Lawyering an Uncertain Cause
134 pages
English

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134 pages
English

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Description

Each year, a number of youth who migrate alone and clandestinely from China to the United States are apprehended, placed in removal proceedings, and designated as unaccompanied minors. These young migrants represent only a fraction of all unaccompanied minors in the US, yet they are in many ways depicted as a preeminent professional and moral cause by immigration advocates.

In and beyond the legal realm, the figure of the "vulnerable Chinese child" powerfully legitimates legal claims and attorneys' efforts. At the same time, the transnational ambitions and obligations of Chinese youth implicitly unsettle this figure. Youths' maneuvers not only belie attorneys' reliance on racialized discourses of childhood and the Chinese family, but they also reveal more broad uncertainties around legal frameworks, institutional practices, health and labor rights—and cause lawyering itself.

Based on three years of fieldwork across the United States, Lawyering an Uncertain Cause is a novel study of the complex and often contradictory rights, responsibilities, and expectations that motivate global youth and the American attorneys who work on their behalf.

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Publié par
Date de parution 04 septembre 2018
Nombre de lectures 0
EAN13 9780826522108
Langue English
Poids de l'ouvrage 4 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1000€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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LAWYERING AN UNCERTAIN CAUSE
LAWYERING AN UNCERTAIN CAUSE
Immigration Advocacy and Chinese Youth in the U.S.
MICHELE STATZ
Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville
© 2018 by Vanderbilt University Press
Nashville, Tennessee 37235
All rights reserved
First printing 2018
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
LC control number 2017042894
LC classification number KF337.5 I45 .S73 2018
Dewey classification number 342.7308/3
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2017042894
ISBN 978-0-8265-2208-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2209-2 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8265-2210-8 (ebook)
For my parents
CONTENTS
Acronyms
Acknowledgments
Preface: “The future doesn’t come to me”
1. “I didn’t think it was in her best interest”
2. The Cause in Theory and in Practice
3. A Poetic and Practical Bridge: Reflections on Youth Mobility
4. Selecting Identity, Rejecting Context: “The Child in Her Context” and Collapsing the Cause
5. The Spectacular Case
6. Limited Relief
7. Reflections on Instability and Inconclusiveness
Notes
References
Index
ACRONYMS
BIA Board of Immigration Appeals BID Best Interests Determination CAT United Nations Convention Against Torture CAPTA Child Abuse Prevention Treatment Act CBP US Customs and Border Patrol CNCS Corporation for National and Community Service CPC Country of Particular Concern CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child DACA Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals DCFS Department of Child and Family Services DHS Department of Homeland Security DOJ Department of Justice DUCS ORR’s Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services EOIR Executive Office for Immigration Review ESL English as a Second Language GAL Guardian ad Litem HHS Department of Health and Human Services ICE US Immigration and Customs Enforcement IJ Immigration Judge INA Immigration and Nationality Act INS US Immigration and Naturalization Service LPR Lawful Permanent Resident NGO Non-governmental Organization ORR Office of Refugee Resettlement SIJ Special Immigrant Juvenile Status SNAP Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program SSI Supplemental Security Income TANF Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TVPRA William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act UAC Unaccompanied Alien Child UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UCA Unaccompanied Children’s Alliance UMP Undocumented Migration Project UNODC United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime USCIS US Citizenship and Immigration Services VAWA Violence Against Women Act VTVPA Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act WIC Women, Infants, and Children
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book only exists because of the extraordinary generosity and insights of others.
I am grateful to everyone who participated in my research. These individuals entrusted me with their personal hopes and professional frustrations, as well as with their complex and often very intimate life stories. They also shared their time, networks, and knowledge. With humility and deep respect, I have done my best to weave together these expert perspectives. I owe special thanks in particular to Young Sullivan, John Sullivan, Hannah Sibiski, Maria Woltjen, Jajah Wu, and those friends (and friends of friends) who provided shelter, food, and helpful directions on so many research stops.
At the University of Washington, I had the incredible gift of attentive, stimulating, and truly caring mentors. My warmest thanks to Arzoo Osanloo, who in the spirit of her father’s academic pursuits always “left the lights on” for me. It remains my heartfelt goal to do the same for my students. I similarly had the good fortune to have Roberto Gonzales’s wise perspective and unwavering support. My appreciation extends to George Lovell, who introduced me to and exemplifies the dynamic and truly collegial world of law and society studies. And finally, I offer my deepest thanks to Steve Harrell. I am a better anthropologist because of his careful attention, high standards, and trustworthy mentorship. This book is written to him.
