Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Sociology

Committee Chair

Anthony Stone Jr.

Committee Member

Simranjit Steel

Committee Member

SunAh Laybourn

Committee Member

Wesley James

Abstract

For more than a decade, migrant childhood arrivals have been identified as “dreamers” due to immigration policy initiatives such as the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). While navigating various identities, including U.S. immigrant, their native nationality, and being socialized simultaneously within their native and American cultures, they must also reckon with what their future identities will be thanks to politics around “undocumentedness.” This is especially true for undocumented Latines in the United States. Today, their livelihoods are in far greater jeopardy than ever before with DACA's uncertainty, calls for mass deportations, their racialized criminalization, and highly restrictive policies, particularly in the U.S. South. With a focus on the undocumented Latin American population in the New Latino South, I utilize qualitative, semi-structured interviews to examine how undocumented young adults understand and navigate their identities and sense of belonging in a country that socially, legally, and politically excludes them. Particularly, I examine how place and policy changes that threaten undocumented young adults’ sense of self affect their identity formations and their sense of belonging. I theorize that racialized undocumented Latinx individuals navigate social, political, and legal systems of oppression to understand their identities and belonging through a dreamer consciousness. I find these experiences are influenced by (1) place, both geographically and (2) socially, and (3) through politics—each of which shapes their identity formation and negotiation. With this study, I address theoretical and place-based research limitations within racial/ethnic studies and immigration scholarship. Lastly, this study takes a holistic approach to contribute to scholarship on undocumented young adults' identity formation and incorporation processes by exploring how these processes evolve over time and across places.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

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Notes

Open access.

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