Governing Immigration Through Crime: A Reader. By Julie A. Dowling and Jonathan Xavier Inda. Stanford University Press, 2013. 320 pp. $29.95 paperback.
Date | 01 March 2015 |
DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12133 |
Published date | 01 March 2015 |
the claimed neutrality of the human rights framework, problems of
representational power, and the call for integrating children’s per-
spectives are not new, the book elucidates the dangers in espousing
uncritically“the orthodoxies of human rights” (i.e., mainstream liter-
ature and advocacy) as a reference point for children’s living rights
(p. 280). Indeed, the book’s case studies provide rich, originally
researched, real-life illustrations of the injustices that may occur
when contexts and lived-experiences are ignored. Further, although
the book explicitly proclaims to focus only on children’s rights in the
developing world, the concepts of living rights, social justice, and
translationsshould equally provokediscussions about the multiplicity
of children’s voices, representations, and rights in developed coun-
tries. And insofar as these three concepts will be helpful in shifting
perspectives—the book is a valuable addition. It is also in this regard,
however, that the omission of any discussion about the lived-
experience of children with disabilities and the disability rights m ove-
ment is regretful. This is so firstly because the international
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) is the
most up-to-date human rights treaty and it is both applicable to chil-
dren and also taps on the book’s themes by incorporating contexts,
social awareness, and agency more than any other previous human
rights framework. Secondly, the omission is regretful because it does
so in particular with regard to children with disabilities, a group of
about 200 million children worldwide,80% of whom reside in devel-
oping countries, and whose living rights, social justice and transla-
tions are too commonly doubly and triply ignored. Still, the book’s
theoretical underpinning, practical illustration, and interdisciplinary
approach will be useful for students who become acquainted with
human and children rights discourses, for those interested in social
movementsfrom below, and for advocates in the field.
***
Governing Immigration Through Crime: A Reader. By Julie A.
Dowling and Jonathan Xavier Inda. Stanford University Press,
2013. 320 pp. $29.95 paperback.
Reviewed by Anil Kalhan, School of Law, Drexel University
In Governing Immigration Through Crime, Julie A. Dowling and
Jonathan Xavier Inda present an important collection of essays
examining different ways in which the lines between immigration
292 Book Reviews
To continue reading
Request your trial