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needed to understand the relationship between 1.5GUY’s ULS, SofB, and everyday life, including their everyday coping strategies.
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1.5GUY are not citizens, focusing on how they experience life because of and despite their ULS can reveal how the immigration policies that are produced from above are experienced from below during the practice of everyday life.
2.5.2 The “Condition of Illegality”
Scholars have emphasized that a fundamental difference between citizens and non-citizens is the former’s deportability—precisely the reason they have also argued that studying deportation alongside the boundaries of belonging is both interesting and valuable within contemporary citizenship studies (Anderson, Gibney, & Paoletti, 2011). The phenomenon of deportability has been described as the
“condition of illegality,” which has been coined to emphasize that ULS is a socio-political condition:
In addition to simply designating a juridical status in relation to the US nation-state and its laws of immigration, naturalization, and citizenship, migrant ‘illegality’ signals a
specifically spatialized socio-political condition. ‘Illegality’ is lived through a palpable sense of deportability – the possibility of deportation, which is to say, the possibility of being removed from the space of the US nation-state (de Genova, 2004, p. 161).
As such, de Genova (2002, 2004) has argued that it is the constant threat of being deported, rather than deportation itself, which instills constant insecurity, surveillance, and repression in the everyday lives of undocumented individuals (see also Kanstroom, 2010).
Additionally, scholars have documented that long-term ULS instills fear, insecurity, and uncertainty that permeates various spheres of undocumented adults’ daily lives in various geographic contexts (e.g.
Coutin, 2000a, 2000b, 2002; de Genova, 2002, 2004; Menjívar, 2006; Ngai, 2004; Willen, 2007). For example, Willen (2007) found that undocumented adults in Tel Aviv, Israel experience fear, anxiety, frustration, and suffering during potential or actual interactions with authorities in daily life. In the U.S., Abrego (2006) argued that fear infiltrates the everyday lives of undocumented adults. Enriquez (2015) claimed that undocumented adults with U.S.-born children are particularly fearful of deportation and concluded that parental fear conditions these citizen children’s lives. Scholars have also argued that the threat of deportation prevents undocumented adults from making long-term and future plans (e.g. Coutin, 1993; Chavez, 1992; Hagan, 1994). The prevalence of undocumented adult’s fear in
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association with ULS makes salient to the need to explore if and how fear permeates 1.5GUY’s everyday lives, especially in relation to SofB.
2.5.3 Liminal Legality
In her research on Guatemalan and Salvadoran immigrants with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States,14 Menjívar (2006) described the legality of these adults neither as undocumented nor undocumented, but rather “liminally legal.” Menjívar (2006) created the term to describe the uncertain, ambiguous, and in-between spaces that the illegal-legal binary could not capture:
It is not simply an undocumented status that matters theoretically and analytically, but the long-term uncertainty inherent in these immigrants’ legal status. This uncertain status—not fully documented or undocumented but often straddling both—has gone on for years and permeates many aspects of the immigrants’ lives and delimits their range of action in different spheres, from job market opportunities and housing, to family and kinship, from the place of the church in their lives and their various transnational activities, to artistic expressions (p. 1001).
Menjívar (2006) added that immigration laws ensure “vulnerability and precariousness by blurring the boundaries of legality and illegality to create gray areas of incertitude, with the potential to affect broader issues of citizenship and belonging (p. 1002). The documented impact of long-term, constant uncertainty in various everyday life actions and interactions is important to keep in mind when
exploring the 1.5GUY’s everyday experiences, especially due to their long-term ULS and also because there is no pathway to legality or citizenship.
Exploring the 1.5GUY’s everyday SofB can illustrate how legal uncertainty conditions the experiences of millions of United States residents, as well as how a quasi-form of citizenship is underway for individuals who straddle legal categories, recognition, inclusion and exclusion. This is precisely why Cebulko (2014) has called for researchers to examine the link between ULS and SofB. Furthermore, Cebulko (2014) documented that legal status is not only ambiguous, partial, or temporary, but also dynamic. Amongst 1.5 generation Brazilian youth of varying legal statuses in Massachusetts, she
14 TPS does not lead to permanent legal residence; temporarily gives individuals the right to remain lawfully in the U.S., albeit with restrictions; and can be renewed or revoked due to varying circumstances. See USCIS for more information.
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found that youth rank four distinct categories of legal status: undocumented, liminally legal, lawful permanent residency, and citizens. Cebulko argued that ULS is the lowest, and furthermore, that individuals can move up or down the legal hierarchy due to visa expirations, failure to renew or successfully renew a residence permit, or new policy changes. As non-citizens can slide up and down the hierarchy, they do not always benefit from a change in legal status.
2.5.4 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals & the Passage of (Temporal) Rights
Researchers have begun to extend the concept of liminal legality to youth whose undocumented status straddles the legal/”illegal” binary (e.g. Abrego, 2008, 2011; Cebulko, 2014; Gonzales, 2006, 2011, 2015; Gonzales & Chavez, 2012; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2011), and especially in relation to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). President Obama announced DACA as an Executive Order, which came into effect in August 2012. DACA offers eligible 1.5GUY temporal reprieve from deportation, and it is estimated that approximately 1.7 of the total 4.4 million undocumented youth aged thirty or under are potentially eligible (Passel & Lopez, 2012, p. 3). Criteria15 are similar to the D.R.E.A.M. Act (e.g. Corrunker, 2012; United We Dream; USCIS, 2016), but significantly, like TPS, DACA is a two year legal stay with no pathway to citizenship; legal protection and recognition are temporary.
Scholars have explained that 1.5GUY with DACA—“DACAmented” youth—experience fewer social and economic challenges, especially as youth can obtain identification and a work permit despite their ULS (e.g. Gonzales, Terriquez, & Ruszczyk, 2014; Martinez, 2014). However, the benefits of DACA are limited, which is both acknowledged and lamented by 1.5GUY (Gonzales et al., 2014; Martinez, 2014). Cebulko (2014) argued that while 1.5GUY possess a valid governmental identification, DACA is not enough to confer full identity, identification, or rights to the 1.5GUY; they are still denied the guarantees and rights that lawful permanent residency or citizenship status confer. Similarly, Martinez (2014) concluded that “the absence of a permanent mechanism virtually guarantees they will remain in an ambiguous space between legality and illegality (p. 1886). Further, DACAmented youth still
15 Eligibility criteria are as follows: 1). Age on June 15, 2012 is 31 or less; 2). Came to the U.S. before age 16; 3). Continual residence in the U.S. since June 15, 2007; 4). Physical presence in the U.S. at time of application; 5). Entered the U.S. either without inspection before June 15, 2012 or legal residence in the U.S. expired as of that date; 6). Are currently in school, graduated or obtained the formal equivalent of graduation from high school, or are an honorably discharged veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard or Armed Forces; and 7). Have not been convicted of a felony, significant misdemeanor, three or more other misdemeanors, and do not otherwise pose a threat to national security or public safety. For more information on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, see Homeland Security (n.d.)
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experience stigma, precariousness, and insecurity (Cebulko, 2014). One youth explained of DACA: “I paid all these fines and I’m no longer quote unquote undocumented. But I’m still not anything else”
(Cebulko, 2014, p. 152). Yet another proclaimed that DACA “isn’t legal status. It’s not citizenship. I don’t know when it might end. I might get my hopes up and then I’m back where I was before. This is so tiring” (Gonzales 2015, p. 4). Together, the uncertainly of ULS and DACA suggest implications for everyday life.