and enjoyable read is that Evans does not focus on the great and the good of history, but on the ordinary men, women, and children who migrated, with their hopes, fears, and desperation. Through primary sources of diaries, court hearings, and letters, Evans tells their stories, which sometimes inspire you with their heroism, and sometimes make you weep over their tragedies ... In a lucid, well-written, and solidly researched analysis, he teases out the mixed and complicated reasons that so many people were compelled to make the risky sea voyage to a perilous wilderness -- The Ven. Dr Lyle Dennen * CHURCH TIMES *Emigrants is an intriguing idea for a book and one which James Evans has executed masterfully. His prose is highly readable, shedding light on just why so many people bravely sought to start a new life in a region which, as contemporaries admitted, was 'not yet perfectly discovered' -- Elizabeth Norton * WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE MAGAZINE *

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Book SynopsisA free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Of Love and Papers explores how immigration policies are fundamentally reshaping Latino families. Drawing on two waves of interviews with undocumented young adults, Enriquez investigates how immigration status creeps into the most personal aspects of everyday life, intersecting with gender to constrain family formation. The imprint of illegality remains, even upon obtaining DACA or permanent residency. Interweaving the perspectives of US citizen romantic partners and children, Enriquez illustrates the multigenerational punishment that limits the upward mobility of Latino families. Of Love and Papers sparks an intimate understanding of contemporary US immigration policies and their enduring consequences for immigrant families. Trade Review"Of Love and Papers. . . .[shows] us what the subtitle tells us: how immigration policy affects romance and family. In the process she delivered an excellent study that shows us how all of social life is always gendered." * American Journal of Sociology *

