Organizing While Undocumented

Abstract

Undocumented immigrants in the United States who take part in social movement activism do so at great risk: the threat of deportation. Despite this risk, undocumented immigrant youth have been at the forefront of the national movement for immigrant rights. In their activism these youth have leveraged their identities as immigrants but also as queer individuals, people of color, and women. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with Asian undocumented, undocumented and queer (undocuqueer), and formerly undocumented activists, Organizing While Undocumented examines these activists’ cultivation of and strategic use of an intersectional movement identity. Through the development of the Identity Mobilization Model, the book highlights three critical strategies that undocumented immigrant youth have utilized when deploying an intersectional movement identity. Ultimately, this book argues that undocumented immigrant youth have challenged the notion that their immigration status wholly defines their lived experiences and, in the process, emphasized the importance of their multiple social identities. This emphasis has in turn allowed undocumented activists to connect their struggle to a broader set of social justice struggles taking place in the world today.