(Re) Framing Legal Vulnerability: Identity, Abjection, and Resistance among DACAmented Immigrants in the Era of Trumpism

Abstract

This article explores the narratives published in the New York Times by and about undocumented and DACAmented immigrants to explore how the abjective status of undocumented migration has shifted to the question of criminality. Using the stories shared by young undocumented immigrants publicly in the New York Times, after the election of Donald Trump, as well as the narratives used by politicians (like Trump), we analyze their narratives to explore what their stories reveal about belonging, identity, abjectivity, and resistance. We argue that abjectivity and illegality has been effectively dislocated by young immigrants, who have successfully challenged the construction of unauthorized migration as an abject status. Politicians, thus, have successfully shifted abjectivity from a question of illegality to a question of criminality, recasting young immigrants as “American dreamers,” while maintaining the abject subject as an illegal and criminal subject.

Keywords:

• undocumented immigrants
• belonging
• abjectivity
• illegality
• borders
• criminality

Notes

1 Available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/storywall/american-dreamers.

2 For example, today, prosecutions of entry and re-entry are at an all-time high (TRAC, 2016), making the “crime” of entry and re-entry carry concrete consequences—such as imprisonment and legal impediments to adjust one’s legal status. This has resulted in people being unable to adjust their status, and living in perpetual illegality (Sarabia, 2012).

3 Lee (2015).

4 Kopan (2017).