Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America Contributor(s): Gonzales, Roberto G. (Author), Vargas, Jose Antonio (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 0520287258 ISBN-13: 9780520287259 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $94.05 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: December 2015 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Sociology - General - Social Science | Children's Studies |
Dewey: 305.230 |
LCCN: 2015022454 |
Physical Information: 1" H x 6" W x 9.1" (1.15 lbs) 320 pages |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: "My world seems upside down. I have grown up but I feel like I'm moving backward. And I can't do anything about it." -Esperanza Over two million of the nation's eleven million undocumented immigrants have lived in the United States since childhood. Due to a broken immigration system, they grow up to uncertain futures. In Lives in Limbo, Roberto G. Gonzales introduces us to two groups: the college-goers, like Ricardo, who had good grades and a strong network of community support that propelled him to college and DREAM Act organizing but still landed in a factory job a few short years after graduation, and the early-exiters, like Gabriel, who failed to make meaningful connections in high school and started navigating dead-end jobs, immigration checkpoints, and a world narrowly circumscribed by legal limitations. This vivid ethnography explores why highly educated undocumented youth share similar work and life outcomes with their less-educated peers, despite the fact that higher education is touted as the path to integration and success in America. Mining the results of an extraordinary twelve-year study that followed 150 undocumented young adults in Los Angeles, Lives in Limbo exposes the failures of a system that integrates children into K-12 schools but ultimately denies them the rewards of their labor. |