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Book SynopsisThrough powerful firsthand accounts, A Story to Save Your Life offers new insight into the harrowing realities of seeking protection in the United States. Sarah C. Bishop argues that cultural differences in communication shape every stage of the asylum process, playing a major but unexamined role.Trade ReviewThis brilliant book features the powerful voices of asylum seekers, government officials who have run the deportation machine, and advocates and researchers who make sense of mass migration. Bishop humanizes the lived experiences of those seeking asylum with stunning emotional depth and insight. A must-read for all who care about immigration. -- Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law SchoolAll storytelling is cultural. It’s about time Western gatekeepers understood that. With thought-provoking research and moving stories, A Story to Save Your Life is a leap toward that vital education. -- Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell YouBishop invites us into the room where asylum decisions are made. A Story to Save Your Life is a disturbing account of how everyone from asylum seekers to judges tries to communicate across cultural and bureaucratic barriers in a messy process where the consequences of misinterpretation are devastating. -- David Scott FitzGerald, author of Refuge Beyond Reach: How Rich Democracies Repel Asylum SeekersThis beautifully written book uncovers the problematic ways the legal structures for assessing asylum claims ignore, misinterpret, and otherwise skew the narratives asylum seekers must share to qualify for asylum. Bishop elucidates how the asylum process perpetuates trauma and results in asylum denials of people who should qualify. A Story to Save Your Life is an essential perspective on this vital topic. -- Beth Caldwell, Southwestern Law SchoolThis book is an essential read to better understand the challenges that asylum applicants encounter when sharing their stories. Bishop provides a clear and in-depth analysis of the relationship between communication and asylum outcomes. * Social Forces *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsNote on the Cover Art1. Halted ExpectationsIn Their Own Words: Josh Childress, Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agent2. Long Stories ShortIn Their Own Words: Alina Das, Immigration Attorney3. Emotional LaborIn Their Own Words: Ethan Taubes, Asylum Officer Trainer4. Nonverbal Communication and CredibilityIn Their Own Words: Dr. Renée Sicalides, Psychologist5. Deterring AsylumIn Their Own Words: Jeffery Chase, Former Immigration Judge6. The ReturnIn Their Own Words: Rafael, Detained Asylum SeekerPostscriptAppendix: Methods and Trauma-Informed Research DesignNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisBehrouz Boochani is a Kurdish-Iranian writer, journalist, scholar, cultural advocate and filmmaker. Boochani was a writer and editor for the Kurdish language magazine Werya in Iran. He is a Visiting Professor, Birkbeck Law School; Associate Professor in Social Sciences at UNSW; non-resident Visiting Scholar at the Sydney Asia Pacific Migration Centre (SAPMiC), University of Sydney; Honorary Member of PEN International; and winner of an Amnesty International Australia 2017 Media Award, the Diaspora Symposium Social Justice Award, the Liberty Victoria 2018 Empty Chair Award, and the Anna Politkovskaya award for journalism. He publishes regularly with The Guardian, and his writing also features in The Saturday Paper, Huffington Post, New Matilda, The Financial Times and The Sydney Morning Herald. Boochani is also co-director (with Arash Kamali Sarvestani) of the 2017 feature-length film Chauka, Please Tell Us The Time; and collaborator on Nazanin Sahamizadeh's play Manus. His book, No Friend But The Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison won the 2019 Victorian Prize for Literature in addition to the Nonfiction category. He has also won the Special Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, the Australian Book Industry Award for Nonfiction Book of the Year, and the National Biography Prize. Omid Tofighian is Adjunct Lecturer in the School of the Arts and Media, University of New South Wales; and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck Law, University of London. He is an award-winning lecturer, researcher and community advocate, combining philosophy with interests in citizen media, popular culture, displacement and discrimination. He is the translator of Behrouz Boochani's multi-award winning book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing From Manus Prison (2018).Moones Mansoubi is a community, arts and cultural development worker based in Sydney. Her work is dedicated mainly to supporting and collaborating with migrants and people seeking asylum in Australia. She has managed numerous community and cultural projects and the first translator of Behrouz Boochani's work when he began writing from Manus Island. She was translation consultant for Boochani's book No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison (Picador Australia 2018). Her translation of the article An Island Off Manus (Saturday Paper 6 May, 2017) was included in Boochani's winning nomination for the Amnesty Media Award in 2017. Moones has a Masters Degree in International Relations and is passionate about social justice and social cohesion. She is currently coordinator of the Community Refugee Welcome Centre in Inner West Sydney and a content producer for SBS Radio, Persian program.Trade ReviewBehrouz Boochani’s prison writings transcend journalism to become both a cry for justice, and an anatomy of a brutal prison system designed to strip its inmates of their identity, their aspirations, their agency, and crush their spirit. His writings are urgent, eloquent, and desperately poetic. Writing from within his Manus Prison, Boochani exposes the horror and inhumanity of Australia’s offshore detention system, yet he also captures the uniqueness, comradeship, and intimate acts of resistance of his fellow inmates, and affirms their full humanity. He fulfils his mission, his “duty to history”, and ensures that this dark chapter in Australian history, and those who suffered its consequences are not forgotten. A tour de force in bearing witness. * Arnold Zable, author of The Fig Tree *International law entitled people fleeing persecution to claim asylum. But those who seek refuge in Australia are subjected to indefinite offshore detention – a form of torture designed to sap their spirit and traumatise their minds. Behrouz Boochani survives to tell the truth about the cruelty of this policy, in a book which should open the eyes of Australians to a cruelty for which they are politically and morally responsible. These are writings of literary power and first-hand authenticity, with a message of urgent importance at a time when the siren slogan of “offshore detention” is appealing to governments in the UK and elsewhere. When will we recognise that it is both unprincipled and inhumane to punish the innocent? * Geoffrey Robertson AO QC *No Friend But the Mountains was a classic of Australian literature; Freedom, Only Freedom is something better. It is the definitive statement on freedom from a diverse group of writers working together on familiar themes. * ArtsHub *Behrouz Boochani’s newspaper articles about the “Manus Prison” have lost none of their original immediacy. This book also showcases some of the rich conversations prompted by his writings. A must-read for anybody wondering about what might happen when governments opt for an Australian “solution” and shirk their responsibilities towards refugees. * Klaus Neumann, author of Across the Seas (2015) *Behrouz Boochani’s work matters not merely because it bears journalistic witness to the brutality of mandatory refugee detentions but also because it distils that experience into a sophisticated theory of power and resistance. This book offers a deep engagement with a truly original writer. * Jeff Sparrow, author of Crimes Against Nature, (2021) *No writer wants to be a prison writer, no exile dreams of displacement without end. But nothing illuminates totalitarian thinking better than the power of creative imagination. We are fortunate that Behrouz Boochani and his friends summoned the courage to push the experience of Australia’s refugee regime into words. This stunning collection chronicles Boochani’s determination not to vanish. Freedom, Only Freedom is absolutely necessary reading for all those who want to understand what moral responsibility, political courage, and