Learning to Be Illegal
Top Cited Papers
- 1 August 2011
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in American Sociological Review
- Vol. 76 (4), 602-619
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122411411901
Abstract
This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to 12 students and entering into adult roles that require legal status as the basis for participation. This collision among contexts makes for a turbulent transition and has profound implications for identity formation, friendship patterns, aspirations and expectations, and social and economic mobility. Undocumented children move from protected to unprotected, from inclusion to exclusion, from de facto legal to illegal. In the process, they must learn to be illegal, a transformation that involves the almost complete retooling of daily routines, survival skills, aspirations, and social patterns. These findings have important implications for studies of the 1.5- and second-generations and the specific and complex ways in which legal status intervenes in their coming of age. The article draws on 150 interviews with undocumented 1.5-generation young adult Latinos in Southern California.Keywords
This publication has 34 references indexed in Scilit:
- Remaking the American MainstreamPublished by Harvard University Press ,2015
- State Dream Acts: The Effect of In-State Resident Tuition Policies and Undocumented Latino StudentsThe Review of Higher Education, 2010
- Legitimacy, Social Identity, and the Mobilization of Law: The Effects of Assembly Bill 540 on Undocumented Students in CaliforniaLaw & Social Inquiry, 2008
- “I Can’t Go to College Because I Don’t Have Papers”: Incorporation Patterns Of Latino Undocumented YouthLatino Studies, 2006
- Migrant “Illegality” and Deportability in Everyday LifeAnnual Review of Anthropology, 2002
- Family obligation and the transition to young adulthood.Developmental Psychology, 2002
- Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties.American Psychologist, 2000
- Outside the imagined community: undocumented settlers and experiences of incorporationAmerican Ethnologist, 1991
- Undocumented Migration to the United States: Perceptions and EvidencePopulation and Development Review, 1987
- War mobilization and the life course: A cohort of World War II veteransSociological Forum, 1987