Abstract
When US citizens sponsor their undocumented
spouses for lawful status, they find themselves at
the center of immigration petitions. They are
invasively scrutinized, treated with bureaucratic
indifference, and separated from their loved ones.
As this “politics of exception,” which often targets
migrants, is unleashed on US citizens, they learn
that their citizenship offers little protection from
dehumanizing treatment. Instead, restrictive
immigration criteria, designed in theory to boost
the value of US citizenship, in practice dehumanize
US citizens and can alienate them from feelings of
national belonging. This contradiction inevitably
emerges when shared lives disrupt the boundaries of
citizenship status, illuminating inconsistencies in
normative conceptions of citizenship itself.
[mixed-status families, immigration law, gendered
citizenship, legal exception, United States]
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Journal | American Ethnologist |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 2016 |
Keywords
- immigration law
- undocumented migration
- citizenship
- mixed status families
Disciplines
- Immigration Law
- Anthropology
- International and Area Studies
- Legal Studies
- Political Science
- Sociology