What’s a life worth? Ethnographic counterfactual analysis, undocumented status and sociological autopsy in a wrongful death lawsuit

This paper asks ‘What is a life worth?’ by analyzing the wrongful death lawsuit for Douglas Morales, an undocumented student who died in 2008 at 17 from brain injuries suffered playing football. The paper first examines how sociologists and New Jersey law monetarily value a child’s life, especially when undocumented status would have decreased long-term earnings. Second, it uses ethnographic, counterfactual methods to do a ‘sociological autopsy’ offering a plausible alternative, a more positive scenario – including a path to legal status – for Douglas’s future life. It uses interviews and document review to establish Douglas’s life habits, leveraging sociological and psychological research on immigrant youth achievers to predict higher future earnings. The paper advances ‘public sociology’ by deploying ethnographic, case-oriented methods to challenge the devaluation of this undocumented life, critique American immigration policies, and to help the decedent’s family directly.