Cultivated intuition: reframing migrant responses to the “Public Charge” policy

Abstract

In this paper, we explore Mexican and Central American migrants’ decisions to refuse public benefits in response to the Trump administration’s proposed change in the enforceability priorities of the “public charge” section of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Based on interviews with migrants who have experienced undocumented status and who are now in the process of becoming lawful permanent residents, we argue that decisions to pre-emptively forego public welfare benefits beginning in 2018 were not simply based on an impulsive fear-based reaction, but rather on thoughtful considerations around the human impact of immigration policies. We conceptualize migrant refusals of public benefits through the framework of what we call cultivated intuition because while these refusals are visceral responses, they are also educated inferences about how the fundamental logics of conditional citizenship within the US immigration system work to regulate migrant mobility and behaviour both at the border and within the nation-state.