Navigating DACA in Hostile and Hospitable States: A Comparative Two-state Analysis

• In Event: 239 - Regular Session. Immigrants, Institutions, and Incorporation

Abstract

This study examines the ways in which liminally legal young immigrants respond to shifting policies that either legitimize or delegitimize their presence within state and national boundaries. Borne out of two larger studies that rely on ethnographic and in-depth interview data in North Carolina and Massachusetts, we primarily focus on longitudinal interviews with individuals responding to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Through the lens of a multilayered political context, we examine the ways in which federal and state policies influence the identity formations and opportunities available to young adult immigrants who grew up in two states with very different political climates. In the more hostile environment of North Carolina, state policies continued to impede mobility pathways and differentiate previously undocumented youths as outsiders even after the passage of DACA. In contrast, young adults in Massachusetts felt more legitimacy and were more optimistic in their abilities to redirect their life pathways after DACA. Young adult immigrants in both states, however, remained acutely aware that DACA only granted them partial and temporary membership in the U.S.

Authors

• Kara Cebulko, Providence College

• Alexis Silver, State University of New York-Purchase College