I am steadfastly grateful for Shanna Scherbinske, Kenny Robinson, Stephanie Maher, Marlaine Figueroa Gray, Jennifer Carroll, and Anne Greenleaf. Special thanks are due Steve Herbert, who has always been a source of trusted counsel, and Mimi Kahn, who always made us feel like family. My life and work have been enriched by the d’Ambruoso family, the Sanfords, the beautiful women of the Double P, Josh Clark, Amy Burke, Kari Smalkoski, Lisa Pruitt, Kathy Letourneau, and Pastor Betty Landis and the good people of St. Paul’s. My deep appreciation extends to Lauren Heidbrink, a trusted collaborator and friend. At the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, I thank Paula Termuhlen, Angie Slattery, and Mustafa al’Absi for their good energy and support. My editor at the Vanderbilt University Press, Beth Kressel-Itkin, guided this work to production with a sincere commitment and immense care. Two anonymous reviewers, as well as Lauren Heidbrink and Kate Kirchman, offered enthusiastic and keen insights that profoundly enhanced this book. Any mistakes or oversights are mine alone.
This project received generous financial support from the US National Science Foundation’s Law and Social Sciences and Cultural Anthropology Programs, the American Association of University Women, and the Department of Anthropology and the Graduate School at the University of Washington. It also benefited greatly from the helpful insights of those at the Chicago Area Law and Society Writing Seminar at the American Bar Foundation and from workshops hosted by the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology, the Law and Society Association, and the West Coast Law and Society Retreat. Some of the material in Chapter 3 appeared in an article in Political and Legal Anthropology Review .
Finally, my thanks to my family. I am grateful to Steve and Mahnaz Warner for their warmth and good humor. My sister, Jennifer, has always guided me with her trustworthy perspective and love. The kindness and confidence of Kathleen and William Statz led me to this journey and carried me through it. As a parent, I will feel lucky if I can match even a fraction of their love and selflessness.
This book could not exist without Bijan Warner, who more than anyone has exemplified the courageous, joyful, and necessary pursuit of knowledge. Since our drive from Chicago to Seattle in 2008, he has been my wise counsel and a source of laughter, music, strength, and growth. He is my truest friend.
This book is also for Zona. I love you.
PREFACE
“The future doesn’t come to me”
The future doesn’t come to me.” I listened as Ruolan described her life in China and some of her reasons for leaving. Now twenty-two, Ruolan had migrated alone and clandestinely to the United States from Fujian Province, on China’s southeast coast, when she was sixteen. Like the other Fujianese youth I spoke with for my research, she had been apprehended upon arrival and identified as an Unaccompanied Alien Child, or UAC. She was put in a federal detention center and placed in removal proceedings, also like the others.
When we met, Ruolan worked in a Chinese restaurant in a small town in Wisconsin. This was her odd day off, so we met together at a nearby café to talk. As with most of my fieldwork sites, the space outside our window was an unexpected yet in many ways commonplace intersection of experience: Amish and Latinx 1 community members examined dishes at a garage sale across the highway. Tourists drove past in luxury cars on their way to an outdoor theater performance. Above the café’s parking lot a billboard read, God says . . . He loves us all! and beyond it, long rows of corn flashed green and grey in the midday sun.
As we sat together, Ruolan talked expertly about the birth-planning policy in China and about changing norms of childhood and parental responsibility. She told me about growing wealth and internal migration and property values and educational policies. Switching often between Chinese and English, she described how her hometown had experienced neither the flush of development nor the effects of many state programs; still, she added, it had changed. “You used to have everything you want, everything you need, [like] everyone else in your village. But now, you know, you can’t even buy a house because the growth of the city, the growth of the economy, land becomes more expensive . . .” She looked out the window and shrugged.
“The future doesn’t come to me,” Ruolan stated, and from her presence in Wisconsin one could perhaps extend the sequence: so I have to go and get it .
Like Ruolan, the other Fujianese youth who participated in my research offered distinct and distinctly expert understandings of transnational mobility. Their reflections accordingly reveal that what is often briskly categorized as “Fujianese migration” is at once individual and relative. It is differentiated by political and economic policies, regional histories, intersecting and often conflicting intergenerational expectations, and deeply felt experiences of marginalization. A young person’s sense of “having to” migrate may further arise from individual responsibilities, persistent ambitions, hidden suffering, the lure and familiarity of established migration networks, and more. Indeed, there is always more, particularly as youths’ multiple journeys—a

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