On the Record

Overview & Synopsis

Immigrant residents seeking legal status in the United States face a catch-22: the documents that they must present to immigration officials—bank records, paycheck stubs, and contracts in their own names—are often challenging for undocumented people to obtain. In this book, Susan Bibler Coutin analyzes how undocumented immigrants and their legal representatives attempt to surmount documentary challenges. Based on four years of fieldwork and volunteer work in the legal services department of an immigrant-serving nonprofit and in-depth interviews with those seeking status, On the Record explores these complex dynamics by taking seriously both documents themselves and the legal craft that has developed around their use. “Weaves vivid narratives with insights gained from deep and thoughtful fieldwork to illuminate how undocumented immigrants navigate the bureaucratic arm of a state committed to their forced removal.” — ANGELA S. GARCÍA, author of Legal Passing: Navigating Undocumented Life and Local Immigration Law “Offers critical insights into how purportedly ‘undocumented’ residents of the United States, and others without citizenship, use documents to define themselves, assert their expertise, and speak back to those in power.” — JENNIFER M. CHACÓN, coauthor of Legal Phantoms: Executive Action and the Haunting Failures of Immigration Law “Incisively explores how service providers mediate a highly repressive legal regime. Coutin’s timely analysis of plenary doctrine transcends ‘law on the books’ versus ‘law in practice’ approaches to legal frameworks, showing how they are dynamic, subjective, and intertwined.” — RUTH GOMBERG, author of Becoming Legal: Immigration Law and Mixed-Status Families