The Power of Inclusion: Theorizing “Abjectivity” and Agency Under DACA

Abstract

Critical migration scholars argue that undocumented 1.5-generation immigrants occupy distinct forms of “abject” statuses, as legally excluded yet physically included members of society. Implemented in June 2012, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program promised to alleviate the situation of many undocumented young persons in the United States by providing them with temporary work authorization, social security numbers, and protection from deportation. Using critical psychological theory, we examine how DACA altered the condition of “abjectivity” characterizing DACA recipients’ lives, revealing how partially inclusive immigration policies can (re)create liminal subjectivities and give rise to new modes of agency and belonging.

Broadened Possibilities: Undocumented Community College Student Course Enrollment After the California DREAM Act

“…This has also been characterized as entrapment in a “jaula de oro” (Los Tigres del Norte, 1984), a “golden cage” where there is but the “illusion of freedom” (Pérez Huber, 2015, p. 94). Ellis et al (2019) described this liminality as “legal abjectivity” in reference to how “partially inclusive immigration policies can (re)create liminal subjectivities” (p. 161). Even as policies reduce and relax constraints, “these young persons continued to feel excluded, fearful, and uncertain about their futures,” and “their new status could not relieve them from their experiences of abjectivity” (Ellis et al, 2019, p. 168).…”

“…Ellis et al (2019) described this liminality as “legal abjectivity” in reference to how “partially inclusive immigration policies can (re)create liminal subjectivities” (p. 161). Even as policies reduce and relax constraints, “these young persons continued to feel excluded, fearful, and uncertain about their futures,” and “their new status could not relieve them from their experiences of abjectivity” (Ellis et al, 2019, p. 168). In this regard, it is possible that financial aid policies absent a pathway to citizenship may only lead to small shifts in course enrollment decisions or no shifts at all.…”

We Are More Than Paperless People: Reflections on Creating Spaces, Narratives and Change with Undocumented Communities

“…Despite this, with court challenges, sustained organizing and shifting immigration priorities, as of May, 2021, DACA remains in effect. Being DACAmented positioned certain groups of undocumented youth in a partially included liminal or "abject" status but with new modes of agency and resistance [16]. Part of these new modes of agency and resistance took the form of countering invisibility, as C discusses below.…”

Existential Displacement: Health Care and Embodied Un/Belonging of Irregular Migrants in Norway

“…For more than a decade, critical migration scholars have shown that restrictive and inhospitable immigration contexts shape irregular migrants' social and material conditions as well as their everyday psychosocial well-being and modes of ''beingin-the-world'' (Bloch et al 2014;De Genova 2002;Ellis, Gonzales, and Rendón García 2018;Gonzales 2016;Gonzales and Chavez 2012;Willen 2007aWillen , 2014. 1 Migrant 'illegality' is a sociopolitical condition produced by the multiplication of everyday borders (Balibar 2004) and by ''deportability'' (De Genova 2002)-the process by which belonging is demarcated and exclusion generated.…”

“…The current management of irregular migrants in Norway distinguishes between lives that are to be enhanced and lives that are not worth preserving (Das and Das 2007). This contributes to an exclusive politics of belonging (Yuval-Davis 2011) as it situates irregular migrants outside what Andrews (1999) calls the ''political economy of hope'': the idea that in a free market economy, everyone can succeed under certain conditions.Though irregular migrants are socialized into irregularity (Bloch et al 2014), they find ways of exercising various modes of agency and attain degrees of control and resistance (Bloch et al 2014;Ellis and Rendón 2018;Bendixsen 2018) that allow them to re-establish a sense of belonging.…”