Drawing upon the idea of the “impossible activism” of undocumented immigrants, Amalia Pallares argues that those without legal status defy this “impossible” context by relying on the politicization of the family to challenge justice within contemporary immigration law. The culmination of a seven-year-long ethnography of undocumented immigrants and their families in Chicago, as well as national immigrant politics,Family Activism examines the three ways in which the family has become politically significant: as a political subject, as a frame for immigrant rights activism, and as a symbol of racial subordination and resistance. 

By analyzing grassroots campaigns, churches and interfaith coalitions, immigrant rights movements, and immigration legislation, Pallares challenges the traditional familial idea, ultimately reframing the family as a site of political struggle and as a basis for mobilization in immigrant communities.  

AMALIA PALLARES is an associate professor of political science and the director of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of From Peasant Struggles to Indian Resistance: The Ecuadorian Andes in the Late Twentieth Century and the coeditor of Marcha: Latino Chicago and the Immigrant Rights Movement.

"In this compelling and highly original work, Pallares illustrates how Latino activists frame the family to contest immigrants' negative representation and to make counterclaims on behalf of unauthorized and mixed-status families."

"Family Activism is a timely, compelling, and significant contribution to understanding the desperation experienced by immigrant families, by women and children, and by undocumented youth raised in the United States because of the ever-present fear of deportation—a must read!"