the anti-totalitarian imagination mean today. * Lyndsey Stonebridge, Professor of Humanities and Human Rights, University of Birmingham, UK, and author of Placeless People *Focused on - but not limited to - his individual journey into exile, Behrouz Bouchani’s Freedom Only Freedom offers a provocative and vivid criticism of politics of incarceration, alienation, and subjugation of displaced refugees across the world with specific reference to the case Australia. He has created a new lexicon to reckon with the traumas of border-crossing, displacement, and alienation. * Fatemeh Shams, author of A Revolution in Rhyme: Poetic Co-Option Under the Islamic Republic *A necessary book in the era of border fetishism. Boochani shows us that the current punitive migration measures are rooted in a racist colonial history. Through linking the struggle of the indigenous people of Kurdistan to the struggle of migrants incarcerated by the Australian state in Manus Prison Boochani unfolds how a progressive political subjectivity emerges from the ruins of the nation-states system. Freedom, Only Freedom is a collection of critical and thoughtful contributions to scholarship on contemporary bordering practices. * Shahram Khosravi, Stockholm University, Sweden *Manus is a polite form of torture, designed to deny us the privilege of people like Behrouz. It is often forgotten that the trial judgment in the Tampa case was delivered just 8 hours before the terrible 9/11 attack on America. Our government ramped up calling boat people like Behrouz “illegals”. It’s a lie: Behrouz points out that he broke no law, committed no crime, and had no trial, but was jailed for years. * Julian Burnside, AO, KC *This collected volume of Boochani's prison writings - supported and contextualised by essays from experts in migration, refugee rights, politics and literature - is profound and necessary reading for anyone interested in literature and human rights. Boochani's prison writings, though produced under horrendous conditions, are poetic, sharp in observation and generous in ambit. His body of work documenting firsthand the atrocities inflicted on refugees by the Australian government and their mandatory detention policies has allowed the world to bear witness to human rights violations which might otherwise have remained in the dark. * Maxine Clarke, Author of The Hate Race *The poetic and essayistic pieces in Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani exemplify the intersection of his prodigious literary and artistic creativity with his formidable political-geographical, political-scientific and journalistic expertise. Boochani and his collaborators undo familiar frames of reference with respect to the political space of incarcerated seekers of sanctuary and share intimate imaginaries of environmentally conceived pathways to healing and justice. * Rita Sakr, Maynooth University, Ireland *Table of ContentsList of Figures Foreword by Tara June Winch Writing in Languages of Freedom by Omid Tofighian Map Part One 2013-2015 - ‘Fighting to Take Back My Identity’: Creating a New Language in Collaboration “Becoming MEG45” by Behrouz Boochani “Unpublished Reports: Untitled and Two Souls, One Body” by Behrouz Boochani “Translating Manus and Nauru: Refugee Writing” by Moones Mansoubi “Collaborating with Behrouz Boochani: Journalists Against a System” by Ben Doherty Part Two 2016 (Feb-April) - A New Theory: Examining the Prison, Exposing the System “This is Manus Island. My Prison. My Torture. My Humiliation” by Behrouz Boochani “Life on Manus: Island of Damned” by Behrouz Boochani “Australia, Exceptional in its Brutality” by Behrouz Boochani “Testifying to History” by Jordana Silverstein Part Three 2016 (June-Dec) - Journalism as Minor Epics: Confrontation, Survival and Death “What it's Like in Solitary Confinement on Manus Island” by Behrouz Boochani “For Refugees Kidnapped and Exiled to the Manus Prison, Hope is Our Secret Weapon” by Behrouz Boochani “Untitled” by Behrouz Boochani “The Day My Friend Hamid Khazaei Died” by Behrouz Boochani “Faysal Ishak Ahmed’s Life was Full of Pain. Australia Had a Duty to Protect Him” by Behrouz Boochani “Time and Borders, Policy and Lived Experience: A Posthumanist Critique” by Sajad Kabgani “Kurdish Identity and Journalism: Reporting to Record History” by Roza Germian Part Four 2017 (Mar-Sept) - Introducing the Kyriarchal System: Knowing Manus Prison “A Kyriarchal System: New Colonial Experiments/New Decolonial Resistance” by Behrouz Boochani “Unpublished Report: Untitled” by Behrouz Boochani “An Island off Manus” by Behrouz Boochani “The Tortuous Demise of Hamed Shamshiripour, Who Didn’t Deserve to Die on Manus Island” by Behrouz Boochani “‘The Man Who Loves Ducks’: The Refugee Saving Animals on Manus” by Behrouz Boochani “Epistemic Violence, Aesthetic Breaks, and the Man Who Loves Ducks” by Anne McNevin “Exposing ‘Incalculable Cruelty’: Writings on Border Harms and Atrocity as Resistance” by Victoria Canning Part Five 2017 (Oct-Dec) - The Siege on Manus Prison: 23 Days of Collective Resistance “Days Before the Forced Closure of Manus We Have No Safe Place to Go” by Behrouz Boochani “Diary of Disaster” by Behrouz Boochani “The Refugees Are in a State of Terror on Manus”bu Behrouz Boochani “A Merciless Fear Provoked by Last Night's Events has Gripped the Manus Island Camp” by Behrouz Boochani “Manus is a Landscape of Surreal Horror” by Behrouz Boochani “The Breath of Death on Manus Island: Starvation and Sickness” by Behrouz Boochani “All We Want is Freedom – Not Another Prison Camp” by Behrouz Boochani “I Write from Manus as a Duty to History.” By Behrouz Boochani “A Letter from Manus Island” by Behrouz Boochani “23 Days of Resistance Alongside Behrouz Boochani” by Shaminda Kanapathi “Words That Escaped from Prison” by Erik Jensen Part Six 2018 (Feb-June) - A Duty to History: Dignity, Time and Identity “Four Years After Reza Barati’s Death, We Still Have No Justice” by Behrouz Boochani “Policy of Exile” by Behrouz Boochani “Mohamed’s Life Story is a Tragedy. But it’s Typical for Father’s Held on Manus” by Behrouz Boochani “The Gay, Transgender and Biosexual men on Manus are Forced into Silence” by Behrouz Boochani “Salim Fled Genocide to Find Safety. He Lost his Life in the Most Tragic Way” by Behrouz Boochani “Manus Island Poem” by Behrouz Boochani “Journalism, Borders and Oppression: The Nauru Context” by Elahe Zivardar and Mehran Ghadiri “On Mothers, Nature and the Body” by Fatima Measham Part Seven 2018 (Aug)-2019 (Apr) - Manus Prison Theory: Creating a Body of Knowledge “Manus Prison Theory” by Behrouz Boochani “Australia Needs a Moral Revolution” by Behrouz Boochani “Five Years in Manus Purgatory” by Behrouz Boochani “’Sam Could Have Been Saved’: Where Does the Money for Healthcare Go on Manus?” by Behrouz Boochani “The Paladin Scandal is Only a Drop in the Ocean of Corruption on Manus and Nauru” by Behrouz Boochani “The 'Papua New Guinea Solution' in Australia's Public Discourse and Human Rights Activism” by Mahnaz Alimardanian “Australian Corruption and the Pacific: Dollars, Displacement and Death” by Helen Davidson Part Eight 2019 (May-Oct) - Writing to Keep Hope Alive/New Dimensions to Systematic Torture “This Election is an Opportunity to Vote for Humanity and Freedom” by Behrouz Boochani “’The Boats are Coming’ is One of the Greatest Lies Told to the Australian People” by Behrouz Boochani “The truth about self-harm in offshore detention” by Behrouz Boochani “Purification by Love” by Behrouz Boochani “Emotion, Responsibility and Hope for Different Futures” by Claudia Tazreiter “Prison Notebooks and the Oceanic-Kurdish Connection: Boochani’s Political Reflectivity” by Steven Ratuva Part Nine 2020 (May-June) – New Narratives and Knowledge: New Writing and Collaboration “As I learn to live in freedom, Australia is still tormenting refugees” by Behrouz Boochani “’A Human Being Feels They Are On a Precipice’: COVID-19’s Threshold Moment” by Behrouz Boochani and Omid Tofighian “Boochani’s ‘Political Poetics’: Subverting and Reimagining the Fiction of Politics” by Anne Surma “Journalism as Dialogue: Creating Collective Activism Through the Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani” by Lida Amiri Part Ten 2020 (Sept) – Neocolonial experiments/Creative resistance “For the refugees Australia Imprisons Music is Liberation, Life and Defiance” by Behrouz Boochani “’White Australia’ Policy Lives On in Immigration Detention” by Behrouz Boochani “On Documentation, Language, and Social Media” by Arianna Grasso “Carceral Coloniality as a History of the Present” by Helena Zeweri List of Contributors

