Abstract
Currently in the United States, approximately 2.1 million children and youth are “undocumented” or without legal status. Due to the 1982 Supreme Court Case, Plyler v. Doe, these children have the right to basic education; from kindergarten through high school (K-12), immigration status cannot be checked or used as a means to bar these children from education. Thus, undocumented children and youth are inside participation, but outside citizenship status while growing up in the United States. With qualitative data constructed in conjunction with thirty-three undocumented youth, this chapter explores how participation in everyday life, social activities, and education structures undocumented youth’s understanding and experiences of citizenship. Because this particular immigrant population straddles the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, their unique experiences allow for fruitful discussion about “lived citizenship,” e.g. citizenship which is defined and earned via participation in everyday life, regardless of legal citizenship status. Empirical findings demonstrate that undocumented children and youth consider themselves to be U.S. citizens precisely because of their inclusion in the educational system and participation in everyday activities―even when they know they are undocumented growing up.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abrego, L. (2011). Legal consciousness of undocumented Latinos: Fear and stigma as barriers to claims-making for first- and 1.5-generation immigrants. Law & Society Review, 45(2), 337–370.
Abrego, L., & Gonzales, R. (2010). Blocked paths, uncertain futures: The postsecondary education and labor market prospects of undocumented Latino youth. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 15(1–2), 144–157.
American Immigration Council. (2011). “The DREAM Act.” http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/dream-act.
Atkinson, R. (1998). The life story interview. Chicago: Sage.
Batalova, J., & McHugh, M. (2010). DREAM vs. reality: An analysis of potential DREAM Act beneficiaries. Washington: Migration Policy Institute, National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy.
Baubock, R. (2003). Reinventing urban citizenship. Citizenship Studies, 7(2), 139–160.
Benesch, S. (2008). “Generation 1.5” and its discourses of partiality: A critical analysis. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 7(3–4), 294–311.
Bloemraad, I., Korteweg, A., & Yurdakul, G. (2008). Citizenship and immigration: Multiculturalism, assimilation, and challenges to the nation-state. Annual Review of Sociology, 34(1), 153–179.
Bosniak, L. (2000). Citizenship denationalized. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 7(2), 447–509.
Carens, J. H. (2000). Culture, citizenship, and community: A contextual exploration of justice as evenhandedness. Oxford: Oxford University Press on Demand.
Cebulko, K. (2014). Documented, undocumented, and liminally legal: Legal status during the transition to adulthood for 1.5-generation Brazilian immigrants. The Sociological Quarterly, 55(1), 143–167.
Christensen, A., & Jensen, S. (2011). Roots and routes. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 1(3), 146–155.
Coutin, S. (1999). Denationalization, inclusion, and exclusion: Negotiating the boundaries of belonging. Indian Journal for Global Legal Studies, 7, 585–593.
De Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Delanty, G. (2003). Citizenship as a learning process: Disciplinary citizenship versus cultural citizenship. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 22(6), 597–605.
Fenster, T. (2005). The right to the gendered city: Different formations of belonging in everyday life. Journal of Gender Studies, 14(3), 217–231.
Fraser, N. (2001). Recognition without ethics? Theory, Culture & Society, 18(2–3), 21–42.
Fraser, N., & Honneth, A. (2003). Redistribution or recognition? A political-philosophical exchange. London: Verso.
Gonzales, R. G. (2007). Wasted talent and broken dreams: The lost potential of undocumented students. Immigration Policy in Focus, 5(13), 1–11. Washington, DC: Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Law Foundation.
Gonzales, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76(4), 602–619.
Gonzales, R. G. (2015). Lives in limbo: Undocumented and coming of age in America. Oakland: University of California Press.
Gonzales, R. G., & Chavez, L. R. (2012). “Awakening to a nightmare”: Abjectivity and illegality in the lives of undocumented 1.5-generation Latino immigrants in the United States. Current Anthropology, 53(3), 255–281.
Gonzales, R., Suárez-Orozco, C., & Dedios-Sanguineti, M. (2013). No place to belong: Contextualizing concepts of mental health among undocumented immigrant youth in the United States. American Behavioral Scientist, 57(8), 1174–1199.
