Claims Making in Everyday Life: Undocumented Immigrant Young Adults Negotiate Citizenship Before and After DACA

This panel explores how State imposed categories defining individuals’ legal status (e.g. undocumented, refugee, citizen) are lived, contested, and re-defined on the ground. It captures how three unique Latina/o groups... [ view full abstract ]

This panel explores how State imposed categories defining individuals’ legal status (e.g. undocumented, refugee, citizen) are lived, contested, and re-defined on the ground. It captures how three unique Latina/o groups negotiate citizenship and belonging across immigration status, legal contexts, and intersectional identities. The first two papers explore how the claims-making processes of undocumented Mexican-origin young adults differ across legal context (California and Georgia) and over time (before and after the implementation of DACA). The second two papers capture how intersectional identities impact claims and understandings of citizenship. Specifically, how gender impacted Salvadorans' claims for refugee status in the 1980s and how race impacts Puerto Ricans' understandings of their “legally” defined citizenship. Through these cases, we address how conceptions of “worth” and “deservingness” evolve across groups and in distinct contexts as individuals seek to carve out a space in the national community.

Laura E. Enriquez
I draw on longitudinal interviews with 116 Latina/o, undocumented young adults in Southern California before and after the implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. I show how DACA recipients’ increased access to formal rights directly increased the type and extent of their participation-based claims, which subsequently increased opportunities for making claims for legalization and additional access to formal rights. Yet, receiving DACA has a minimal effect on undocumented young adults’ identification with the U.S. because these claims and demonstrations of deservingness rested on more long-term factors (e.g. age of migration, cultural adaptation) unaffected by DACA.