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Book SynopsisThe go-to book on immigration: fact-based, comprehensive, and nonpartisan.Immigration is one of the most controversial topics in the United States and everywhere else. Pundits, politicians, and the public usually depict immigrants as either villains or victims. The villain narrative is that immigrants pose a threatto our economy because they steal our jobs; our way of life because they change our culture; and to our safety and laws because of their criminality. The victim argument tells us that immigrants are needy outsidersthe poor, huddled masses whom we must help at our own cost if necessary. But the data clearly debunks both narratives. From jobs, investment, and innovation to cultural vitality and national security, more immigration has an overwhelmingly positive impact on everything that makes a society successful.In The Truth About Immigration, Wharton professor Zeke Hernandez draws from nearly 20 years of research to answer all the big questions

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Book SynopsisA collection of essays about Armenian identity and belonging in the diaspora.Trade ReviewThe 18 essays in this collection delve into questions of Armenian identity, belonging and displacement from the perspective of a community whose past often goes unacknowledged. * New York Times *Every essay from this compelling group of featured authors brings a unique and powerful perspective on what it means to search for one’s authentic identity when disconnected from homeland, language, and heritage. Textured and emotionally resonant, these entries ask the question What does it mean to be 'Armenian enough'? Together, the anthology honors the history of the lives lost and forever changed by the Armenian Genocide and resulting diaspora and charts a course forward through the power of telling and retelling important stories. It’s both a stunning achievement and a welcome addition to our literary record. * Chicago Review of Books *Part party and part opera—both delightful and wrenching, altogether joyful...Each essay builds on the last, deepening the reader’s understanding of the multi-generational impact of genocide on families and prompting contemplation on notions of ethnicity. The essays do not flinch in the face of sometimes harrowing events, but every one also offers sweetness, grace, and resolve to face these truths and to move forward with hope and compassion. It’s an exquisite collection of essays. * TriQuarterly *With passion and insight, the writers [in We Are All Armenian] explore and express the joys of and obstacles to constructing an affiliation with their ethnic and diasporic communities that does not bind them to a prescribed mode of identity and belonging. Often inventive and surprising, these accounts of searching for association without unwelcome constraints will enrich the still-expanding narrative on expressive and analytic discourses of minority identities and commitments...Highly recommended. * CHOICE *A lovely, much-needed compilation that presents a culture of great import, examining diasporic experiences in deeply-felt prose. * Nowruz Journal *Table of Contents Editor’s Note Introduction How Armenian Funeral Halva Helped My Family Find Home in America (Liana Aghajanian) Hava Nagila (Naira Kuzmich) “Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From?” (Sophia Armen) An Inter/Racial Love History (Kohar Avakian) Language Lessons (Nancy Kricorian) A Good, Solid Name (Olivia Katrandjian) My Armenia: Imagining and Seeing (Chris McCormick) Inside the Walls: Reflections on Revolutionary Armenians (Nancy Agabian) Going Home Again (Chris Bohjalian) Lost and Found (Aline Ohanesian) A Letter to My Great-Grandson (Raffi Joe Wartanian) Open Wounds (Anna Gazmarian) Բառէրը-the Words (J. P. Der Boghossian) The Road to Belonging (Raffy Boudjikanian) The Story of My Body (Hrag Vartanian) Valley View: An Armenian Diasporic Account in Lieu of a Glendale Biennial Review (Mashinka Firunts Hakopian) Perspectives on Artsakh from a Black Armenian Angeleno (Carene Rose Mekertichyan) We Are All Armenian (Scout Tufankjian) Acknowledgments Reading List of Armenian Writers Notes on the Contributors

