Latino/a Citizen Children of Undocumented Parents Negotiating Illegality

Abstract

Objective:The objective of this study is to examine how citizen young adults with undocumented parents manage parental illegality. Background: These citizen young adults are part of mixed-status families, which consist of members with different immigration statuses and often include U.S. citizen and undocumented immigrant family members. With 16 million people in mixed-status families, scholars are beginning to capture their unique experiences, but little is known about the adult-age citizen children in these families. Method: Data for this study include interviews with 34 Latino/a citizen young adults ages 18 to 28. Interviews were analyzed by using the sociological concepts of legal violence and multigenerational punishment. Results: The findings demonstrate that young adults are somewhat shielded from parental deportation concerns because of less sustained contact with parents and because of the perception that parents are cautious. Young adults also manage illegality when they apply for federal college financial aid and navigate the possibility of sponsoring their immigrant parents for legalization. Young adults' legal access to wage labor also entails distinct responsibilities to participate in family breadwinning. Conclusion:This research demonstrates how parental undocumented status shapes family negotiations and state-produced punishments for adult citizen children previously unaccounted for in immigration and family scholarship. These findings point to the distinct challenges of citizen young adults-experiences that differ from undocumented peers, the children of lawfully present parents, and minor children in mixed-status families.

Relational Legal Consciousness of U.S. Citizenship: Privilege, Responsibility, Guilt, and Love in Latino Mixed-Status Families

“…Along with various social institutions, the legal system that adjudicates applications for legal permanent residency centers the needs of U.S. citizens, often without regard to the well‐being of undocumented or legally insecure relatives (Gomberg‐Muñoz ). The condition of illegality, however, spills over to affect all members of mixed‐status families (Abrego ; Rodriguez ), so how do U.S. citizen children in these families navigate the contradictions of inclusion and exclusion?…”

“…These cases demonstrate that legal violence—the suffering that is generated, maintained, justified, and normalized by immigration policies (Menjívar and Abrego )—powerfully affects not just undocumented and liminally legal immigrants, but also U.S. citizens in their midst (Rodriguez ). In fact, the record rates of detention and deportation are having a decidedly negative impact on U.S. citizen children's emotional well‐being (Dreby ; Rojas‐Flores et al ), forcing children to navigate life without parents in the United States, on the one hand, or the educational institutions in their parents' home countries (Hamann et al ; Zayas and Bradlee ), on the other .…”

“…With few exceptions (see Dreby ; Rodriguez ), we know little about the experiences of adult members of mixed‐status families. Future research should explore how other factors, such as race, class, sexuality, and ability play a role in the experiences and legal consciousness of U.S. citizen members of mixed‐status families across the life span.…”

The implications of migration policies on migrant worker mixed families: The case of Filipinos in Israel

“…When the children of migrant workers are born in a destination country whose nationality law is based on the principle of jus soli , such as the United States of America (USA), the children are automatically conferred citizenship of the country of birth. If the parents are not legal immigrants, their families become “mixed status families” since the children are citizens, but the parents are undocumented (Fix and Zimmerman, 2001; Butler and Bazan, 2011; Schueths, 2015; Enriquez, 2015; Rodriguez, 2019; Terrazas et al., 2020; Logan, Melo and Castañeda, 2021). Unauthorized migrants who give birth in countries such as the USA are viewed as trying to “scam the system” by means of “anchor babies,” for the sole purpose of guaranteeing their stay in the host country (Kendall, 2012: 350).…”

Children of immigrants as “brokers” in an era of exclusion

“…For instance, children with deported parents are forced to step up to help their families navigate through deportation proceedings and financially provide for their younger siblings who stay in the US (Dreby, 2012(Dreby, , 2015Valdivia, 2020). In a similar vein, US citizen children try to leverage their privilege of citizenship to petition and legalize their undocumented parents in an effort to protect them from punitive immigration policies (Abrego, 2019;Lopez, 2019;Rodriguez, 2019). To this end, children of immigrants serve a powerful role in their families as they help their parents adapt to and navigate punitive policies and anti-immigrant culture in the US society.…”