Roadmap to Citizenship: How Undocumented Immigrants Make Claims on the State

• In Event: The Role of Education in Civic Engagement

Abstract

This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature on temporary and uncertain immigration statuses in the United States by examining how undocumented, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations impact recipients’ conceptualizations of citizenship rights, belonging and, consequently, sociopolitical engagement. In particular, I ask: lacking formal citizenship rights, what frameworks do immigrants with uncertain statuses rely on in order to make claims on the state? Further, how does “cultural citizenship,” or the everyday experiences of participation and belonging, influences these immigrants’ sociopolitical engagement and claims making tactics? The analysis draws from political ethnography, an interdisciplinary research strategy that seeks to generate contextual knowledge claims by engaging in reasoning from within social practice. I rely on 32 qualitative interviews I conducted with undocumented immigrants, as well as DACA and TPS recipients in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. In addition, I draw on participant observation data I have collected while attending events, rallies, teach-ins, and advocacy days organized by immigrant rights organizations in these states since 2016. All data was coded and analyzed using Nvivo.

I find that undocumented immigrants and TPS/DACA recipients have a nuanced and critical understanding of citizenship and of their positions as insecurely documented immigrants. Whereas many feel that they belong to the dominant society and make claims on the state based on length of stay, family ties, and contributions to their communities, others are increasingly critical of the discourse of citizenship and feel that terms such as “American” and “citizenship” are exclusionary and racialized. In addition, I find that cultural citizenship plays an important role in allowing these immigrants to conceive of different forms of belonging and, in doing so, to expand the realm of rights that they expect and demand from the local, state, and national level. Simply put, while mobilizing to claim belonging to the host-society, these immigrants are renegotiating what it means to be a citizen, what it means to belong, and what rights citizens should have. These findings were consistent across individuals, regardless of their nation of origin and length of stay in the United States. However, immigrants’ length of stay in the U.S. impacted their sense of national belonging, and their expectations of rights –including the right to continue to reside in the U.S. Syrian TPS recipients (the latest group to be granted temporary deportation relief under the program) were the most likely to view the U.S. as a temporary home and express a desire to return to their home-country.

While the focus of this research is on insecurely documented immigrants in the U.S., the findings addressed grapple with important questions about American democracy and the place of minorities and marginalized communities in the American Public Square. As such, this research is significant to understand not only the plight of immigrants and other minorities, but also, and more generally, how through their everyday acts these individuals expand the dominant understanding of citizenship and belonging.

Author

• Emily Cury, Pine Manor College