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Undocumented

How Immigration Became Illegal

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Undocumented

By: Aviva Chomsky
Narrated by: Frankie Corzo
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About this listen

A longtime immigration activist explores what it means to be an undocumented American—revealing the ever-shifting nature of status in the U.S.—in this “impassioned and well-reported case for change (New York Times)

In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.

Blending history with human drama, Chomsky explores what it means to be undocumented in a legal, social, economic, and historical context. The result is a powerful testament of the complex, contradictory, and ever-shifting nature of status in America.

©2017 Aviva Chomsky (P)2017 Beacon Press
Americas Emigration & Immigration Latin American Studies Law Political Science

Critic Reviews

“An impassioned and well-reported case for change . . . Chomsky ably lays out just how brutal life can be for the undocumented.” New York Times Sunday Book Review

“Undocumented adds smart, new, and provocative scholarship to the immigration debate.” Los Angeles Review of Books

“From the first page to the last, Undocumented is to immigrant rights movement what We Charge Genocide was to the African American movement—a dossier that sets aside quibbles about whether immigrants contribute to the US economy or not, whether immigrants speak English or not and gives flesh to the slogan, 'Immigrant rights are human rights.' A clear-headed and smart book that locates the struggles of immigrants squarely in the struggles for human rights. Nothing less is to be accommodated, and much more is to be imagined.” —Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

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An aspect of North America described very well.

If you’re concerned about the state of the Western developed democracy you’re living in, particularly if you’re undocumented yourself, or know someone who is, this book will really enlighten you, and probably benefit you in other ways. This review is for the audiobook but I intend to get the text version also, for the richest informative experience. Other books on this subject, even one that doesn’t appear to sympathise with undocumented folks, are on my wish list.

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