Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice 9780190619800, 9780190619817, 9780190619824, 9780190619831, 9780190619848

Table of contents :
Title_Pages
Dedication
Series_Editor_Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Socially_Not_Legally_Undocumented
On_Social_Identity
Socially_Undocumented_Embodiment
Pregnant_and_Socially_Undocumented
Socially_Undocumented_Horizons
Rethinking_Open_Borders
ConclusionA_New_Approach_to_Immigration_Justice
The_Injustice_of_the_Migrant_Journey_to_the_United_States
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Socially Undocumented

P H I L O S O P H Y O F   R AC E Series Editors Linda Martín Alcoff, Hunter College and the Graduate Center CUNY Chike Jeffers, Dalhousie University

Socially Undocumented Identity and Immigration Justice A M Y R E E D -​S A N D OVA L

1

3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2020 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Reed-Sandoval, Amy, author. Title: Socially undocumented : identity and immigration justice / Amy Reed-Sandoval. Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, 2020. | Series: Philosophy of race | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2019034781 (print) | LCCN 2019034782 (ebook) | ISBN 9780190619800 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190619817 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190619824 (updf) | ISBN 9780190619831 (epub) | ISBN 9780190619848 (online) Subjects: LCSH: United States—Emigration and immigration—Government policy—Moral and ethical aspects. | Illegal aliens—Government policy— Moral and ethical aspects—United States. | Illegal aliens—United States— Social conditions. | Marginality, Social—United States. Classification: LCC JV6483 .R43 2020 (print) | LCC JV6483 (ebook) | DDC 25.73—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034781 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034782 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America

For Amalia Mayahuel, my daughter

Series Editor Foreword The topic of race has been an object of serious philosophical concern starting from as early as the 17th century. Work on the topic has included political philosophy, social ontology, the philosophy of science, ethics, the philosophy of art, and the philosophy of language, among other areas. Philosophers have wanted to know what is this thing called “race,” whether it actually refers to anything in the world, how it is related to other ways of marking group identities, and what its political, ethical, and aesthetic effects have been. The concept of a “critical philosophy of race,” the title for this series, helpfully signals that philosophers do not necessarily take race to be a natural kind, but that there is debate over what kind of “kind” race is. Critical race philosophy sets out to explore the implicit “race-​effects” on the conceptual architecture of modern societies, as well as legal hermeneutics, concepts of justice, and the formation of institutions. Race also plays a role in forms of subjectivity, intersubjective relations, and in general, on our varied forms of life. This series aims to explore the emergence and consequences of the concept of race, as well as its associated practices. It aims to showcase both domination and resistance, the complexity of racial meanings across diverse communities, and the variable ways in which race and racism operate in regard to varied identities. The concept of race is mercurial, as are the ideas that legitimate racism. There needs to be a constant reappraisal of new forms, new ideas, and new efforts at amelioration. The series will showcase the unique contributions philosophers can bring to this area of inquiry. Two of these involve conceptual analysis and normative analysis. Conceptual analysis concerns how “race-​ talk” emerges, how it refers and to what, how (and whether) it is distinct from ethnic or other group categories, and how it operates in the pragmatics of everyday speech. Normative analysis concerns the politics and morality of “race-​talk,” or racial classifications. Beyond

x  Series Editor Foreword these two broad areas, every field in the history of philosophy itself has been impacted by new debates on major figures, from the influence of Aristotle’s views about slavery to the debates over Sartre’s understanding of negritude. Linda Martín Alcoff Chike Jeffers Series Editors