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Book SynopsisMore children than ever are crossing international borders alone to seek asylum worldwide. In the past decade, over a half million children have fled from Central America to the United States, seeking safety and a chance to continue lives halted by violence. Yet upon their arrival, they fail to find the protection that our laws promise, based on the broadly shared belief that children should be safeguarded. A meticulously researched ethnography, Precarious Protections chronicles the experiences and perspectives of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process. Chiara Galli debunks assumptions about asylum, including the idea that people are being denied protection because they file bogus claims. In practice, the United States interprets asylum law far more narrowly than what is necessary to recognize real-world experiences of escape from life-threatening violence. This is especially true for children from Central America. Galli reveals the formidable challenges of lawyering with children and exposes the humantoll of the US immigration bureaucracy.Trade Review"One of the most impressive ethnographic studies. . . .theoretically inspiring, methodologically rigorous, empirically rich, and politically significant. This brilliant book will be foundational to future studies of refugees and asylum seekers." * Sociology of Race and Ethnicity *Table of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. Exclusion and Protection in US Immigration Law and Policy 2. Central American Youths Escape from Violence 3. Enter the Bureaucratic Maze: The Legal Socialization of Unaccompanied Minors Begins 4. Access to Legal Representation: Representing Eligible Youths or Choosing the “Compelling” Case 5. Lawyering with Unaccompanied Minors: Helping Youths Apply for Asylum and Protections for Abandoned, Abused, or Neglected Children 6. Coming of Age under the Gaze of the State 7. Beyond Precarious Protections: Lessons for Humane Immigration Reform Methods Appendix Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContents List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgments Introduction PART I THE FIRST WAVE: SEEING WORK AND FAMILY ACROSS OPEN BORDERS 1 • “And They Go Silently:” Pioneering Family Migrations, 1890–1920 2 • From Revolution to Exodus: Going North in Times of Conflict, 1915–1929 PART II RETURN FLOW: FORCING REPATRIATION, KEEPING COMMUNITY 3 • The Great Depression and The Great Return: Coming Home, 1929–1936 4 • Good Presidents, Bad Husbands, and Dead Fathers: Trials of Binational Living, 1934–1940 PART III THE NEW WAVE: RECRUITING MEN, WOMEN KEEP COMING 5 • War and a New Migration Order: Nations Seek Braceros, Women Make Families, 1940–1947 6 • The Era of Policing: Women Beyond Control, 1945–1965 Epilogue. Fit to Be Migrants: Undocumenting Lives, 1965–1986 Appendix: Repatriation Train Statistics Tables Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisThis expansive history traces the hidden connections between oil and capitalism from the late 1800s to the current climate crisis. Beyond simplistic narratives that frame oil as 'prize' or 'curse', Crude Capitalism uncovers the surprising ways that oil is woven into the fabric of our modern world: the rise of an American-centered global order; the breakdown of Empire and anti-colonial rebellion; contemporary finance and US dollar hegemony; debt and militarism; and the emergence of new forms of synthetic consumption. Much more than an energy source or transport fuel, oil has a foundational place in all aspects of contemporary life - no challenge to the fossil fuel industry can be effective without taking this fact seriously.Crude Capitalism maps the varied geographies of oil, including the rise of OPEC, the importance of revolutionary and Post-Soviet Russia, the crucial role of African upstream reserves, and the new petrochemical circuits that link

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Book SynopsisForbes, Best Business Books of 2022Behavioral Scientist, Notable Books of 2022Immigration is one of the most fraught, and possibly most misunderstood, topics in American social discourse-yet, in most cases, the things we believe about immigration are based largely on myth, not facts. Using the tools of modern data analysis and ten years of pioneering research, new evidence is provided about the past and present of the American Dream, debunking myths fostered by political opportunism and sentimentalized in family histories, and draw counterintuitive conclusions, including:* Upward Mobility: Children of immigrants from nearly every country, especially those of poor immigrants, do better economically than children of U.S.-born residents - a pattern that has held for more than a century.* Rapid Assimilation: Immigrants accused of lack of assimilation (such as Mexicans today and the Irish in the past) actually assimilate fastest.* Improved Economy: Immigration changes the economy in unexpected positive ways and staves off the economic decline that is the consequence of an aging population.* Helps U.S. Born: Closing the door to immigrants harms the economic prospects of the U.S.-born-the people politicians are trying to protect.Using powerful story-telling and unprecedented research employing big data and algorithms, Abramitzky and Boustan are like dedicated family genealogists but millions of times over. They provide a new take on American history with surprising results, especially how comparable the "golden era" of immigration is to today, and why many current policy proposals are so misguided.

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Book SynopsisIn Sanctuary Everywhere, Barbara Andrea Sostaita reimagines practices of sanctuary along the U.S.-Mexico border in order to explore the possibilities for radical fugitivity in the face of militarized border enforcement. After the 2016 presidential election, churches, universities, cities, and even states began declaring themselves sanctuaries. Sostaita proposes that these calls for expanded sanctuary are insufficient when dealing with the everyday workings of immigration enforcement. Through fieldwork in migrant clinics, shelters, and the Sonoran Desert, Sostaita demonstrates that, as a sacred practice, sanctuary cannot be fixed in any one destination or mandate. She turns to those working to create sanctuary on the move, from a deported nurse offering medical care on the border to incarcerated migrant women denying rules on touch in detention facilities to collectives set up to honor those who died crossing the border. Understanding sanctuary to be a set of fugitive practices t

