Paper Trails: Migrants, Documents, and Legal Insecurity

Across the globe, states have long aimed to control the movement of people, identify their citizens, and restrict noncitizens' rights through official identification documents. Although states are now less likely to grant permanent legal status, they are increasingly issuing new temporary and provisional legal statuses to migrants. Meanwhile, the need for migrants to apply for frequent renewals subjects them to more intensive state surveillance. The contributors to Paper Trails examine how these new developments change migrants' relationship to state, local, and foreign bureaucracies. The contributors analyze, among other toics, immigration policies in the United Kingdom, the issuing of driver's licenses in Arizona and New Mexico, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and community know-your-rights campaigns. By demonstrating how migrants are inscribed into official bureaucratic systems through the issuance of identification documents, the contributors open up new ways to understand how states exert their power and how migrants must navigate new systems of governance.

Contributors. Bridget Anderson, Deborah A. Boehm, Susan Bibler Coutin, Ruth Gomberg-Muñoz, Sarah B. Horton, Josiah Heyman, Cecilia Menjívar, Juan Thomas Ordóñez, Doris Marie Provine, Nandita Sharma, Monica Varsanyi

Author: Sarah B. Horton
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 08/14/2020
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.60d
ISBN13: 9781478008453
ISBN10: 1478008458
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Social Science | Emigration & Immigration
- Social Science | Sociology | General

About the Author
Sarah B. Horton is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields: Illness, Injury, and Illegality among U.S. Farmworkers.

Josiah Heyman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas--El Paso, and coeditor of The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics and Historical Interactions.