Manoeuvering through the multilayered jurisdictional policy patchwork: DACA recipients’ navigational capital in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan region

ABSTRACT

During its almost-decade of existence, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been a focal point of immigration policy debate. Liminally legal DACA recipients have endured a rollercoaster of lawsuits and court decisions, yet are simultaneously incorporating into local communities characterized by distinctive socio-legal contexts. Drawing from a longitudinal qualitative study of 30 DACA recipients in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan region, we argue that DACA recipients draw from their legal-spatial consciousness and local knowledge to forge navigational capital that allows them to adeptly manoeuver between different jurisdictions. Over time, they deploy this navigational capital to strategically access distinct yet interconnected educational, health care, housing, and employment sectors and expand their spatial mobility, underscoring their capacity for adaptation and resilience. As forms of collective knowledge, their navigational capital reverberates through their social networks as they broker on-the-ground forms of inclusion for themselves and their families and communities within these socio-legal contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)
• immigrant youth
• immigration policy
• liminal legality
• contexts of reception
• navigational capital

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our research participants for sharing their life experiences and perspectives with us over time. We also wish to thank the DACAmented DREAM Team for their contributions to and feedback on the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Though ubiquitous in use in the region, no clear definition of the DMV exists and a number of other similar terms (e.g. the Washington Metropolitan region or area and the National Capital Region) are also in simultaneous use. In its narrowest usage, the region consists of the Washington, D.C., Montgomery and Prince Georges Counties in Maryland, the Counties of Arlington and Fairfax and the Cities of Alexandria and Falls Church in Virginia (Council of the District of Columbia 2021). The federal government defines the region more expansively as consisting of 22 counties, including core, suburban, and exurban counties (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2006). The US Census defines the region even more broadly, labelling it as the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV metropolitan statistical area (American Community Survey 2019). Our participants referred to the DMV in the middle category – as broader than the region defined by the Council of the District of Columbia but not nearly as expansive as the Census label. We have included a table (Table 1) detailing the jurisdictions and place names relevant to this study.

2 One individual first moved out of state, and then to Virginia.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Maryland, College Park [grant number Dean's Research Initiative, Research and Scholarship Award].