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Book SynopsisThis is a tale of human obsession, one intrepid tuna, the dedicated fisherman who caught and set her free, the promises and limits of ocean science and the big truth of how our insatiable appetite for bluefin transformed a cottage industry into a global dilemma.In 2004, an enigmatic charter captain named Al Anderson caught and marked one Atlantic bluefin tuna off New England's coast with a plastic fish tag. Fourteen years later that fish dubbed Amelia for her ocean-spanning journeys died in a Mediterranean fish trap, sparking Karen Pinchin's riveting investigation into the marvels, struggles, and prehistoric legacy of this remarkable species.Over his fishing career Al marked more than sixty thousand fish with plastic tags, an obsession that made him nearly as many enemies as it did friends. His quest landed him in the crossfire of an ongoing fight between a booming bluefin tuna industry and desperate conservation efforts, a conflict that is once again heating up as overfishing and cl

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Book Synopsis“Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I am going to go fulfill my proper function in the social organism. I’m going to go unbuild walls.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The DispossessedDrawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition.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.Unbuil

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Book SynopsisA VITALLY IMPORTANT BOOK CHALLENGING THE MANY MISCONCEPTIONS SURROUNDING THE TOPIC OF IMMIGRATION.''A book that will force Left and Right alike to reconsider old assumptions . . . an important book'' The TelegraphA careful, balanced, and convincing take . . . challenges much of what we think is obvious about migration' Ian Morris, author of Why The West Rules For Now------------------------------Authoritative and myth-busting, this is the one book you need to read to understand why we''ve been wrong about migration - perfect for fans of Tim Marshall''s Prisoners of GeographyGlobal migration is not at an all-time high.Climate change will not lead to mass migration.Immigration mainly benefits the wealthy, not workers.Border restrictions have paradoxically produced more migration.These statements might sound counter-intuitive or just outright wrong - but the facts behind the headlines reveal a completely different story to the ones we''re told about migration. In this ground-breaking and revelatory book, based on more than three decades of research, leading expert Professor Hein de Haas explodes myths from left to right that politicians, interest groups and media regularly spread about migration.Above all, How Migration Really Works offers a new vision of global migration based on facts rather than fears, and a paradigm-altering understanding of this perennially important subject.

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Book SynopsisThis insightful book explores the governance of immobilities and temporality in African migration. It shares lessons from the experiences of Zimbabwean migrants fleeing economic crisis to the South African town of Musina and asks what the work of state and non-state actors there tell us about the management of immobile people and places.

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Book SynopsisAt the turn of the millennium, Middle Eastern and Muslim Germans had rather unexpectedly become central to the country's Holocaust memory culture—not as welcome participants, but as targets for re-education and reform. Since then, Turkish- and Arab-Germans have been considered as the prime obstacles to German national reconciliation with its Nazi past, a status shared to a lesser degree by Germans from the formerly socialist East Germany. It is for this reason that the German government, German NGOs, and Muslim minority groups have begun to design Holocaust education and anti-Semitism prevention programs specifically tailored for Muslim immigrants and refugees, so that they, too, can learn the lessons of the Holocaust and embrace Germany's most important postwar democratic political values. Based on ethnographic research conducted over a decade, Subcontractors of Guilt explores when, how, and why Muslim Germans have moved to the center of Holocaust memory discussions. Esra Özyürek argues that German society "subcontracts" guilt of the Holocaust to new minority immigrant arrivals, with the false promise of this process leading to inclusion into the German social contract and equality with other members of postwar German society. By focusing on the recently formed but already sizable sector of Muslim-only anti-Semitism and Holocaust education programs, this book explores the paradoxes of postwar German national identity.Trade Review"Esra Özyürek has written a path-breaking and much needed book on the multifaceted, constitutive ways by which Turkish- and Arab-background migrants shaped German Holocaust memory and how it shaped their identity in return. Based on ethnographic research, this is a fundamental contribution that rewrites our understanding of the development of Holocaust memory in Germany"—Alon Confino, author of A World Without Jews"German Holocaust memory culture is often held up as a model for other nations to imitate. But, as Esra Özyürek shows in this provocative and ethnographically rich book, the story is much more complicated. Subcontractors of Guilt is a fascinating study of belonging and exclusion in post-Holocaust Germany and a must-read for all who are interested in contemporary Europe."—Michael Rothberg, author of Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization"Subcontractors of Guilt is an essential intervention into contemporary German debates around migration, Muslim minorities, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust memory. By centering the perspectives of young German Muslims, Özyürek's insightful study offers an important corrective to narratives that too often fail to do so."—Fatima El-Tayeb, Yale University"This powerful, well-informed book would make a fine addition to any academic library. Recommended."—S. Anderson, CHOICETable of ContentsIntroduction: German Holocaust Memory and the Redemptive Path toward Democracy 1. Rebelling against the Father, Democratizing the Family 2. Export-Import Theory of Muslim Antisemitism in Germany 3. Wrong Emotions / Wrong Empathy for the Holocaust 4. Subcontracting Guilt, Policing Victimhood 5. Visiting Auschwitz as Pilgrimage and as Shock Therapy Conclusion: Can Muslims Flip the Script of the German Memory Theater?

