Undocumented Migrants in the United States: Life Narratives and Self-Representations by Ina Batzke (review)

With her analysis of life narratives by undocumented migrants in the United States, Ina Batzke makes a timely and significant contribution to the field of lifewriting studies. Even though the topic of migration currently constitutes one of the most hotly-debated issues globally, scholarly works that foreground the voices of so-called undocumented migrants are still rare. Undocumented Migrants starts filling this gap by analyzing life writing as "an often differing, yet significant discursive space in which political power struggles over representations occur" (7). Batzke carefully examines the stylistic choices, structures, and rhetorical tools of six works by undocumented migrants published between 2001 and 2016. The insights she provides are not only applicable to a US context but to displacement worldwide at this moment.

Batzke begins her investigation of undocumented life writing with a critical interrogation of terms such as migrant, immigrant, transnationality, "illegal" (which she keeps in quotation marks throughout the book), and undocumented. She further offers helpful background information on US immigration laws (most notably the DREAM Act and the DACA program), political discourse on migration, and the importance of life writing. The book's introduction clarifies the humanizing impact life narratives have had by offering platforms for those actually affected by supposedly neutral laws and political rhetoric about "illegal aliens." The author convincingly outlines the development of what she sees as a new genre of undocumented life narratives that use self-representation to challenge nationalist and exclusionary understandings of belonging and citizenship; she reveals how these texts offer alternative representations but also perpetuate neoliberal and nationalistic master narratives; and she asks paramount questions, such as how do "stories by the undocumented attempt to negotiate and perhaps even redraw the borders of the nation?" (7).

Part 1 of Undocumented Migrants presents the reader with a detailed précis of the history of public immigration discourse in the US that established a dichotomy between desirable and undesirable immigrants, as well as legal developments that uphold a myth of meritocracy. This section creates a fruitful foundation for Batzke's close readings in the remainder of the book.

In Part 2, Batzke begins her literary analysis with undocumented life narratives, which she distinguishes from more traditional life writing discussed in the last section of the monograph. Each close reading is prefaced with a comprehensive summary of key developments within the undocumented movement and US politics that shaped the life narrative in question. The first case study is made up of the 2007 congressional testimonies by three students in support of the DREAM Act, which constituted undocumented students' first public discussion of their immigration status on a national level. Batzke analyzes in great detail the testimonies' narrative strategies, which, she claims, were influenced by activist groups and politicians and which served as blueprints for later narratives. The collaborative, multimodal student publication Underground Undergrads: UCLA Undocumented Immigrant Students Speak Out (2008) serves as the second case study and stresses a need for collectivity and self-confidence after the DREAM Act failed to pass. Diverging from earlier narratives, the UCLA authors refrain from portraying themselves as exceptional individuals that deserve special legal treatment. Lastly, this section looks at Jose Antonio Vargas's widely read essay "Outlaw: My Life in America as an Undocumented Immigrant," which appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 2011. Batzke dissects how Vargas's literary double coming-out as undocumented and gay pushes back against notions of assimilation and normalcy so intrinsic to traditional immigrant writing in the US.

Part 3 moves to close readings of life writing published in book format. Batzke meticulously discusses Dan-el Padilla Peralta's Undocumented: A Dominican Boy's Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League (2015), the first autobiography of an undocumented person published by a major press (Penguin), with a special focus on how the text seemingly adheres to the normative American Dream story, a major trope in US immigrant literature, while, in...