Legal Phantoms

"Legal Phantoms is the rare book that captures both the structural and human costs imposed by America's patchwork approach to immigration. It offers richly faceted analysis of how DACA has operated, its relationship to racist crimmigration regimes, and the tolls of temporariness on recipients. This is urgent reading for anyone who is concerned with immigrant precarity."
—Elizabeth Cohen, Boston University
"Impressive in focus and scope and meticulously researched, Legal Phantoms renders accessible the mesmerizing complexity of the immigration system that spews temporality into immigrants' lives while humanizing those who are entangled in its web. This superb team of scholars has crafted a lasting, indispensable resource for scholars, policy makers, and anyone who cares about immigrants today."
—Cecilia Menjívar, University of California-Los Angeles
"As policy questions around migration remain central to the American political debate, [Legal Phantoms] bring[s] insight into the intricacies of migration regimes, the everyday experiences of migrants and refugees that navigate them, and the activists and community organizations that advocate for their rights."
—Matthew Canfield and Smoki Musaraj, Political and Legal Anthropologyl Review
"Legal Phantoms is a must read for all people interested in better understanding the historical and contemporary forces behind anti-immigration movements and the contributions of immigrants and their families to local communities and society at large. In the face of extreme anti-immigrant distrust and hate across the country—from border communities to mainstream America to the White House—Legal Phantoms offers positive transformation and progress toward social change, equality, and justice in difficult and uncertain times.... Highly recommended."
—M. G. Urbina, CHOICE
"Showing just how political children's lives are, and how important it is to take them seriously as political actors if we truly wish to understand their place in society, remains one of the main tenants of critical childhood and children's rights scholarship. Luttrell Rowland's book is an important contribution to this body of work, as it seeks to expose and understand the various ways in which state power operates by listening to two different groups of children whose lives are characterized by structural violence, poverty, and work."—Edward van Daalen, Law & Society Review
"Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law serves as a stark reminder that policy choices and legal regulations are not abstract; they have profound consequences on individuals' lives, families, societies, and even transcend borders. The authors, drawing on their legal expertise and extensive fieldwork, critique the flawed immigration system in the US, a system that is not unique to this country."—Itır Aladağ Görentaş, Border Criminologies