Enduring Illegality: Time and the State of Waiting in Undocumented Middle Life - Softcover

García, Angela S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520397487 ISBN 13: 9780520397484

Publisher: University of California Press, 2026

Synopsis

Enduring Illegality chronicles the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants who have spent decades in the United States waiting for a path to legalization that has yet to arrive. Based on longitudinal fieldwork, this book traces how people who migrated as young adults have transitioned into middle age still undocumented, caught in a state of legal and temporal suspension. Focusing on parents who would have qualified for the failed Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) program, Angela S. García argues that illegality is not only a legal condition but a temporal one, produced and reproduced through decades of waiting for reform. Even in the face of such exclusion, migrants sustain lives, labor, and care across borders. Enduring Illegality offers a critical account of how the state uses time as a mechanism of immigration control, structuring lives and inequality in ways that outlast any single policy or presidential administration.
 

About this title

About the Author

Angela S. García is Associate Professor in the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago and author of Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520397487
• ISBN 13: 9780520397484
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 281