A DREAM Disrupted: Undocumented Migrant Youth Disidentifications with U.S. Citizenship

Abstract

The choices DREAMers participating in Citizen Orange's “DREAM Now” letter-writing campaign made to appeal for passage of the DREAM Act in the United States in 2010 provide insight into how disidentificatory strategies can be used by marginalized groups seeking belonging. DREAM activists adopted disidentification as a tactic to develop and deliver their intentions for national belonging without radically subverting current citizenship structures or entirely assimilating to them. In doing so, DREAMers altered the conditions of national inclusion by engaging in a practice of disidentification that demonstrated the possibility for creating coalitional subjectivity, and how it might be used to facilitate social change.

Keywords:

• Social Media
• Immigration
• Queer
• Coalitional Subjectivity
• National Belonging

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Shiv Ganesh, Karma Chávez, Lisa Flores, and Larry Frey for their assistance, as well as the other anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback.

Notes

1. In its most recent incarnation in 2011, the DREAM Act intended to “authorize the cancellation of removal and adjustment of status of certain alien students who are long-term United States residents and who entered the United States as children and for other purposes” (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2011, para. 1).

2. I use the acronym LGBT/Q to refer to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community, offsetting the “Q” for Queer to reflect the sometimes divergent political interests between those identifying as queer and others in the community. As has been well documented, those who adopt queer politics often challenge the inclusionary efforts sometimes advanced by those identifying as gay, lesbian, or LGBT.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Megan E. Morrissey

Megan Elizabeth Morrissey is a Ph.D. candidate in Communication Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 National Communication Association Convention