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Enduring Illegality chronicles the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants who have spent decades in the United States waiting for a path to legalization that has yet to arrive. Based on longitudinal fieldwork, this book traces how people who migrated as young adults have transitioned into middle age still undocumented, caught in a state of legal and temporal suspension. Focusing on parents who would have qualified for the failed Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, Angela S. García argues that illegality is not only a legal condition but a temporal one, produced and reproduced through decades of waiting for reform. Even in the face of such exclusion, migrants sustain lives, labor, and care across borders. Enduring Illegality offers a critical account of how the state uses time as a mechanism of immigration control, structuring lives and inequality in ways that outlast any single policy or presidential administration.
"Angela García offers a nuanced answer to the understudied question of what it means to navigate middle age while undocumented. She does a wonderful job situating her interview data in the broader political, social, and legal context."—Jennifer M. Chacón, coauthor of Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law
"Enduring Illegality deploys a life course lens to examine how adult immigrants experience 'illegality' over time. Focusing on middle-age immigrants who care for their children in the United States and their parents in Mexico, García underscores the importance of time and waiting, a tool of immigration control baked into the system and a condition that many immigrants experience around the globe."—Cecilia Menjívar, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles
"García offers a profound look at the toll of perpetual waiting. By examining the experiences of undocumented parents who have lived in the United States for decades without relief, Enduring Illegality reveals how the state weaponizes time itself. A powerful testament to the lives sustained and the futures deferred by a broken system."—Roberto G. Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America
"Enduring Illegality is a welcome contribution to the literature on immigrant experiences, and its rich accounts of endurance demonstrate the value of life course approaches and shed light on the heterogeneity of immigrant communities."—Susan Bibler Coutin, Professor of Criminology, Law, and Society, University of California, Irvine