This paper explores how humanitarianism operates within the nation-state, asking: what strategies do lawyers employ to help undocumented immigrants access membership rights in the United States though humanitarian policies? I identify three concurrent evaluations that lawyers undertake to determine legalization strategies. First, attorneys carry out an assessment of threat of deportation because not all undocumented immigrants are equally at risk. Second, they determine eligibility by matching migrants' complex lived experiences to narrow, formal eligibility criteria, which often exclude individuals arbitrarily. Third, attorneys determine whether each case is "strong" or "weak" (more/less likely to acquire status) by identifying instances of migrant suffering to transform them into what I call "humanitarian capital," a symbolic resource legible to adjudicators in the immigration bureaucracy who grant legal status on the basis of compassion to limited numbers of exceptional cases.
This article examines the effects of contradictory U.S. immigration laws on unaccompanied minors from Central America. As children, they are considered deserving of protection, but as undocumented immigrants, they are subjected to state legal violence. Apprehended at the border, they must interact with multiple immigration agencies and finally apply for humanitarian deportation relief. Interactions in these institutional spaces teach youths about U.S. laws and behavioral norms expected of young claimants deemed deserving of humanitarian protection, which are construed in contrast to discourses that stigmatize their co-ethnics as “bad” immigrants. These interactions shape youths’ sense of belonging and commonsense understanding of the law or legal consciousness. I argue that the “legal consciousness” of unaccompanied minors is dichotomous and characterized by: (1) a combination of trust and fear in the state; (2) concurrent feelings of deservingness/rights and stigma/subordination; (3) information and misinformation about U.S. laws. This dichotomous consciousness shapes how youths claim belonging and rights in social interactions and in their applications for legal status. To signal their own belonging and deservingness, youths leverage information about their rights and normative notions about desirable teen and migrant behavior. Yet, in the process, they also inadvertently perpetuate stigmas about co-ethnics.
Drawing on ethnographic research at a legal aid organization, I analyze the legal brokerage of youths' asylum applications. As youths increasingly seek asylum alone, the United States has adopted policy changes allowing them more favorable access to the asylum process than adults. Despite this opening, I argue that mediating youths' asylum claims remains challenging. First, youths have more difficulty sharing their stories than adults, and I identify three youth-specific interviewing strategies that legal intermediaries employ to elicit their accounts of forced migration. Second, I analyze how intermediaries edit these accounts to satisfy the asylum system's expectations about childhood, as well as forced migration, constructing narratives that distance youths from criminalized adult identities and depict them as innocent child-refugees, which configures the asylum process as a victimizing and infantilizing rite of reverse passage.
Unaccompanied minors are among the most vulnerable undocumented immigrants facing removal proceedings in US immigration court. To avoid being sent back to violence and deprivation in their home countries, unaccompanied minors may apply for asylum or deportation relief for abandoned, abused, or neglected children. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a crisis for American society that also had key impacts on immigrants’ lives and their ability to interact with state systems to apply for legal status and claim rights. This paper asks: (1) How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect unaccompanied minors’ social vulnerabilities in the US?; and (2) How did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the US immigration bureaucracy and the work of nonprofit advocates who broker unaccompanied minors’ interactions with these state systems? Findings show that the pandemic exacerbated unaccompanied minors’ social vulnerabilities, with especially adverse effects on indigenous youths, those in legal limbo, unrepresented youths, and those experiencing job loss. The pandemic also disrupted the US immigration bureaucracy and, consequently, the work of advocates who broker immigrants’ interactions with these systems, making it more difficult to interact with traumatized youths to obtain necessary information for their cases, meet strict deadlines, and identify their needs. This case study provides lessons on how states and civil society strategically manage a “crisis” and discusses the implications for immigrants’ rights and vulnerabilities.
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