Abstract
Contrasting the dominant narrative that undocumented people living in the United States hide out of view and do not engage with the government, Engage and Evade discusses the more realistic narrative of selective engagement with every day and structural surveillance in the United States. Asad rotates between sociological theories and political science discussions of law and policies to provide detailed accounts of selective surveillance within the US immigration system. Asad questions current understandings and furthers counternarrative scholarship in public policy and administration. This book’s account of the US immigration policies and structure helps to place the intricacies of the US immigration policies in a more historical, cultural, political and social context that gives us a better opportunity to question our common knowledge of the interactions between migrants and the system.
Asad discusses the sociopolitical dynamics of surveillance for undocumented parents while placing it all within the historical context of the US immigration policies, such as the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), and the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). These laws, policies and regulations have laid the groundwork for surveillance, punishments and rewards.
Asad uses the term ‘selective surveillance’ to display the way undocumented parents in Dallas, TX navigate the intricacies of regulatory and service-oriented surveillance; this surveillance ‘is nonetheless mutual’ (p. 18) because it is as much about the fear of exclusion as it is the hope for inclusion. Due to being undocumented, the parents will stay out of the way of regulatory surveillance, such as police or ICE; yet, as parents, participating in service-oriented surveillance helps keep records that they are symbolically ‘good, competent parents’ that provide for their citizen children (p. 31).
Through interviews and ethnography, as well as survey data, Asad brings a unique set of narratives to the forefront that showcases the racialised and classist immigration system in the United States. Asad reveals the way an undocumented parent weighs the social roles and responsibilities with their political status and spotlights the inequality within the immigration system. The drawback of this book is also one of its strengths, Asad looks at the complex dynamics of undocumented parents of citizen children. This limitation cannot provide clarity for those with other social roles and responsibilities in other states and more engagement and discussion with the role of surveillance and social responsibilities should be explored.
Scholars of public administration and policy will find Engage and Evade beneficial as it investigates the continuing immigration issue in the United States. Through the inherent inequities and paradoxes within the structure of the US immigration system, this book challenges common understandings and gives evidence to a unique counternarrative through which undocumented migrants contend: the social, political, historical and racial factors. This account helps us better understand the ways in which migrants interact with and within systems of policy and can provide cultural competency and a better social justice approach to researching immigration in public administration.