Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses Through Regularization1
Transformative Effects of Immigration Law: Immigrants’ Personal and Social Metamorphoses through Regularization1 Cecilia Menjívar Sarah M. Lakhani University of Kansas University of California, Berkeley This article examines the enduring alterations in behaviors, practices, and self-image that immigrants’ evolving knowledge of and partici- pation in the legalization process facilitate. Relying on close to 200 interviews with immigrants from several national origin groups in Los Angeles and Phoenix, the authors identify transformations that indi- viduals enact in their intimate and in their civic lives as they come in contact with U.S. immigration law en route to and as a result of reg- ularization. Findings illustrate the power of the state to control indi- viduals’ activities and mind-sets in ways that are not explicitly formal or bureaucratic. The barriers the state creates, which push immigrants to the legal margins, together with anti-immigrant hostility, create con- ditions under which immigrants are likely to undertake transformative, lasting changes in their lives. These transformations reify notions of the deserving immigrant vis-à-vis the law, alter the legalization pro- cess for the immigrant population at large, and, ultimately, shape in- tegration dynamics. INTRODUCTION Recent scholarship has highlighted the effects of immigration law, through the legal statuses it creates, on various aspects of immigrants’ lives. Researchers 1 We would like to thank Sebástien Chauvin, Jaeeun Kim, Walter Nicholls, and Michele Waslin, as well as the AJS reviewers, for their insightful comments. We would also like to thank the audience members who commented during presentations to the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California, the Department of Sociology at UCLA, the © 2016 by The University of Chicago.
[Show full text]