The Legal Status Divide among the Children of Immigrants

Abstract

Over the past thirty-five years, federal immigration policy has brightened the boundaries of the category of undocumented status. For undocumented young people who move into adulthood, the predominance of immigration status to their everyday experiences and social position has been amplified. This process of trying to continue schooling, find work, and participate in public life has become synonymous with a process of learning to be “illegal.” This essay argues that despite known variations in undocumented youths by race, place, and educational history, undocumented status has become what Everett Hughes called a “master status.” The uniform set of immigration status-based exclusions overwhelms the impact of other statuses to create a socially significant divide. The rise, fall, and survival of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, a policy offering qualified youths a temporary semilegal status, have underlined how closely access and rights hew to the contours of contemporary immigration policy.

Transnational Social Stratification? Legal Status of Immigrant Parents and the Educational Achievements of Mexican Children

“…Legal status is neither static nor binary (Menjívar and Kanstroom 2013), yet this article and others continue to demonstrate that lacking legal status is associated with blocked social mobility among the children of undocumented parents (Bean et al 2011), irrespective of whether those children reside in the United States or Mexico. The durability of educational stratification by parents’ documentation status in this article suggests that legal status has independent effects on life chances and collateral consequences for families (see also Bean et al 2011; Waters and Kasinitz 2021), lending support to Gonzales and Ruszczyk ‘s (2021) conceptualization of legal status as a “master status.” While research on legal status and its role in the transnational system of social stratification theorized here is in its earliest stages, it is never too early to begin considering a path toward its abolition.…”

“…For adolescents, legal restrictions on college attendance and access to federal and state financial aid block many students from successfully transitioning to higher education (Abrego 2006;Gonzales 2011). Many undocumented students begin to lower their schooling aspirations when they first learn of their documentation status in high school, citing prohibitive costs and the limited value of a college degree when they are unauthorized to work legally after graduation (Gonzales 2016).…”

The Spatial Mobility Trap? How Urban Contexts Shape the Spatial Mobility of Male Undocumented Youths

“…In particular, deportation practices have targeted immigrants from certain places of origin, especially Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States and North Africans, West Africans, and Chinese in France. While undocumented status may function as a master status, that is, playing a predominant role in spelling out life trajectories, other identities may shift how and when undocumented status matters (Gonzales and Ruszczyk 2021).…”

Disrupting Agamben: Beyond undocumented children as “Homo Sacer”

“…More succinctly, phenotypic characteristics or observable traits make UC, especially from Mexico and Central America targets for politicized policies and deportation. Race and ethnicity make im(migrants) targets for enforcement and (or) discrimination, while at the same time, allowing others to enter as citizens (Gonzales and Ruszcyk, 2021).…”