Legal Passing

Reviews / Votes

"Legal Passing helps make sense of not only a fragmented U.S. immigration system but also this system's diverse effects on the undocumented immigrants subject to its varied laws and policies. Through rigorous data collection, a sharp sociological imagination, and lucid prose, Angela S. Garcia breaks new ground by revealing the insidious ways immigration measures simultaneously integrate and marginalize millions of undocumented immigrants and their U.S.-citizen family members from the country they call home." * Ethnic and Racial Studies * "...a real achievement and an outstanding contribution to law and society scholarship. As a study of legal consciousness, the book reveals how migrants perform legality through quotidian and embodied practices. It elucidates the uneven costs that "illegality" imposes across different geographies, demonstrating how space and place shape the effects of immigration laws, and how immigration laws also shape space and place. Eminently readable, Legal Passing will engage undergraduate and graduate students, as well as an inter-disciplinary community of socio-legal scholars." * Law & Society * "[Legal Passing] maintains an explicit and thoughtful focus throughout on the complex, messy, and often unanticipated consequences of law." * Social Forces * "Angela Garcia's excellent first book addresses [their experiences and]. . . . makes clear that undocumented immigrants are hardly living in the shadows." * American Journal of Sociology *