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Book SynopsisRonald Takaki's beloved revisionist history of America, praised by Howard Zinn as 'a bold and refreshing new approach to our national history,' now featuring a foreword from Clint Smith, author of the award-winning #1 bestseller How the Word Is Passed. Ronald Takaki's 'brilliant revisionist history of America' (Publishers Weekly) is a landmark work of American history retells American history from the bottom up, through the lives of many minorities — Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish Americans, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and others — who helped create this country's mighty economy and rich mosaic culture. A Different Mirror brilliantly illuminates our country's defining strengths as it reveals America as a nation peopled by the world. 

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsContents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Note on Transliteration Map of Cited Departure Points and Stepping Stones of Suez Canal Migrants Introduction 1 • A Universal Meeting Point on the Isthmus of Suez 2 • Like a Beehive: Race and Gender on the Suez Worksites 3 • A Semilawless Borderland: The Presence of These People Could Bring Evil 4 • Entertainment in Port Said, a Sink of Immoral Filth Conclusion: It Would Be Wonderful If It Were Not Unhappy Postscript Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRadical Hospitality: American Policy, Media, and Immigration re-imagines the ethical relationship of host societies towards newcomers by applying the concept of hospitality to two specific realms that impact the lives of immigrants in the United States: policy and media. The book calls attention to the moral responsibility of the host in welcoming a stranger. It sets the stage for the analysis with a historical background of the first host-guest diads of American hospitality, arguing that the early history of American hospitality was marked by the degeneration of the host-guest relationship into one of host-hostage, normalizing a racial discrimination that continues to plague immigration hospitality to this day. Author Nour Halabi presents a historical policy and media discourse analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during three periods of US history: the 1880s and the Chinese Exclusion Act, the 1920s and the National Origins Act and the 2000s and the Muslim travel ban. In so doing, it demonstrates how U.S. immigration hospitality, from its peaks in the post-Independence period to its nadir in the Muslim travel ban, has fallen short of true hospitality in spite of the nation’s oft-touted identity as a “nation of immigrants.” At the same time, the book calls attention to how a discourse of hospitality, although fraught, may allow a radical reimagining of belonging and authority that unsettles settler-colonial assumptions of belonging and welcome a restorative outlook to immigration policy and its media coverage in society.Trade Review"Nour Halabi masterfully tracks the representation of immigrants in American media and how it shapes popular perceptions about immigrants and policies on immigration. She brings attention to the silenced histories of immigration in the US context and invites us to make the connections between these silences and the current reality of these marginalized groups." — Wunpini Fatimata Mohammed, Department of Entertainment & Media Studies, University of Georgia "The media plays a key role in shaping immigration discourse in the United States. Nour Halabi’s excellent book, Radical Hospitality, sheds light on how contradictory ideas of hospitality and xenophobia can both exist through her analysis of immigration regulation and media coverage during key historical periods of U.S. history from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Muslim travel ban." — Nancy Yuen, author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism "An important book that focuses on a fundamental contradiction between the legal protection offered to immigrants to the USA through the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on the one hand, and the anti-immigrant sentiment, which inflects public discourse and ever more restrictive immigration policies on the other. Writing from her first-hand experience of having to negotiate the immigration process for herself and her family, the author advocates her unique vantage point. She takes an historico-political perspective to explore shifting policies around immigration, both legislative (regulatory hospitality) and media-oriented (media hospitality), the extent to which immigrants are or are not ‘welcomed’ to the USA, and how different orientations contribute to how immigrants can ‘build’ a home in their adopted country. The methodology for data collection during the three sample periods is well-described and the rationale for the choice of periods is persuasive as is the volume of material analysed; the archival research is impressive. It is a significant and scholarly book which provides some important insights through its use of the ‘hospitality’ concept and its historical orientation."— Judges for the 2023 Media, Communication, and Cultural Studies Association Outstanding Book AwardTable of Contents1 The Case for Hospitality 2 Poisoned Beginnings: The Birth of the (Immigrant) Nation 3 The Move to Exclude: Chinese Exclusion Act (1880s) 4 The Rise of Nativism: National Origins Act (1920s) 5 The Shift to National Security: Patriot Act (2000s) 6 Conclusion: The Future of American Hospitality Appendix A: Note on Reflexivity and Methods Appendix B: Regulatory Documents Acknowledgments Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisA New York Times best book of 2024On Barack Obama's Summer Reading List 2024 'Urgent, extraordinary . . . a tribute to the astonishing indomitability of the human spirit.' - Patrick Radden Keefe, bestselling author Empire of Pain'Moving, sweeping, and masterful' - Sally Hayden, author of My Fourth Time, We DrownedNew Yorker journalist Jonathan Blitzer has been covering the immigration crisis at America’s southern border for nearly a decade, but the current emergency is the end of a much larger story. In this, his first book, Blitzer goes back to the beginning: to the shadowy civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s; to the American prison system in the 1990s and the policies of mass deportation that transformed local street criminals into international crime syndicates; to Honduras’s brutal crackdown on crime in the 2000s and the emergence of gangs acro

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Book SynopsisIn this affecting and innovative global history - starting with the European children who fled the perils of World War II and ending with the Central American children who arrive every day at the US southern border - Anita Casavantes Bradford traces the evolution of American policy toward unaccompanied children.

