Navigating DACA in Hospitable and Hostile States

Abstract

This study examines the ways in which liminally legal young immigrants respond to shifting policies that either legitimize or delegitimize their presence within state and national boundaries. Borne out of two larger studies that rely on ethnographic and in-depth interview data in Massachusetts and North Carolina, we primarily focus on longitudinal interviews with individuals responding to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). We examine the ways in which federal and state policies interact to affect access to membership for young adult immigrants in states with very different political climates. In Massachusetts, young adults felt more legitimacy and were more optimistic in their abilities to redirect their life pathways after DACA. In contrast, in the more hostile environment of North Carolina, state policies continued to impede mobility pathways and differentiate previously undocumented youth as outsiders even after the passage of DACA. Instead of characterizing the transition to adulthood for liminally legal youth as a unidirectional transition to exclusion, we emphasize the interactive influence of state- and federal-level policies and illustrate how incorporation can occur on multiple levels and even in opposite directions simultaneously. Moreover, we discuss how hostile policies in one state appear to reverberate outward, suggesting spillover effects for respondents in other states.