Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States takes readers on a journey through the history of the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the United States in the twenty-first century. The book follows the documentation trail of undocumented youth activists spanning over two decades of organizing. Each chapter carefully analyzes key organizing strategies used by undocumented youth to produce direct forms of activism that expose and critique repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained, and imagined as “aliens” or “illegal.”

Rafael A. Martínez, an undocu-scholar, intricately weaves his lived experience into this deeply insightful exploration. Martínez’s interdisciplinary approach will engage scholars and readers alike, resonating with disciplines such as history, American studies, Chicana and Chicano studies, and borderlands studies.
Illegalized shows that undocumented youth and their activism represent a disruption to the social imaginary of the U.S. nation-state and its figurative and physical borders. It invites readers to explore how undocumented youth activists changed the way immigrant rights are discussed in the United States today.

Rafael A. Martínez is an assistant professor in the Southwest Borderlands Initiative at Arizona State University whose work focuses on immigrant rights, mixed-status families, and Latinx cultural and historical productions in the Southwest borderlands.

“The methodology of undocumenting activism is an important one for scholars of immigration and social movements. This book does important work undocumenting what undocumented youth activists did, why they did it, and what it means for all of us in the Americas.”—Karma R. Chávez, author of The Borders of AIDS: Race, Quarantine, and Resistance

“Rafael Martínez’s Illegalized offers a powerfully written, methodically researched, and compellingly argued contribution to the growing literature on immigrant youth’s activism. Martínez compellingly tells the story of multiple undocumented youth movements through a focus on the question of how one might utilize academic approaches to document a movement led by those who are undocumented. A much-needed and immensely timely addition, Illegalized is a must-read for scholars, activists, and scholar-­activists alike.”—Kevin Escudero, author of Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism under the Law— -