Acknowledgments Endeavoring to use the tools of philosophy to address a social injustice is, in my experience, both difficult and fascinating. One aims to bring useful conceptual clarity to what one perceives as a gargantuan social web of unfairness (the fascinating part) while constantly questioning the extent to which one’s methods truly serve the “real world” of which one writes (the difficult part). When doing such work, it really pays to be enveloped in a supportive community. I have been exceedingly fortunate to receive ongoing support from fellow academics, teachers, community partners, students, friends, and family members who have challenged, nurtured, and inspired me in turn since I began to write on immigration justice in the context of my doctoral dissertation, and as I continued with these efforts as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy working at the Mexico-​U.S. border. I want to begin by expressing my appreciation of Linda Martín Alcoff. In addition to serving as one of my series editors for this book, it was Linda who, following a panel on anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism that we co-​organized for the 2015 Latin American Studies Association annual meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, originally encouraged me to develop a book-​length project based on my theory of socially undocumented oppression. Without her initial prompting, I am not sure that this book would have been written (or even attempted). I also want to thank Chike Jeffers, the other series editor of the Oxford University Press (OUP) Critical Philosophy of Race Series, as well as Peter Ohlin at OUP, who, in addition to being a wonderful editor with whom to work, generously helped me to meet several manuscript milestones in a timely fashion before I gave birth to my daughter (just a day after I submitted to him my revised version of this book). I am also extremely grateful to Joseph Carens for his mentorship and his feedback on many of this book’s arguments. I came to know Joe when I was working on my proposal for this book, and since then, he has been an exceptionally generous interlocutor, providing invaluable

xii Acknowledgments support and critique through the very final stages of drafting this manuscript. The seeds for this book were planted, so to speak, when I  was a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington (UW), writing a dissertation entitled “Immigrant Oppression and Social Justice.” I  had the privilege of working with a warm, encouraging, and dynamic dissertation committee, the members of which helped to make my writing process as joyful and interesting as possible given the difficult topic at hand. Michael Blake, who directed my dissertation, somehow regularly managed to give me extraordinarily challenging feedback on my arguments while simultaneously nourishing my self-​confidence as a developing philosopher. Sara Goering and William Talbott, two other members of my committee in the UW Department of Philosophy, have always made time to read and comment carefully on my work—​even after I graduated from UW and began navigating my first years as an Assistant Professor. Shelley Wilcox, one of my external committee members, has been helping me find my way as a philosopher ever since she introduced me to feminist philosophy when I was an undergraduate philosophy student. José Antonio Lucero, a political scientist and another member of my committee, taught me how to approach immigration justice from outside the disciplinary limits of academic philosophy. Apart from my dissertation committee members, María Elena García, Alison Wylie, and Jamie Mayerfeld have also served as energetic mentors to me during and after my time at UW. Early drafts of this book’s chapters were presented over the years in a variety of academic venues and events, and I am very thankful to all the organizers and audience members who attended and commented on my work. The events in question include, but are not limited to, a 2014 panel at the American Philosophical Association Central Division meeting in Chicago; an “Immigration and Identity” panel at the 2014 American Philosophical Association Eastern Division meeting in Philadelphia; the 2015 annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico; the 2016 Roundtable on Latina Feminism in Cleveland, Ohio; a 2016 colloquium at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas at the UNAM in Mexico City, Mexico; the 2016  “Immigration, Toleration and Human Rights Conference” in

