Engage and Evade: How Latino Immigrant Families Manage Surveillance in Everyday Life

by Asad L. Asad

How everyday forms of surveillance threaten undocumented immigrants—but also offer them hope for societal inclusion

Some eleven million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, carving out lives amid a growing web of surveillance that threatens their and their families’ societal presence. Engage and Evade examines how undocumented immigrants navigate complex dynamics of surveillance and punishment, providing an extraordinary portrait of fear and hope on the margins.

Asad L. Asad brings together a wealth of research, from intimate interviews and detailed surveys with Latino immigrants and their families to up-close observations of immigration officials, to offer a rare perspective on the surveillance that undocumented immigrants encounter daily. He describes how and why these immigrants engage with various institutions—for example, by registering with the IRS or enrolling their kids in public health insurance programs—that the government can use to monitor them. This institutional surveillance feels both necessary and coercive, with undocumented immigrants worrying that evasion will give the government cause to deport them. Even so, they hope their record of engagement will one day help them prove to immigration officials that they deserve societal membership. Asad uncovers how these efforts do not always meet immigration officials’ high expectations, and how surveillance is as much about the threat of exclusion as the promise of inclusion.

Calling attention to the fraught lives of undocumented immigrants and their families, this superbly written and compassionately argued book proposes wide-ranging, actionable reforms to achieve societal inclusion for all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sociology

331 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 13, 2023

Reviews

[Wisconsin Alumni]

Asad Asad ’11
Author

From the author:
Some 11 million undocumented immigrants reside in the United States, carving out lives amid a growing web of surveillance that threatens their and their families’ societal presence. Engage and Evade examines how undocumented immigrants navigate complex dynamics of surveillance and punishment, providing an extraordinary portrait of fear and hope on the margins.

Asad L. Asad brings together a wealth of research, from intimate interviews and detailed surveys with Latino immigrants and their families to up-close observations of immigration officials, to offer rare perspective on the surveillance that undocumented immigrants encounter daily. He describes how and why these immigrants engage with various institutions — for example, by registering with the IRS or enrolling their kids in public health insurance programs — that the government can use to monitor them. This institutional surveillance feels both necessary and coercive, with undocumented immigrants worrying that evasion will give the government cause to deport them. Even so, they hope their record of engagement will one day help them prove to immigration officials that they deserve societal membership. Asad uncovers how these efforts do not always meet immigration officials’ high expectations, and how surveillance is as much about the threat of exclusion as the promise of inclusion.

Calling attention to the fraught lives of undocumented immigrants and their families, this superbly written and compassionately argued book proposes wide-ranging, actionable reforms to achieve societal inclusion for all.

[Mihr Mehrzad · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an example of classic sociological research. The main point of the book is that undocumented immigrants do not simply hide from view because of their legal status, but instead they seek out interactions with surveilling institutions (police, schools, healthcare....) in hopes of securing a pathway to legalization. The argument gets repeated a lot throughout the book, probably mainly because it is supposed to be very academic. But that, coupled with the use of jargon, makes it a bit dry, which sorta undercuts from its message.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply researched and beautifully written book! I learned so much about what it means to be an undocumented immigrant in the United States—and how policymakers can make changes to institutions to make life better for immigrants and the families.