Dear Sociology 117M students,
After three years of teaching a sociology course on U.S. immigration enforcement and deportations, I've had time to read some of the rapidly growing literature on immigrant exclusion and inclusion. The syllabus covered a range of topics, mainly via journal articles (see an expanded list that I periodically update here), current events news items, public policy reports and briefs, and government reports.
In order to keep up with a large number of new books on the consequences of living in limbo, I turn to the original sources as well as author interviews on podcasts. Below are links to NewBooksNetwork.Com interviews with authors discussing their work. You will recognize some of these authors from class assignments. The interviews offer valuable insights into the high and myriad costs of ongoing commitments to exclusion.
As a UCSC student, you also have access to electronic books. Below is my extensive list of immigration enforcement and migration policy citations courtesy of UCSC library resources.
If you're interested in books that are free to anyone with an internet connection, I've marked several such titles as OPEN ACCESS in the above list; such as one of my favorites from 2020: Of Love and Papers by Professor Laura E. Enriquez.
Between the syllabus, podcasts below, and these e-books, you'll be sure to find lots to read.
Be well,
Professor Pedroza
foto: ijuanathesaurus shelves w/ books by year of publication (not pictured: office books)
The links below redirect to the New Books Network website. The episodes listed cover U.S. immigration enforcement and related policies, immigrant exclusion/inclusion, U.S. borderlands, and resistance movements (listed chronologically by date of interview):
10 books with a central focus on U.S. immigration enforcement in bold
2009 Interview
Tempo, Carl J. Bon. Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War. Princeton University Press, 2008. Interview on 02/12/2009
2011 interview
Cohen, Elizabeth F. Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Interview on 05/20/2011
2013 interviews
Andersen, Kristi. New Immigrant Communities: Finding a Place in Local Politics. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010. Interview on 02/22/2013
Skogberg, Cari Lee. Shaping the Immigration Debate: Contending Civil Societies on the US-Mexico border. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011. Interview on 06/10/2013
Gleeson, Shannon. Conflicting Commitments: The Politics of Enforcing Immigrant Worker Rights in San Jose and Houston. Cornell University Press, 2012. Interview on 06/17/2013
Kretsedemas, Philip. The Immigration Crucible: Transforming Race, Nation, and the Limits of the Law. Columbia University Press, 2012. Interview on 09/16/2013
2014 interviews
Masuoka, Natalie, and Jane Junn. The Politics of Belonging: Race, Public Opinion, and Immigration. University of Chicago Press, 2013. Interview on 01/06/2014
Carens, Joseph. The Ethics of Immigration. Oxford University Press, 2013. Interview on 02/01/2014
Chávez, Karma R. Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities. University of Illinois Press, 2013. Interview on 03/10/2014
Brennan, Denise. Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States. Duke University Press, 2014. Interview on 05/20/2014
2015 interviews
DeSipio, Louis, and Rodolfo O. de la Garza. U.S. Immigration in the Twenty-First Century: Making Americans, Remaking America. Westview Press, 2015. Interview on 04/12/2015
Cadava, Geraldo L. Standing on Common Ground: The Making of a Sunbelt Borderland. Harvard University Press. Interview on 06/14/2015
Rosas, Ana Elizabeth. Abrazando el Espíritu: Bracero Families Confront the US-Mexico Border. University of California Press, 2014. Interview on 06/20/2015
Hsu, Madeline Y. The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril became the Model Minority. Princeton University Press, 2017. Interview on 06/23/2015
Molina, Natalia. How Race is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts. University of California Press, 2014. Interview on 09/02/2015
Weise, Julie M. Corazón de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South since 1910. University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Interview on 12/17/2015
2016 interviews
Flores, Lori A. Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement. Yale University Press, 2016. Interview on 03/10/2016
Zimmer, Kenyon. Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America. University of Illinois Press, 2015. Interview on 06/16/2016
Gündogdu, Ayten. Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants. Oxford University Press, 2014. Interview on 06/26/2016
Tang, Eric. Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the New York City Hyperghetto. Temple University Press, 2015. Interview on 06/28/2015
Wald, Sarah D. The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl. University of Washington Press, 2016. Interview on 06/28/2016
Mollenkopf, John, & Pastor, Manuel (Eds.). (2016). Unsettled Americans: Metropolitan Context and Civic Leadership for Immigrant Integration. Cornell University Press. Interview on 07/27/2016
Hernández, Kelly Lytle. Migra!: A History of the U.S. Border Patrol. University of California Press, 2010. Interview on 08/23/2016
Loza, Mireya. Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom. University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Interview on 09/12/2026
2017 interviews
Law, Anna O. The Immigration Battle in American Courts. Cambridge University Press, 2010. Interview on 02/13/2017
Silber Mohamed, Heather. The New Americans? Immigration, Protest, and the Politics of Latino Identity. University Press of Kansas, 2017. Interview on 07/31/2017
2018 interviews
Zepeda-Millán, Cris. (2017). Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism. Cambridge University Press. Interview on 01/22/2018
Alvarado, Karina Oliva, Alicia Ivonne Estrada, and Ester E. Hernández, eds. U.S. Central Americans: Reconstructing Memories, Struggles, and Communities of Resistance. University of Arizona Press, 2017. Interview on 03/16/2018
Lim, Julian. Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Interview on 03/30/2018
