On the Record

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Immigrant residents seeking legal status in the United States face a catch-22: the documents that they must present to immigration officials—bank records, paycheck stubs, and contracts in their own names—are often challenging for undocumented people to obtain. In this book, Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes how undocumented immigrants and the attorneys and paralegals who represent them attempt to surmount this and other documentary challenges. Based on four years of fieldwork and volunteer work in the legal services department of an immigrant-serving nonprofit and in-depth interviews with those seeking status, On the Record explores these complex dynamics by taking seriously both documents themselves and the legal craft that has developed around their use.

Susan Bibler Coutin is Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine. She is author of Legalizing Moves: Salvadoran Immigrants’ Struggle for U.S. Residency and coauthor of Documenting Impossible Realities: Ethnography, Memory, and the As If.

Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations

Introduction
1. Securitization, Humanitarianism, and Plenary Power
2. Routine Exceptionality
3. Legal Craft
4. Otro mundo es posible (Another World Is Possible)
Conclusion: Documenting Back

Notes
References
Index