“Hidden But Exposed”: The Social Production of Migrant Illegality

• In Event: 4151 - International Migration Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 7: Undocumented Immigration

Abstract

Some migration scholars argue that legal status is the most consequential aspect in the lives of undocumented immigrants, but others have pointed to the importance of intersecting social positions, like race. Through 20 in-depth life history interviews of undocumented young adults (18-35-year-old) from various ethnoracial groups who have lived, worked, and/or studied in the Chicagoland area, this paper analyzes these two prevailing theories. In particular, I examine how undocumented young adults navigate the presumptions, suspicions, and secrets of their legal status: a social production of migrant illegality. This social production of migrant illegality, I argue, is indeed a racialized phenomenon based on processes of visibility. Undocumented young adults can disguise their legal status through racial passing or legal passing by resembling U.S.-born groups. Undocumented non-Latinxs primarily leverage racial passing, while Latinxs primarily leverage legal passing to avoid the presumption of illegality. In their hiding in plain sight, voluntarily or involuntarily, some racial groups come to be further erased from the imagination of migrant illegality, leading to an intersectional and social invisibility. In this way, illegality becomes an idea rather than a juridical status.

Author

• Oscar Ruben Cornejo, Northwestern University