Description
Book SynopsisThe contributors to
Paper Trails examine migrants' relationship to the state through requirements to obtain identification documents in order to get legal status.
Trade Review“The rich collection of case studies in
Paper Trails reminds us that states have increasingly refined their surveillance techniques. A must-read for anyone interested in how the issuing of the identifications and documents that pervade our everyday lives give states power over the populations—both citizens and immigrants—they govern.” -- Leo R. Chavez, author of * The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation *
“Offering a unique way to think about the materiality of immigrant life and the ways that papers shape migrants' identities, experiences, rights, and sense of belonging, this volume tells a compelling story about the need to center documents in the study of international migration.” -- Leisy J. Abrego, coeditor of * We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States *
“Documents, or ‘papers,’ both reflect and help construct a global reality of heightened border policing and profound socioeconomic inequality. By powerfully illuminating the work that documents do in producing the state and people of unequal status, and the tactics people employ to contest citizenship-related forms of exclusion,
Paper Trails provides valuable tools for those engaged in the struggle to realize a more just world.” -- Joseph Nevins, author of * Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid *
“
Paper Trails is a substantial and well-edited collection of research. It is an interesting, theoretically engaging and empirically rich book. It is undoubtedly an important contribution to migration studies and social sciences in general.” -- Shahram Khosravi * Ethnic and Racial Studies *
“A group of preeminent scholars of immigration have produced a stellar collection of essays. . . . [
Paper Trails] is an invaluable addition to our understanding of how the everyday processes of documentation operate in systems of state governance. . . . It deserves a wide readership.” -- Susan J. Terrio * Journal of Anthropological Research *
“Paper Trails is an important contribution for students and researchers in migration studies, as well as practitioners in the field.” -- Sandra King-Savic * Refuge *
Table of ContentsIntroduction. Paper Trails: Migrants, Bureaucratic Inscription, and Legal Recognition / Sarah B. Horton 1
Part I. Foundations: Controlling Space and Time 27
1. The "People Out of Place": State Limits on Free Mobility and the Making of Im(migrants) / Nandita Sharma 31
2. And About Time Too . . .: Migration, Documentation, and Temporalities / Bridget Anderson 53
3. Documenting Membership: The Divergent Politics of Migrant Driver's Licenses in New Mexico and Arizona / Doris Marie Provine and Monica W. Varsanyi 74
Part II. Documents as Security, Documents as Visibility 103
4. Documented as Unauthorized / Deborah A. Boehm 109
5. Opportunities and Double Binds: Legal Craft in an Era of Uncertainty / Susan Bibler Coutin 130
6. Document Overseers, Enhanced Enforcement, and Racialized Local Contexts: Experiences of Latino Immigrants in Phoenix, Arizona / Cecilia Menjívar 153
Part III. Resistance and Refusals 179
7. Knowing Your Rights in Trump's America: Paper Trails of Community Empowerment / Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz 185
8. Strategies of Documentation among Kichwa Transnational Migrants / Juan Thomas Ordóñez 208
Conclusion: Documents as Power / Josiah Heyman 229
Contributors 249
Index 253
