Ways of Belonging

Undocumented Youth in the Shadow of Illegality

By Francesca Meloni

SERIES: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Rutgers University Press

Ways of Belonging examines the experiences of undocumented young people who are excluded from K–12 schools in Canada and are rendered invisible to the education system. Canadian law doesn’t mention the existence of undocumented children, and thus their access to education rests on discretionary practices and is often denied altogether. This book brings the stories of undocumented young people vividly alive, putting them into conversation with the perspectives of the different actors in schools and courts who fail to include these young people.

Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Francesca Meloni shows how ambivalence shapes the lives of young people who are caught between the desire to belong and the impossibility of fully belonging. Meloni pays close attention to these young people’s struggles and hopes, showing us what it means to belong and to endure in contexts of social exclusion. Ways of Belonging reveals the opacities and failures of a system that excludes children from education and puts their lives in invisibility mode.

An interview with the author (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/clpn/news-views/book-interviews/items/interview-with-francesca-meloni-about-her-book-ways-of-belonging-undocumented-youth-in-the-shadow-of-illegality.html)

'Ways of Belonging provides sophisticated and empathic insights into how young people whose lives are shaped by legal liminality and an ambivalent national reception navigate these vulnerabilities while concurrently exerting agency. A must-read for developmentalists, educators, policymakers, human rights advocates, or, frankly, anyone with a social conscience.' Carola Suárez-Orozco, co-editor of Transitions: The Development of Children of Immigrants

Meloni's book usefully contributes to a growing literature that probes the nuances involved in processes of migrant 'illegalization.' By avoiding simplistic accounts of state oppression and victimization, she proposes a multidimensional framework for understanding how people who are 'vanished' may, nevertheless, generate affective strategies that enable layered ways of surviving and even flourishing. Jacqueline Bhabha, author of Child Migration and Human Rights in a Global Age

'Ways of Belonging examines what it means when young people reside in a place while not being of that place and how they carve out spaces of their own in the face of uncertainty and invisibility. Based on an impressive study, this remarkable book shines an important light on the nuances of contemporary migration and the policies that have produced ambiguous belonging. Theoretically insightful, rigorously researched, and compellingly argued, this is a must-read for scholars and policymakers alike.'
Roberto G. Gonzales, author of Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America

FRANCESCA MELONI is an assistant professor in social justice at King’s College London.

Introduction

1 Removable Children

2 Hidden Traces

3 Failing to Be Called

4 Getting Used to Here

5 Double Binds

6 Hopes and Departures

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

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