Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life
Asad L. Asad, Stanford University
Some eleven million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, carving out lives amid a growing web of surveillance that threatens their and their families’ societal presence. Engage and Evade examines how undocumented immigrants navigate complex dynamics of surveillance and punishment, providing an extraordinary portrait of fear and hope on the margins.
Dr. Asad’s publisher has offered a very generous discount for
CPIR:
Code: ALA30
Title: Engage and Evade (9780691182285)
Discount: 30% off the list price of $33
Expiration: 6/30/2024
Purchasers can access the book here:
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691182285/engage-and-evade
Asad L. Asad brings together a wealth of research, from intimate
interviews and detailed surveys with Latino immigrants and their
families to up-close observations of immigration officials, to
offer a rare perspective on the surveillance that undocumented
immigrants encounter daily. He describes how and why these
immigrants engage with various institutions—for example, by
registering with the IRS or enrolling their kids in
public health insurance programs—that the government can use to
monitor them. This institutional surveillance feels both
necessary and coercive, with undocumented immigrants worrying
that evasion will give the government cause to deport them. Even
so, they hope their record of engagement will one day help them
prove to immigration officials that they deserve societal
membership. Asad uncovers how these efforts do not always meet
immigration officials’ high expectations, and how surveillance is
as much about the threat of exclusion as the promise of
inclusion.
Calling attention to the fraught lives of undocumented immigrants
and their families, this superbly written and compassionately
argued book proposes wide-ranging, actionable reforms to achieve
societal inclusion for all.