Acknowledgments  xiii Seattle, Washington, organized by the University of Washington and Goethe University HI-​NORM Research Cluster; the 2017 Great Lakes Philosophy Conference (which featured a workshop on “Migrants, Refugees, and the Moral Significance of Borders”) in Adrian, Michigan; a 2017 colloquium in the University of California-​ Northridge Department of Philosophy; the 2017  “Women and Resistance” panel at the Women’s History Month Conference of the University of Texas at El Paso; the 2018 Post-​Globalization, Decolonization, and Transmodernity Conference of the Association of Liberation Philosophy in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; as well as the 2018  “Justice without Borders” conference organized by the Philosophy Graduate Student Association at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. I am also grateful to the academic colleagues with whom I have been in dialogue about aspects of this book’s arguments over the course of many years. At the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), I wish first to thank Josiah Heyman for introducing me to several of the works in the anthropology of immigration that I  engage throughout this book, and also for all his encouragement. In addition, my thanks go to UTEP colleagues Caroline Arruda, Dennis Bixler-​Márquez, Howard Campbell, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Sandra Deutch, Larry Lesser, Deepanwita Dasgupta, Azuri González, Laura González, Carina Heckert, Pamela Herron, Ophra Leyser-​Whalan, Aurolyn Luyks, Marc Moffett, Aurelia Lorena Murga, Richard Pineda, Aleksandar Pjevalika, Sara Potter, Guillermina Nuñez-​ Mchiri, Brenda Risch, Kathleen Staudt Michael Topp, and Michael Zárate. In the broader academic world, my work on immigration justice has been benefited greatly by the commentary of Luvell Anderson, Michael Ball-​Blakely, Miranda Belarde-​Lewis, Tim Black, Tim Brown, Enrique Camacho, Julio Covarrubias, Natalie Cisneros, Leo Chavez, Max Cherem, Theresa Delgadillo, Marisa Duarte, Lisa Eckenwiler, Verena Erlenbusch-​ Anderson, Cécile Fabre, Asia Ferrin, Melissa Fitzpatrick, Lori Gallegos de Castillo, Alyshia Gálvez, Victor Manuel Hernández Márquez, Jennifer Kling, Nelson Maldonado-​Torres, James Maffie, Colin Marshall, Denise Meda Calderon, Amos Nascimento, Uchena Okeja, Adam Omar Hosein, Peter Higgins, Tyler Hildebrand, Guillermo Hurtado, Alex Lenferna, Matthew Lister, Eithne Luibhéid, Kayla Mehl, Eduardo Mendieta, José Jorge Mendoza, Kristina

xiv Acknowledgments Meshelski, Mariana Ortega, Cynthia Paccacerqua, Serena Parekh, Carlos Pereda, Andrea Pitts, Ernesto Rosen Velásquez, Michael Rosenthal, Alexander Sager, Alejandro Santana, Lynn Stephen, Fanny del Río, Stephanie Rivera Berruz, Grant Silva, Jack Turner, Manuel Vargas, Kyle Whyte, and Amelia Wirts. My ethnographic research for Chapter  4 of this book, which is concerned with Mexican women’s experiences crossing the Mexico-​ U.S.  border while visibly pregnant, was impacted significantly (and beneficially) by the rich dialogues and interviews I engaged in with medical professionals of the Mexico-​U.S.  borderlands who shared their time and expertise with me. My thanks go to Lynn Arnold, Emilio González Ayala, Sandra Iturbe, Mario Padilla, Oscar Durán González, and several others who wish to remain anonymous. In addition, I am deeply grateful to another group of interview subjects I consulted for that chapter for so generously sharing with me their personal stories of crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border while pregnant (and who remain anonymous). My UTEP student research assistants Claudia Lopez, Julisa Fernández-​Rivera, and Lauren Viramontes also provided valuable support for the development of this chapter. The aforementioned difficulties associated with applying the methods of philosophy to “real world” social injustice were somewhat mitigated by my inspiring collaborations with community partners in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, particularly in the context of Philosophy for Children and “community philosophy” outreach (which often had an immigration justice focus). I am very grateful to the following organizations for collaborating with me: La Mujer Obrera, Rayito de Sol Daycare and Learning Center, La Biblioteca Independiente Ma’Juana, Austin High School, Aliviane, Inc., and the YWCA of El Paso. I also wish to thank some of the wonderful individuals with whom I  have worked through these organizations: Lorena Andrade, Carlos Aceves, Cemelli de Aztlán, Susana Baez, Janet Chavez, Luis Rubén Díaz, Ana Laura Ramírez, and all the student volunteers of the Philosophy for Children in the Borderlands program. I am also grateful to the American Philosophical Association for providing funding for some of these outreach activities. My family has graciously lifted me up along my writer’s journey. Thanks go to my parents, Rick and Cathy Reed (my mother passed