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Book SynopsisReveals the legacy of the train as a critical site of race in the United StatesDespite the seeming supremacy of car culture in the United States, the train has long been and continues to be a potent symbol of American exceptionalism, ingenuity, and vastness. For almost two centuries, the train has served as the literal and symbolic vehicle for American national identity, manifest destiny, and imperial ambitions. It's no surprise, then, that the train continues to endure in depictions across literature, film, ad music. The Racial Railroad highlights the surprisingly central role that the railroad has playedand continues to playin the formation and perception of racial identity and difference in the United States. Julia H. Lee argues that the train is frequently used as the setting for stories of race because it operates across multiple registers and scales of experience and meaning, both as an invocation of and a depository for all manner of social, historical, and political narratives.Trade Review"Julia Lee’s brilliant scholarly intervention is in rendering the railroad as THE technology for understanding American exceptionalism, racial exclusion, and racist state harm, as well as, contradictorily, the symbol of liberation and legitimation for so many non-white Americans who have struggled to lay claim to the U.S. The depth and breadth of Lee’s archive, from canonical American novels to contemporary films and music videos further reinforces the ubiquity of trains and the railroad in the racial hierarchies of the last two centuries and is a testament to Lee’s capacious intellect and scholarly rigor." * Jennifer Ho, author of Racial Ambiguity in Asian American Culture *"A fascinating interdisciplinary book offering a sustained consideration of the railroad’s cultural iconicity from the suppressed perspective of racialized authors. Lee’s distinctive expertise in literary analysis and comparative race studies covers a broad and diverse archive that conveys the railroad’s racial implications and contestations across visual, acoustic, and literary forms." * Hsuan Hsu, author of The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics *"Lee examines affinities between narratives and images of American exceptionalism and railroads, both of which narrowly orient perspective through the perception of movement. … Lee examines visual narratives of trains in railroad advertisements, in film history, and in reenactments. She examines narratives of Chinese degeneracy and Chinese American memory, of the survival and critique of Jim Crow, and of border crossings and the exploitation of migrant labor, all taking place on trains … offers valuable insights on how racism and exclusionary borders take shape through physical infrastructure." -- Manu Karuka * Public Books *

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewUndocumented Lives is a deep dive into the history of Mexican migration to and from the United States and how, many times, migrants can feel ni aquí, ni allá, neither here, nor there—not fully recognized by any one place. -- Monica Campbell * PRI’s The World *Minian’s aching and timely book clearly lays out the political and cultural forces on both sides of the border that have placed millions of Mexicans in the golden cage that is the U.S.’ immigration policy…Minian has conducted exhaustive research, which includes copious oral-history interviews, to produce a work providing historical context and perspective for the current debate raging about immigration. -- Sara Martinez * Booklist *Necessary and timely…By unearthing 50-year-old narratives, Minian draws a straight line to today’s racist and acerbic anti-immigration policies in America…A valuable text to consider alongside the current fight for DACA, the border concentration camps, and the unending rhetoric dehumanizing Mexican migrants. * PopMatters *Minian traces today’s unauthorized migration to the years between 1965 and 1986, when the disruption of Mexican circular migration trapped unauthorized migrants on US soil. The book explores Mexican and US policies as well as media resources and intimate testimonials to show how migrants thought about home and how they were treated, as well as discussing their financial limitations, child-rearing challenges, and relationships with romantic partners and family. -- Ana Hontanilla * Latin American Research Review *Minian provides an elaborate account of Mexican immigration to the United States, particularly from the mid-1960s to the 1980s…This history provides a rare window into ‘the messy complexity of [the] lived experience’ of Mexican migrants and contributes much-needed nuance to contemporary debates on immigration. * Publishers Weekly *Undocumented Lives explores the double exclusion of Mexican men from their respective homes of national belonging—Mexico, by making it impossible for families to subsist without husbands’ and fathers’ migration and remittance; the United States, by exploiting undocumented laborers while forcing them to live in the shadows lest they be deported. This is a deeply humane book that focuses on the lives of migrants who endure and navigate these exclusions. -- Mae Ngai, Columbia UniversityA truly impressive accomplishment that combines political and economic analysis with personal narratives of love, loss, and belonging to offer a holistic, deeply humane look at Mexican migration in the late twentieth century. If you read only one book about the roots of immigration debates today, this should be it. -- Geraldo Cadava, author of Standing on Common GroundWell-written and gripping, this book rigorously and imaginatively shows us how changes in immigration policy on both sides of the border dramatically affect peoples’ lives. Based on an impressive number of oral histories conducted in both Mexico and the United States, Undocumented Lives is a valuable contribution to the history of both countries and a revelation of the experience of those who can claim neither as home. -- Margaret Chowning, University of California, BerkeleyAn important book that will have an immediate impact on the history and historiography of Mexican migration to the United States in the twentieth century and beyond. -- David G. Gutiérrez, University of California, San Diego

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Book SynopsisFrom America's illustrator in chief (Fast Company), a stunning graphic memoir of a childhood in Cuba, coming to America on the Mariel boatlift, and a defense of democracy, here and thereHailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. Now for the first time, he draws his own life, revisiting his childhood in Cuba and his family's passage on the infamous Mariel boatlift.When Edel was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or worms, leave the country. The faltering economy and Edel's family's vocal discomfort with government surveillance had made their daily lives on a farm outside Havana precarious, and they secretly planned to leave. But before that happened, a dozen soldiers confiscated their home and property and imprisoned them in a detention center near the port of Mariel, where th

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