Shifting Boundaries: Immigrant Youth Negotiating National, State, and Small-Town Politics

Paul N. McDaniel of Kennesaw State University reviews Shifting Boundaries: Immigrant Youth Negotiating National, State, and Small-Town Politics by Alexis Silver. In this book, Silver examines the experiences of immigrant youth growing up in a small town in North Carolina—a state that experienced unprecedented growth in its Latino population in the 1990s and 2000s, and where aggressive anti-immigration policies have been enforced. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interview data, she finds that contradictory policies at the national, state, and local levels interact to create a complex environment through which the youth must navigate. From heritage-based school programs to state-wide bans on attending community college; from the failure of the DREAM Act to the rescinding of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA); each layer represents profound implications for undocumented Latino youth. Silver exposes the constantly changing pathways that shape their journeys into early adulthood—and the profound resilience that they develop along the way.

Read the book review at https://doi.org/10.1177/0197918318818534.