Immigration Law in the Lives of Migrant Couples

• In Event: Families and Migration (Co-sponsored by Sociology of the Population Section)

Abstract

Legal status categories produce inequalities across immigrant individuals in almost all areas of life, from housing and healthcare to educational institutions and the labor market. But two-thirds of immigrants are also married, raising important theoretical questions about how an individual’s legal status relates to that individual’s spouse. Using the case of dependent visas—where one spouse is tied to the other for legal membership in the U.S.—we argue that legal status does not operate merely at the individual-level; instead, it operates, and is negotiated, at the couple-level. Drawing on interviews with 174 members of 87 couples from across the globe living in the U.S. with primary or dependent visas, we describe three ways in which legal status operates at the couple-level: separation, whereby legal requirements physically and emotionally divide partners across borders and living arrangements; isolation, wherein visa restrictions limit social interactions within and across households; and domestication, as the law constrains one partner to the household, and allows the other partner access to the world. But significantly, these processes are negotiated depending on the gender of the dependent visa holder, their ethno-racial identity, and socioeconomic resources. Ultimately, these findings reveal that the law does not merely confer rights and resources onto individuals; rather, both an individual’s agency and a couple’s relationality mediate the influence of the law on immigrant inequality. We conclude by offering implications for the literatures on immigration, the law, and gender; and we offer suggestions for how to test this concept on other groups and institutions.

Authors

• Nicole Nicole Kreisberg, Penn State University

• Natalee Chin, Penn State