Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to submit a chapter proposal for an edited volume tentatively titled Kids in Cages: The History, Politics, and Lived Experiences of Child Migrant Detention (see description below). Should you be interested in participating, please send a title, abstract, and author bio by August 1, 2021. Should the abstract be accepted, we would notify you by mid-August and would expecting to receive drafts for review by November 1, 2021 and finalized chapters byJanuary 15, 2022. The expectation is that the project will be published with NYU Press, who has shown considerable interest in the volume.

The detainment of migrant children has recently become well-documented in news media, with viral images of “kids in cages” being attributed to the Trump administration. However, the migration of children to the United States is not new, nor is their detainment. In this volume, we seek to provide greater context to the history and current realities of child migrant detention.

The “surge” of children migrating alone since 2012 became a reminder of our precarious understanding of this population in the social, legal, and political immigration discourse of the United States. It also became clear that our social, legal, and political remedies are vastly inadequate at best and cruel at worst. When and how did the detention of immigrant children become the norm? What has been the evolution of legal remedies and its connection to American politics? What has been the impact on immigrant families in the United States that endured the detention and forced separation from their children? Who profits and how much has the detention of children increased? What has been the response of the American public to the detention of immigrant children over the decades?

In this volume, we will bring together interdisciplinary work that explores the practice of detaining migrant children. We hope to address the longer history of child migration to the United States, with a particular focus on the government interventions throughout the decades. We would like to include insight into the political and activist battles surrounding child migrant detention. Finally, this volume seeks to provide accounts of the impact of detention on children, their families, and their communities.

Topics may include, but are not limited to: Child migration history, law, and policy; Emergence of the unaccompanied minor in American immigration; Historical accounts of child migrant detention; Psychological and developmental impacts of detention on children and families; Political battles over child migration detention; Ethnographic or narrative accounts of child migrant detention; Activism around child detention; Analysis of the Flores settlement and other policy; Detention as violence; Criminalization of migrant children in and through detention; Media representations of child migrant detention; Ethics of detention; Experience of practitioners working with detained children; Analysis of nonprofit and for-profit detention structures.

Manuscripts should not be previously published.

Please submit inquiries and abstracts for consideration to Emily Ruehs-Navarro, PhD (emily.navarro@elmhurst.edu) and Lina Munoz-Caswell (lcaswell@ccm.edu) by August 1, 2021.