WEEK 12
Undocumented Immigrants / Immigrant Rights
How did immigrants become “illegal?” What does it feel like to live in the shadows? How have immigrants and their allies fought for rights, protection, and belonging?
- Rachel Buff, ed., Immigrant Rights in the Shadows of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2008)
- Leo Chavez, Shadowed Lives: Undocumented Immigrants in American Society (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2013)
- Aviva Chomsky, Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal (Boston: Beacon Press, 2014)
- Susan Bibler Coutin, Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for U.S. Residency (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000)
- Patrick Ettinger, Imaginary Lines: Border Enforcement and the Origins of Undocumented Immigration (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009)
- Roberto G. Gonzáles, Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015)
- Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us: A Memoir (New York: Washington Square Press, 2013)
- Maddalena Marinari, “Divided and Conquered: Immigration Reform Advocates and the Passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act,” Journal of American Ethnic History, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Spring 2016): 9-40
- Natalia Molina, How Race is Made: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014)
- Hiroshi Motomura, Immigration Outside the Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)
- Sonia Nazario, Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother (New York: Random House, 2007)
- Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); “How Grandma Got Legal” LA Times, May, 2006 “Second-Class Citizens,” New York Times, January 30, 2014
- Migration Policy Institute, “An Analysis of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States by Country and Region of Birth,” August, 2015
- Amalia Pallares, Family Activism: Immigrant Struggles and the Politics of Noncitizenship (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014)
- Margaret Regan, The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010)
- Eileen Truax, Dreamers: An Immigrant Generation’s Fight for Their American Dream (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015)
- Jose Antonio Vargas, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” New York Times, June 26, 2011
Primary Sources
- Stories from the Define American project
- Patrick Radden Keefe, “The Snakehead,” The New Yorker April 24, 2006
- Mike Luckovich, “Show me your papers,” Atlanta Journal Constitution, April 30, 2010 (via Flickr)
- Jeff Parker, “They say they’re building a wall because many of us enter illegally…”, Florida Today, 2006 (via Imgur)
- Lydia Kitahara, “My Life as an Out-of-Status Immigrant, Shared After 32 Years” Huffington Post, April 22, 2016
- “What Part of Legal Immigration Don’t You Understand?” Reason, 2008
Multimedia
- “History of the Undocumented Immigrant,” Lower East Side Tenement Museum
- Crossing Arizona (documentary film)
- Documented (documentary film)
- Latino USA, “Dreamers”; “The Dream 9”; “Los Otros Dreamers,” National Public Radio
WEEK 13
Border Walls & Border Policing
Why do nation-states build walls and police borders? What impact do walls and border policing have on individuals, families, and communities? How do they shape our views of immigrants and our neighbors to the north and south? Why are borders more permeable for some people — and goods — than for others?
- Peter Andreas, Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)
- Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (New York: Zone Books, 2010)
- Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015)
- Michael Dear, Why Walls Won’t Work: Repairing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
- Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, Borders: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)
- Timothy J. Dunn, The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978-1992 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996)
- Kelly Lytle Hernández, Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010)
- S. Deborah Kang, The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Kevin R. Johnson, Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink Its Borders and Immigration Laws (New York: New York University Press, 2007)
- Todd Miller, Border Patrol Nation: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Homeland Security (San Francisco: City Lights, 2014)
- Jeannette Money, Fences and Neighbors: The Political Geography of Immigration Control (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)
- Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary (New York: Routledge, 2010)
- Harel Shapira, Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013)
- Rachel St. John, Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011)
- Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil’s Highway: A True Story (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2005)
Primary Sources
- Border Battles: The U.S. Immigration Debates, Social Science Research Council
- Bracero History Archive
- National Border Patrol Museum Oral Histories, National Border Patrol Museum
- Report of the Boundary Commission upon the Survey and Re-marking of the Boundary between the United States and Mexico West of the Rio Grande, 1891-96, includes 258 photographs of the border in the late 19th century), University of North Texas Digital Library
- Undocumented Migration Project, University of Michigan
- United States-Mexico Border, Color Image Map Series, U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Customs Service, 1979-1983, University of Texas, Austin Libraries
Multimedia
- Border Cantos, Richard Misrach, Guillermo Galindo, and Josh Kun
- Borderland, National Public Radio
- Raising Barriers: A New Age of Walls, Washington Post
- Visualizing the US-Mexico Border, The Intercept
- Walls of Shame: The US-Mexican Border, Al Jazeera English
WEEK 14
Post-9/11 America
In the wake of the terrorist attacks and the U.S.-led War on Terror, how did concerns for national security affect immigration policy? How did the terrorist attacks – and the U.S. response – influence American attitudes towards immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers? How have the long-standing fears of invasion by populations considered “unassimilable” justified the continued expansion of border controls in the name of national security?