Patiño, Jimmy. Raza Sí, Migra No: Chicano Movement Struggles for Immigrant Rights in San Diego. University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Interview on 04/05/2018
Lew-Williams, B. (2018). The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard University Press. Interview on 05/28/2018
Cohen, Elizabeth F. The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice. Cambridge University Press, 2018. Interview on 06/29/2018 plus 2nd interview on 08/27/2018
Benton-Cohen, Katherine. Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy. Harvard University Press, 2018. Interview on 07/30/2018
Minian, Ana Raquel. Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration. Harvard University Press, 2018. Interview on 08/22/2018
Rael, Ronald. Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. University of California Press, 2017. Interview on 11/16/2018
Rensink, Brenden W. Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Texas A&M University Press, 2018. Interview on 12/13/2018
2019 interviews
Hirota, Hidetaka. Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy. Oxford University Press, 2016. Interview on 01/23/2019
Longo, Matthew. The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11. Cambridge University Press, 2017. Interview on 02/04/2019
Hahner, Leslie A. To Become an American: Immigrants and Americanization Campaigns of the Early Twentieth Century. Michigan State University Press, 2017. Interview on 04/05/2019
Bui, Long T. Returns of War: South Vietnam and the Price of Refugee Memory. New York University Press, 2018. Interview on 06/07/2019
Bejarano, Carolina Alonso, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein. Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science. Duke University Press, 2019. Interview on 07/01/2019
Jones, Jennifer A. The Browning of the New South. University of Chicago Press, 2019. Interview on 07/24/2019
Carter, Niambi Michele. American While Black: African Americans, Immigration, and the Limits of Citizenship. Oxford University Press, USA, 2019. Interview on 08/28/2019
Chávez-García, Miroslava. Migrant Longing: Letter Writing Across the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Interview on 09/17/2019
Cohen, Elizabeth F., & Cyril Ghosh. Citizenship. Polity Press, 2019. Interview on 10/16/2019
Guerrero, Perla M. Nuevo South: Latinas/os, Asians, and the Remaking of Place. University of Texas Press, 2017. Interview on 10/31/2019
Kang, S. Deborah. The INS on the Line: Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954. Oxford University Press, 2016. Interview on 11/11/2029
Lopez, William D. Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019. Interview on 12/09/2019
Wadhia, Shoba Sivaprasad. Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump. New York University Press, 2019. Interview on 12/30/2019
2020 interviews
Bihler, Lori Gemeiner. Cities of Refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945. State University of New York (SUNY) Press, 2018. Interview on 01/16/2020
Hong, Jane H. Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion. University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Interview on 01/17/2020
Besteman, Catherine. Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine. Duke University Press, 2016. Interview on 01/21/2020
Denvir, Daniel. All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It. Verso, 2020. Interview on 01/27/2020
García, Mario T. Father Luis Olivares, a Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles. University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Interview 02/11/2020
Reed-Sandoval, Amy. Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice. Oxford University Press, 2019. Interview on 03/20/2020
Weber, John. From South Texas to the Nation: The Exploitation of Mexican Labor in the Twentieth Century. University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Interview on 03/20/2020
Yang, Jia Lynn. One Mighty and Irresistible Tide the Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965. W. W. Norton, 2020. Interview on 05/14/2020
Dolmage, Jay Timothy. Disabled Upon Arrival: Eugenics, Immigration, and the Construction of Race and Disability. The Ohio State University Press, 2018. Interview on 06/08/2020
McGreevey, Robert C. Borderline Citizens: The United States, Puerto Rico, and the Politics of Colonial Migration. Cornell University Press, 2018. Interview 06/15/2020
Goodman, Adam. The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton University Press, 2020. Interview on 06/29/2020
García-Colón, Ismael. Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire: Puerto Rican Workers on U.S. Farms. University of California Press, 2020. Interview on 07/10/2020
Escudero, Kevin. Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth's Political Activism under the Law. New York University Press, 2020. Interview on 07/20/2020
Martínez-Matsuda, Verónica. Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. Interview on 07/27/2020
Olivas, Michael A. Perchance to DREAM: A Legal and Political History of the DREAM Act and DACA. New York University Press, 2020. Interview on 08/03/2020
Kraut, Julia Rose. Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2020. Interview on 08/17/2020
Quraishi, Uzma. Quraishi, Uzma. Redefining the Immigrant South: Indian and Pakistani Immigration to Houston During the Cold War. University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Interview on 08/21/2020
Medoff, Rafael. The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust. University of Nebraska Press, 2019. Interview on 08/31/2020
Ramirez, Mark D., and David A. M. Peterson. Ignored Racism: White Animus Toward Latinos. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Interview on 09/15/2020
Gillum, Rachel M. Muslims in a Post-9/11 America: A Survey of Attitudes and Beliefs and Their Implications for U.S. National Security Policy. University of Michigan Press, 2018. Interview on 09/23/2020
Parekh, Serena. No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis. Oxford University Press, 2020. Interview on 10/01/2020
Cox, Adam B., and Cristina M. Rodríguez. The President and Immigration Law. Oxford University Press, 2020. Interview on 10/14/2020
Espejo, Paulina Ochoa. On Borders: Territories, Legitimacy, and the Rights of Place. Oxford University Press, 2020. Interview on 11/20/2020
Kommentare