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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.
"This compelling book takes records seriously, both as process and product, in a way that I have yet to see across the social science immigration literature. Coutin weaves vivid narratives with insights gained from deep and thoughtful fieldwork to illuminate how undocumented immigrants navigate the bureaucratic arm of a state committed to their forced removal."—Angela S. García, author of
Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law "
On the Record incisively explores how service providers mediate a highly repressive legal regime to effectively advocate for immigrant clients. Coutin's timely analysis of plenary doctrine transcends 'law on the books' versus 'law in practice' approaches to legal frameworks, showing how they are dynamic, subjective, and intertwined."—Ruth Gomberg, author of
Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed-Status Families "In On the Record, Coutin provides readers with deep, critical insights into how purportedly 'undocumented' residents of the United States, and others without citizenship, use documents not only to advance their legal claims, but also to define themselves, assert their expertise, and speak back to those in power."—Jennifer M. Chacón, coauthor of Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law
186 pp.6 x 9Illus: 5 b/w figures
9780520422827$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Aug 2025