The ordinary lives and uneven precarity of the DACAmented: visualising migrant precarity in metropolitan Washington

ABSTRACT

In many countries, undocumented immigrant youth experience differential socio-legal considerations because of their real and perceived vulnerability. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is an example of a relatively new ‘temporary’ and ‘skilled’ migrant category in the United States created for undocumented youth in 2012 and rescinded 5 years later with a new administration. Nearly 700,000 immigrants still have DACA as of 2019. To visualise the place-specific and day-to-day experiences of being DACAmented, we used a photo solicitation approach with college students living in Metropolitan Washington DC. The value of this method is discussed with regard to appreciating the importance of protected places, scalar uncertainties, and the shifting socio-legal frameworks that immigrant youth contend within an urban immigrant gateway. The research underscores that those with DACA experience spatially uneven and oscillating precarity over time and yet the ‘ordinariness’ of their daily lives is a political expression of belonging. The possibility that this status could completely disappear in 2020 heightens the overall precarity for this group. This case study is indicative of broader trends towards the creation of temporary socio-legal structures for undocumented youth that can either heighten or lessen their precarity over time and across scales.

KEYWORDS:

• Undocumented youth
• DACA
• temporary migrants
• precarity
• photo solicitation

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 To be eligible for DACA, an undocumented youth had to arrive the US before the age of 16 by 15 June 2007; also, a person must have a high school education or its equivalent, or have served in the military. Applying for DACA requires completing a background check, no criminal record, and a $495 processing fee in order to receive status for two years, which is renewable for the same fee.

2 This is a colloquial term used by students with DACA and is a reference to the term documented, which implies a legal status.

3 Challenges by federal courts forced the Trump administration to continue renewing DACA applications but no new ones are being accepted. In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard testimony regarding the termination of the DACA program, they will likely release their opinion in June 2020.

4 All the study participants still have DACA because of court challenges, but no new DACA applications have been processed since the fall of 2017.