Hopkins, N., & Blackwood, L. (2011). Everyday citizenship: Identity and recognition. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 21(3), 215–227.
Kebede, S. S. (2010). The struggle for belonging: Forming and reforming identities among 1.5-generation asylum seekers and refugees. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre.
Kim, B. S., Brenner, B. R., Liang, C. T., & Asay, P. A. (2003). A qualitative study of adaptation experiences of 1.5-generation Asian Americans. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 9(2), 156–170.
Kostakopoulou, D. (2003). Why naturalisation? Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 4(1), 85–115.
Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. London: Sage.
Lefebvre, H. (1984). Everyday life in the modern world. New York: Continuum.
Lister, R., Smith, N., Middleton, S., & Cox, L. (2003). Young people talk about citizenship: Empirical perspectives on theoretical and political debates. Citizenship Studies, 7(2), 235–253.
Marshall, T. H. (1950). Citizenship and social class and other essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Menjívar, C. (2006). Liminal legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants’ lives in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 111(4), 999–1037.
Miller-Idriss, C. (2006). Everyday understandings of citizenship in Germany. Citizenship Studies, 10(5), 541–570.
Olivas, M. A. (2005). Plyler v. Doe, the education of undocumented children, and the polity. In D. Martin & P. Schuck (Eds.), Immigration Stories (pp. 197–220). New York: Foundation Press.
Passel, J. S., Cohn, D., Krogstad, J. M., & Gonzalez-Barrera, A. (2014). As growth stalls, unauthorized immigrant population becomes more settled. Washington: PEW Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project.
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982). https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=261289&p=2339383
Purcell, M. (2003). Citizenship and the right to the global city: Reimagining the capitalist world order. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(3), 564–590.
Rumbaut, R. G. (2005 [1976]). The one-and-a-half generation: Crisis, commitment, identity. In P. Rose (Ed.), The dispossessed: An anatomy of exile (pp. 337–343). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Shear, M., & Nixon, R. (2017). New Trump deportation rules allow far more expulsions. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/us/politics/dhs-immigration-trump.html. Accessed 01. Mar. 2017.
Sigona, N. (2012). “I have too much baggage”: The impacts of legal status on the social worlds of irregular migrants. Social Anthropology, 20(1), 50–65.
Suárez-Orozco, C., Yoshikawa, H., Teranishi, R., & Suárez-Orozco, M. (2011). Growing up in the shadows: The developmental implications of unauthorized status. Harvard Educational Review, 81(3), 438–473.
Suárez-Orozco, C., & Suárez-Orozco, M. (2001). Children of immigration. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Thomsen, T. L. (2012). Irregular migration: Mismatch between conceptualizations and lived experiences. Qualitative Studies, 3(2), 97–114.
Turner, B. S. (1990). Outline of a theory of citizenship. Sociology, 24(2), 189–217.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). (2016). Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). http://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/considerationdeferred-action-childhood-arrivals-daca.
Varsanyi, M. W. (2006). Interrogating “urban citizenship” vis-à-vis undocumented migration. Citizenship Studies, 10(2), 229–249.
Warming, H. (2011). Children’s participation and citizenship in a global age. Empowerment, tokenism or discriminatory disciplining? Social Work & Society, 9(1), 119–134.
Willen, S. S. (2007). Toward a critical phenomenology of “illegality”: State power, criminalization, and abjectivity among undocumented migrant workers in Tel Aviv, Israel. International Migration, 45(3), 8–38.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, ein Teil von Springer Nature
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Benedict Christensen, E. (2019). Inside Participation, Outside Citizenship: What We Can Learn about Citizenship from Undocumented Youth. In: Grünendahl, S., Kewes, A., Ndahayo, E., Mouissi, J., Nieswandt, C. (eds) Staatsbürgerschaft im Spannungsfeld von Inklusion und Exklusion. Studien zur Migrations- und Integrationspolitik. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25534-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25534-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer VS, Wiesbaden
Print ISBN: 978-3-658-25533-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-658-25534-3
eBook Packages: Social Science and Law (German Language)