Conclusion

This book concludes with an analysis of how the Identity Mobilization Model and its illustration of movement activists’ efforts to leverage the use of an intersectional movement identity continue to resonate with organizers in the immigrant rights movement and broader social movement contexts as well. In particular, the conclusion points to the immigrant rights movement’s growing emphasis on black undocumented immigrant and transgender undocumented immigrant activist identities as well as the potential for coalition building and allyship with the Muslim immigrant and refugee community. By examining the continued manifestations of an intersectional movement identity in the immigrant rights movement and beyond, the conclusion underscores the importance of such a framework for understanding the movement’s future and its promise to bring about meaningful, transformative social change for immigrants and other members of marginalized groups.

Undocuqueer Activism

This chapter examines the experiences of those who identify as both undocumented and queer: undocuqueer activists. As the narratives in the chapter demonstrate, undocuqueer activist experiences point to the potential promise of an intersectional movement identity in bringing together immigrants, queer communities, and undocuqueer individuals. Undocuqueer activists begin by drawing parallels between the “coming-out” processes that undocumented immigrants and queer individuals have undergone, noting the similarities and differences in the experience for members of each group. Emphasizing the effect of undocuqueer organizers taking a critical role in the national immigrant rights movement, the chapter examines how these activists, especially the youth, have leveraged their intersectional identities to increase the visibility and interconnectedness of queer and immigrant struggles for liberation. Finally, the chapter provides an account of allyship by queer individuals and immigrant rights activists working to enact a politics of solidarity with undocuqueer community members.

Asian and Undocumented

This chapter focuses on the case of Asian undocumented youth to explain immigrant youth activists’ efforts to unearth the silenced history of Asian undocumented immigration and to place this history in conversation with current immigration debates. As part of these efforts, activists use storytelling strategies to counteract stereotypes of Asian immigrants as solely high-skilled workers and individuals who have come to the United States to attend college, noting that Asians were and continue to be affected by the issue of undocumented immigration. Asian undocumented activists also strategically draw upon their intersectional identities as both Asian and undocumented individuals in Latinx organizing spaces to work alongside members of a group that is largely invoked in the national imaginary in discussions of undocumented immigration. As part of activists’ efforts to push beyond discussions solely of the need for increased representation of Asian and other non-Latinx undocumented activists, this chapter emphasizes the extensive efforts that Asian and Latinx undocumented organizers have undertaken to employ a broad, multiracial approach to framing undocumented identity.

The Identity Mobilization Model

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s organizing theoretical framework, the Identity Mobilization Model, includes an overview of the sites where fieldwork for the book was conducted, and details the histories of the three subgroups whose experiences are the main focus of the book. The Identity Mobilization Model combines social movement research on education, strategy, and allyship to explain how members of a marginalized group who do not hold formal recognition under the law contest this form of exclusion and fight for increased rights. The discussion of the book’s multisited ethnographic approach, which is based on fieldwork conducted in San Francisco, Chicago, and New York City, highlights the similarity of each city with regard to the welcoming environment it provides for undocumented community members. The chapter concludes with a detailed background of the three subgroups within the immigrant rights movement that the book’s ethnographic chapters focus on: Asian undocumented immigrants, undocuqueer immigrants, and formerly undocumented women.

Formerly Undocumented Activists

This chapter profiles the experiences of a group of individuals whose experiences are not often discussed within the literature on undocumented migration: formerly undocumented individuals. Focusing on the case of formerly undocumented immigrant women activists who have continued their involvement in the immigrant rights movement after adjusting their immigration status, the chapter highlights the importance of these organizers’ identities as women, people of color, and formerly undocumented individuals. Of the formerly undocumented women of color activists interviewed for this book, the majority discussed their efforts in providing mentorship to what they refer to as the future generation of undocumented activists. Through examples of roles as graduate students, musicians, and full-time organizers, these individuals’ experiences draw attention to the fluid, shifting nature of immigrant legal status, as well as the resonance of undocumented status in the lives of those who are no longer undocumented.

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of the immigrant rights movement and the emergence of a prominent contingent of undocumented immigrant youth at its forefront. These youth have strategically and purposefully leveraged the use of an intersectional movement identity to in turn facilitate coalition building with members of similarly situated groups. The introduction lays out the book’s theoretical intervention in the scholarly literature on undocumented immigration and social movement activism and its methodological approach. It also includes a road map of the later ethnographic and interview-based chapters.