Rethinking “Open Borders”

This chapter seeks to problematize the so-called open borders option as a means for undermining the oppressive constraints associated with socially undocumented identity. Its goal is to create conceptual space for a philosophical conversation about the legitimacy of our current system of borders and its relationship to ongoing socially undocumented oppression that is not beholden to established frameworks of the established open borders debate. First, it explores a range of reasons why one might argue that opening borders could reduce socially undocumented oppression. Second, it argues that despite this appeal of an open borders policy, such oppression could nevertheless continue to exist in an “open borders world.” Third, it argues positively that eliminating borders is not, at present, the most effective means for addressing socially undocumented oppression.

Conclusion

This chapter identifies four ways in which the descriptive, phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity offered over the course of these chapters shifts our focus in terms of the ethics of immigration. They include (1) a focus on oppression; (2) an employment of philosophical resources for understanding how social identities operate in the pursuit of immigration justice; (3) a focus on the perspectives and organizing activities of socially undocumented people themselves; and (4) a reframing of the philosophical “open borders debate” in light of the realities of socially undocumented oppression (as discussed in Chapters 6 and 7). Second, it offers a series of proposals for combating socially undocumented oppression as a matter of relational egalitarian justice.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment

This chapter continues to build the argument that “being socially undocumented” entails having such a real and unique social identity. It argues that “being socially undocumented” is embodied. To make this argument, it first engages the narratives of socially undocumented people themselves as conveyed in the contexts of music, poetry, ethnographic interviews, and first-person testimonios in order to understand aspects of socially undocumented embodiment from the perspectives of those who experience it. Second, it traces the development of socially undocumented embodiment over the course of United States history, focusing on the Mexican-American war, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the Johnson-Reed Act, Repatriation, and the Bracero Program. These explorations will reveal, it is argued, that socially undocumented embodiment is both racialized and class-based in nature. This means that “being socially undocumented” meets at least one of the criteria of a “visible” social identity identified in Chapter 2.

Introduction

The Introduction introduces the concept of being socially, as opposed to (merely) legally undocumented. It briefly explores the relationship of being socially undocumented to Latina/o/x identity and anti-Latina/o/x racism. It establishes the relational egalitarian conception of justice that is employed throughout this book. The Introduction also lays out the framework for the remaining chapters. Chapter 1 articulates a new framework for immigration justice using a more expansive conception of what it means to “be undocumented.” Chapter 2 explores the meaning of having a socially undocumented identity. Chapter 3 argues that “being socially undocumented” is embodied along racial and class lines, an argument continued in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapters 6 and 7 examine what states must do to undermine anti-socially undocumented oppression. The Conclusion draws upon the arguments explored in all the previous chapters.

Socially Undocumented Horizons

This chapter completes the argument that “being socially undocumented” entails having a real, visible social identity by exploring possible aspects of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. It argues that the socially undocumented interpretive horizon can be characterized in terms of resistance to a “double bind” in which socially undocumented people often find themselves. On the one hand, they often have no choice but to perform under-valued labor in the United States; failure to do so could very literally result in starvation and death. On the other hand, socially undocumented people with and without legal authorization to be in the United States are “read” as “illegals,” and subjected to demeaning, immigration-related constraints, on the very basis of performing and being associated with such labor. They are, then, faced with two highly constraining options. This chapter explores ways in which socially undocumented people take innovative action to respond to this double bind.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented

This chapter employs the tools of ethnography and philosophical analysis to develop a descriptive account of female, socially undocumented embodiment. It explores the first-person narratives of “pregnant border-crossings” offered in ethnographic interviews conducted with many Mexican women who, while living in Mexico, crossed the Mexico-U.S. border to seek prenatal care and give birth in the United States, thereby securing U.S. citizenship for their children. It argues that for pregnant, socially undocumented people, the embodied, class-based elements of socially undocumented identity are particularly (and perhaps even inescapably) pronounced. For even a pregnant, middle-class, socially undocumented body seems indicative of what Bourdieu described as laisser aller—“letting oneself go”—causing pregnant, middle-class socially undocumented women to be “read” by immigration enforcement as belonging to a lower class-bracket. Thus, it is argued that the pregnant, socially undocumented women may be the most “illegalized” of all socially undocumented subjects in the United States.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented

This chapter argues that there is a distinct social group called the “socially undocumented,” which is distinguishable—at least in certain respects—from the social group of legally undocumented people. Furthermore, it is argued that the socially undocumented are an oppressed social group. They are those who are presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance, which often entails being taken to “look like” someone who is Mexico and working class, and subjected to demeaning immigration-related constraints on that basis. This chapter also argues that being oppressed as a socially undocumented person entails being subjected to injustice in the realm of immigration.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey to the United States

This chapter has two main goals. First, it aims to provide one normative argument about one oft-traveled migrant journey: that of Central Americans and Mexicans who intend to enter the United States without legal authorization by traversing Mexico, the Sonoran Desert, and the heavily militarized Mexico-U.S. border. It argues that this journey is a violation of justice in the scope of U.S. immigration policy because it plays a key role in the perpetuation of socially undocumented oppression within the United States, in violation of relational egalitarian justice. Second, it argues, from a relational egalitarian perspective, for the demilitarization of the Mexico-U.S. border as a response to the ways in which the migrant journey reinforces socially undocumented oppression.

On Social Identity

This chapter begins to explore what it means to have a socially undocumented identity by means of establishing what asocial identities are. It engages the respective metaphysical accounts of social identity of Linda Martín Alcoff and Pierre Bourdieu, both of which focus, albeit in different ways, on the embodied aspects of certain social identities. It adopts an account of social identity that understands such identities—particularly those that are race, gender and class-based—to be real, embodied sites of hermeneutical horizons. The goal is to develop a theory of socially undocumented identity that will prove useful for dismantling the sorts of institutions, thinking, and rhetoric that serve to brand and constrain unjustly a subset of the population as so-called “illegals.”