Lawyering an Uncertain Cause

Immigration Advocacy and Chinese Youth in the U.S.
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8265-2208-5
Verlag: Vanderbilt University Press

Buch, Englisch, 257 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Öffentliches Recht Staats- und Verfassungsrecht Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Rechtswissenschaften Bürgerliches Recht Familienrecht Sorgerecht, fam. Namensrecht, Abstammung

Über Autor(innen)

Michele Statz is an anthropologist of law at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth. She is a creator and co-editor of the website Youth Circulations.