Acknowledgments  xv away during the writing of this book, but I want to thank her nevertheless), and my brother, Ricky Reed. I also wish to thank my father’s life-​ partner Christine Risch, along with my “other family,” Cindy, Jack, and Brenna O’Keefe, who helped to raise me. Mi suegra, Alicia Cervantes, y mi suegro, Juventino Sandoval, también son, de muchas maneras, como “otros papás” para mí, y considero a mi cuñado Daniel Sandval como mi “nuevo hermano.” I send love and thanks to my Pennsylvania and Virginia-​based aunts and uncles Tim, Kate, Butch, and Georgine Ruch, and to my cousins Sarah Goetz and Ryan Ruch. También mando todo mi cariño a mi gran familia extendida de El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, y la Ciudad de México: gracias por toda la alegría, las risas, y las comidas compartidas. My “kinship network” also includes beloved friends Lauren DePino, Karen Emmerman and Jaime Fabey, to whom I also send my much gratitude and love. I also extend thanks to my madrina, Cheryl Gonzalez. Finally, my greatest thanks of all are reserved for my husband, best friend, first reader, and “rock,” Iván Sandoval-​Cervantes, whom I love with my entire heart and who, I should add, helped me come up with the term “socially undocumented” back in our graduate school days.

Introduction

Alejandra, who is now twenty-​one, grew up in Ciudad Juárez, which borders El Paso—​two cities divided by the Rio Grande and the heavily militarized Mexico-​US border.1 As a child, she frequently crossed the border to El Paso on a tourist visa for daytrips with her family. She started dreaming of going to college in the United States. “I remember going to El Paso and driving past the beautiful campus of the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) on the I-​10,” she told me over tea in El Paso. “I told myself that one day I was going to study there.” Years later, when Alejandra began applying to colleges, her mother told her that she could not afford to pay for Alejandra to attend a university in the United States. Alejandra would have to go to college in Mexico. Ever-​determined, Alejandra, a straight-​A student, managed to get two academic scholarships that would pay for her US undergraduate degree in its entirety. After obtaining an F-​1 visa that permitted her to live, work, and attend school in the United States, Alejandra enrolled in her first college classes at UTEP. Like many residents of Ciudad Juárez who attend grade school or university in El Paso, she decided to save money by living in Juárez with her family while attending school in the United States. This required her to cross the Mexico-​US border on a daily basis to go to her classes at UTEP. Each day, at about six o’clock in the morning, her mother would drop her off at the Paso del Norte International Bridge/​Puente



1

“Alejandra” is a pseudonym.

Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

2 Introduction Internacional that is frequented daily by border-​crossers moving between the United States and Mexico. Alejandra would wait in lines that varied in length; she recalls occasions on which she had to wait for two hours in the winter cold prior to her morning classes. What was most distressing for her, though, were her regular encounters with the Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents, who would decide whether Alejandra would be allowed to cross the border and make it to school that day, and sometimes even keep the visa on which her US schooling depended. While some CBP agents were very friendly, others would make her uncomfortable. “Often they don’t even look you in the eye when they tell you to give them your visa and they ask you questions,” she explained. “It makes you feel like you are inferior to them.” On a lucky day, the CBP agents would simply ask to see the contents of her bag for inspection. On two occasions, though, Alejandra was asked to go wait in a room for additional questioning. “Even though I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong—​I mean, I was just trying to go to school—​my heart would start racing, and I would start sweating!” she said. “I felt like I was doing something wrong even though I knew that I wasn’t.” Alejandra recalls an occasion when one of the large dogs that often accompany CBP agents started sniffing at her shoes with peculiar intensity. “In general, I like dogs, but the CBP dogs make me really nervous,” she explained. That day, Alejandra, who has an anxiety disorder, felt her heart pound heavily. She began sweating profusely, and the CBP agent noticed. He became suspicious, and sharply asked Alejandra if she had something to hide. