Borders of Belonging investigates a pressing but previously unexplored aspect of immigration in America—the impact of immigration policies and practices not only on undocumented migrants, but also on their family members, some of whom possess a form of legal status. Heide Castañeda reveals the trauma, distress, and inequalities that occur daily, alongside the stratification of particular family members' access to resources like education, employment, and health care. She also paints a vivid picture of the resilience, resistance, creative responses, and solidarity between parents and children, siblings, and other kin.
Castañeda's innovative ethnography combines fieldwork with individuals and family groups to paint a full picture of the experiences of mixed-status families as they navigate the emotional, social, political, and medical difficulties that inevitably arise when at least one family member lacks legal status. Exposing the extreme conditions in the heavily-regulated U.S./Mexico borderlands, this book presents a portentous vision of how the further encroachment of immigration enforcement would affect millions of mixed-status families throughout the country.
Heide Castañeda is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She is a co-editor of Unequal Coverage: The Experience of Health Care Reform in the United States (2018).
Table of Contents
Introduction: Illegality and the Immigrant Family 1. Belonging in the Borderlands 2. United Yet Divided: Mixed-Status Family Dynamics 3. "Little Lies": Disclosure and Relationships Beyond the Family 4. Estamos Encerrados: Im/mobilities in the Borderlands 5. Additional Borders: Education, Work, and Social Mobility 6. Unequal Access: Health and Well-Being 7. Family Separation: Deportation, Removal, and Return 8. Fixing Papers: Status Adjustment in Mixed-Status Families Conclusion
