Exceptional upward mobility sin papeles: the case of Familia Arias and their fútbol team in New York City

Abstract

In this paper I analyze cases of Mexican families in New York, which have experienced exceptional upward mobility while being headed by long-term undocumented immigrants. The focus is on Familia Arias, from Tlaxcala. They are part of a larger group of families who I identified in an amateur football team based in New York. I explain that some of these families are exceptional because out of 53 family-households headed by undocumented or DACA immigrants from Mexico in New York City and Long Island, only half a dozen reported an annual family income above $70,000 USD. Along the paper I explain how individual and group factors in each case combine to promote this upward socio-economic mobility. These mechanisms or processes that promote mobility for long term unauthorized immigrants, strongly interacting around amateur football teams, include (i) transferring binational labour skills, (ii) long-time tenure in jobs or prosperous self-employment, and (iii) positive intra-family dynamics. Stories such as the ones of Marcela and Claudio Arias are part of 92 individual ethnographic cases I developed and collected between the fall of 2014 and the summer of 2017 in two urban counties – the Bronx and Queens – and suburban towns in Suffolk County, Long Island. Almost all of these cases were incorporated into the Mexican Initiative for Deferred Action project, initiated in the summer of 2015, which includes other areas, regions, and counties in New York State and the metro area (screening over 1,700 individuals). The 92 cases studied and developed are mainly short biographies, labour and migratory trajectories of foreign-born Mexicans, most of them unauthorized immigrants, who have been living in New York for an average of 17 years with an estimated median family-household income of $43,000 USD annually. Fútbol, for participants in Queen, in New York City, was a key activity to develop strong local networks in the city.

Keywords:

• Mexican immigration to the United States
• social mobility
• illegality
• unauthorized migrants
• immigrant families

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 All names and last names are pseudonyms. IRB File #2015-1317. After several interactions, indirect and direct questions, the immigration status of 92 participants was fully verified. The research design involves 92 cases (from over 70 in-depth recorded interviews and 22 non-recorded interviews but written or registered cases) with young and middle-aged adults born in Mexico: half male, half female, mostly between 25 and 49 years old, who arrived in the U.S. after 1986. The logic of selection for the study was to analytically discuss how various contextual and institutional features in each place were relevant for the immigrant life of Mexicans in New York, a majority of them identified as long-term undocumented immigrants living in family households. The participants were selected from four settings: (1) a food/taco-truck I called ‘Los Nómadas’, (2) a non-professional soccer group denominated ‘Terrenate F.C.’ (both in Queens), (3) a community-based organization focused on educational issues in the Bronx; and (4) a local faith-based organization in Long Island. Based on reported social mobility and on access to their family-household life, 12 families (that is, three to four families in each site of interest) were selected for fuller ethnographic study, involving additional participant observation and more detailed notes. I recorded detailed data concerning individuals’ first job or occupation, their trajectory, most recent job, income, and working hours over time. I also asked how undocumented parents make decisions about education for themselves and their children.

2 The annual median family household income for 53 Mexican families was $35,500.

3 In 2015, the Mexican population had the third lowest median household income ($46,000) compared with the five largest Latino national subgroups in New York City.

4 Social mobility for immigrants in this research was assessed by their total family-household income resulting from their jobs or occupations, and allowing them to acquire valuable educational opportunities for themselves and their children. Educational planning is defined as a process of preparation, application or exercising of verbal plans and actions to advance the education of adults and children within the immigrant family household beyond high school and college graduation.

5 I am grateful to Phil Kasinitz for sharing with me these ideas and pointing out in detail these three points.

6 Additional detailed data from families not experiencing ‘exceptional upward mobility’ was not included due to scope and space limitations, but Table 1 includes cases of negative intra-family dynamics and participation in weak or less reliable networks having the more prevalent outcome I called ‘precarious immobility’.

7 MIDA was a research and intervention project to promote Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications led by Robert C. Smith from Baruch College. Over 1,700 intakes were conducted between 2015 and 2016 with the collaboration of a dozen community-based organizations and legal service providers all over New York State. This dissertation was one piece of the larger MIDA project. I focused my fieldwork on New York City and the East End of Long Island, but I have simultaneously been data manager and research assistant for MIDA and interrelated projects that emerged since 2017, with full access to databases and team meetings. I also want to thank Rob Smith for supporting this research work over the years, and after our collaboration as part of the Seguro Popular research team (see Smith, Waisanen, and Yrizar Barbosa, 2019).

8 This estimate was available in July 2020 at: https://datausa.io/profile/geo/queens-county-ny

9 This is basically an agreement to receive legal services and gain lawful immigration status via asylum. This is connected to the idea that after a decade of living in the U.S. without papers and having U.S.-born minor children, families may have a stronger case. Familia Arias asked me for help to go over a ‘10-year law’ agreement as the only possible solution at the time for their lack of papers. My suggestion was to talk with more than one lawyer.

10 When Javier applied for DACA, he had a hard time finding evidence for time of arrival or early presence in New York. In fact, Marcela remembered that paperwork from a dentist appointment helped Javier with his DACA application.

11 According to Lind and Zarracina (2019) the first two years of Trump’s policies affected larger numbers of immigrants: 436 immigration arrests per day on average between 2017 and 2018, compared to 300 in 2016; 44,631 immigrants in ICE detention each day on average, compared to 34,376 in fiscal year 2016; 620,311 denials of visas, green cards, and other legal immigration statuses in 2018, up 37 percent from fiscal year 2016; even the deportation worries among Latinos grew from 47 percent in 2017 to 55 percent in 2018. See also Smith, Yrizar Barbosa, and MIDA Team (2019) on the ‘Greenlight Law’ in NYS.

12 ‘Violence in my country is without a doubt my biggest concern’ they both wrote in their individual letters, showing how aware they are of the critical situation Mexico is facing (after 2006) in public safety and security.

13 Under New York state law, undocumented immigrants can qualify for various professional licenses and access professional study programs as undocumented students (Wernick 2015), and there are certifications that do not list citizenship or immigration status as a requirement. For Calvo (2017) New York State made more accessible for undocumented immigrants to obtain licenses for specific professions in 2016.

14 These examples might indicate that there is a difference when people work for a locally owned small business compared to a national chain. Perhaps Marcela and Claudio might never move up if they worked for food-chains in the suburbs rather than a locally owned restaurant in Manhattan. Probably, at some point, they would have had to fill out paperwork and show a Social Security Number. Therefore, local economies matter for these families (personal communication with Phil Kasinitz).

15 According to Alba and Foner (2015) integration for immigrants is associated with access to socially valuable goods, resources or institutions in the destination society.

16 In November 2014, the Obama administration announced the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), with the idea of protecting undocumented parents with U.S. born children from deportation. This program was never implemented, but informants in Queens and the Bronx told me about lawyers in New York City accepting cases and charging for preparing paperwork related to ‘potential DAPA cases’ before it was cancelled.

17 At the begging of my fieldwork in Queens between 2013 and 2014, I had the opportunity to look at data produced by a local CBO working with esquineros or jornaleros from different Latin American countries, including Mexican workers who were undocumented. According to the numbers produced by this CBO the estimated annual earnings for about 70 male workers – with an average of 40 years of age, mainly working in construction related occupations – was around $22,000.

18 By planned and mutually agreed, I mean that Claudio and Marcela were able to talk and negotiate about when and how they were going to be together as a couple again and settling in another country and without documents.

19 Silvia Fernández is an undocumented mother from Puebla with over 12 years living in New York in 2017.