Critically Accommodating “Illegality”: Anticipatory Losses within Mixed-Status Immigrant Families

Abstract

“Illegality” presents multidimensional barriers resulting in diverse losses. Using autoethnography, I outline the similarities among my interlocking experiences of managing the threat of forced family separation resulting from deportation and death. I reflect on feeling “illegality’s” losses within social service offices, classrooms, jails, and hospitals while growing up in a mixed-status family. Employing an anticipatory loss lens, I suggest that through experiencing “illegality” my parents gained experiential knowledge that facilitated their critical accommodation of legal barriers and surveillance. My discussion captures “illegality’s” multiple impacts on families not separated by deportation, yet who are nonetheless living with loss.