Early in Stephanie L. Canizales’ recent book about unaccompanied migrant children in L.A., she introduces a boy named Tomás. When he was 2, Tomás lived in poverty in Guatemala and helped his sister shine shoes. Abandoned at 10, he dreamed of having clothes, food and shelter. He joined his sister in the U.S. at 14, but soon left when she feared his undocumented status might draw attention from authorities and risk her U.S.-born child’s future.
He wound up sleeping on the floor of a garment factory. “Why,” he wondered, “am I not a kid who was born here?”
Tomás’s story is one among many that Canizales, a UC Berkeley assistant professor of sociology, uses in Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States to explore how cultural practices and legal policies shape the lives of undocumented young people in California. Some youth find reprieve and stability, she said. But many are exploited for their labor, lack family support and grow into adults in a country that leaves them in the shadows and vilifies them for political gain.
The book — her first — is anchored in sociological theory. But the way Canizales sees it, her job is also to make readers care despite the many other issues in need of attention today.
“I’m really trying to challenge this idealized-on-a-pedestal idea of who immigrants should be for us to consider them human, worthy of inclusion and deserving of protection,” Canizales said.