Professor Jennifer Chacón, Life Fellow and Fellows Research Advisory Committee member, was featured in an article that asked four Stanford academics to tackle what the public should know about immigration and citizenship policy, from 1776 to the present. Chacón recently co-authored an immigration law textbook and Legal Phantoms which explores how the past decade’s shifting immigration policies have shaped, and been shaped by, immigrant communities and organizations in Southern California.
Her portion of the article featured on the idea of being a “good citizen” and the difference between being a good citizen and being a formal legal citizen, in that being a legal citizen does not necessarily require good citizenship. She speaks about how during the research for Legal Phantoms, those they spoke to lacked legal status and held out little hope that they would be granted citizenship by Congress, but still thought it was important to be good citizens in their communities.
Chacón is currently the Bruce Tyson Mitchell Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, where she teaches courses such as Carceral Borders and Criminal Law. She is the co-author of the immigration law textbook Immigration Law and Social Justice, now in its second edition.
Read the article here.