- Edward H. Alden, The Closing of the American Border: Terrorism, Immigration, and Security Since 9/11 (New York: Harper, 2008) and “9/11 Lessons: Immigration Policy,” Council on Foreign Relations, August 26, 2011
- Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does it Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab In America (New York: Penguin Press, 2008)
- Muzaffar Chishti and Claire Bergeron, “Post-9/11 Policies Dramatically Alter the U.S. Immigration Landscape,” Migration Policy Institute, September 28, 2011
- Nicholas De Genova, “The ‘War on Terror’ as Racial Crisis: Homeland Security, Obama, and Racial (Trans)formations,” in Daniel HoSang, Oneka LaBennett, and Laura Pulido, Racial Formation In the Twenty-First Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012)
- Gary Gerstle, “The Immigrant as Threat to American Security: A Historical Perspective” in Barkan et. al, eds., From Arrival to Incorporation: Migrants to the U.S. In a Global Era (New York: New York University Press, 2008)
- Deepa Iyer, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (New York: The New Press, 2015)
- Tram Nguyen, We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories From Immigrant Communities After 9/11 (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005)
- Leti Volpp, “The Citizen and the Terrorist,” UCLA Law Review (2002): 1575-1600
Primary Sources
- Feisel Abdul Rauf, “Building on Faith,” The New York Times, September 7, 2001
- Five Ways Immigration System Changed after 9/11, ABC News
- Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration “Effective Immigration Controls to Deter Terrorism”; October 17, 2001, Yale Law School
- Statement of Dr. Demetrios G. Papademetriou Co-Director and Deborah Waller Meyers Policy Analyst Migration Policy Institute Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration United States Senate Hearing on Border Security Issues and Options; October 17, 2001, Yale Law School
- Fact Sheet: The Secure Fence Act of 2006, George W. Bush White House Archives
Multimedia
- Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath (documentary film)
- Immigration Battle, PBS, Frontline
- Out of Status (documentary film)
WEEK 15
Deportation Nation
Who has been targeted for deportation throughout United States history, and why? How has expulsion shaped who is considered to be an insider and outsider, and who is considered to be deserving and undeserving? How does the history of deportation challenge the United States’ reputation as “a nation of immigrants”?
- Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2006)
- Deborah Boehm, Returned: Going and Coming in an Age of Deportation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016)
- David C. Brotherton and Luis Barrios, Banished to the Homeland: Dominican Deportees and Their Stories of Exile (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)
- Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz, eds., The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)
- Mark Dow, American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004)
- Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism (New York: New York University Press, 2015)
- Torrie Hester, Deportation: The Origins of U.S. Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming, 2017)
- Bill Ong Hing, Deporting Our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- Hidetaka Hirota, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)
- Daniel Kanstroom, Deportation Nation: Outsiders in American History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) ; Aftermath: Deportation Law and the New American Diaspora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
- Patrisia Macías-Rojas, From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post/Civil Rights America (New York: New York University Press, 2016)
- Deirdre M. Moloney. National Insecurities: Immigrants and U.S. Deportation Policy since 1882 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012)
- Tom K. Wong, Rights, Deportation, and Detention in the Age of Immigration Control (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2015)
- Luis H. Zayas, Forgotten Citizens: Deportation, Children, and the Making of American Exiles and Orphans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)
Primary Sources
- The Bisbee Deportation of 1917 (Web Exhibit with newspapers, photographs, maps, letters, and interviews), University of Arizona Library
- Immigration Detention Maps and Statistics, Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC)
- TRAC Immigration Project, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
- War Resistance, Anti-Militarism, and Deportation, 1917-1919, The Emma Goldman Papers, UC Berkeley Library
Multimedia
- “Mass Deportation May Sound Unlikely, But It’s Happened Before,” National Public Radio, September 8, 2015
- “Inside a Georgia Immigration Court, One Man Fights to Stay with His Family,” National Public Radio, April 28, 2016
- ICED-I Can End Deportation (video game that teaches players about current immigration laws about detention and deportation)
- “Sentenced Home” (documentary film)
- “Immigrant America: The High Cost of Deporting Parents,” VICE News, March 19, 2014