Normalized Expendability: Navigating Immigrant Legal Status During A Global Pandemic

Abstract

Using longitudinal qualitative data, we examine how undocumented immigrants in Florida navigated the first year of the COVID pandemic. Building on the concepts of compounded vulnerability and legal violence, we demonstrate how heightened exposure to COVID shaped immigrants’ well-being by virtue of being overrepresented among frontline workers, underserved by the healthcare industry, and excluded from government pandemic aid. We demonstrate how immigrants’ anxieties overlay onto existing vulnerabilities facing those without legal status; although undocumented immigrants were often at even greater risk for negative outcomes related to the pandemic, access to mitigation efforts was denied to them because of policies and laws that allow for—and normalize—the unequal treatment of noncitizens. Findings demonstrate that undocumented immigrants and their families experienced legal violence through the mechanisms of restricted government aid, for which they were ineligible, in addition to bureaucratic delays in immigration paperwork renewals that resulted in expiring work permits for some with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. These experiences further compounded their economic and social marginalization, rendering immigrants an expendable social group. We identify coping strategies that allowed immigrants to persevere in the face of uncertainty and distress and discuss how policies can diminish some of these vulnerabilities and improve their well-being.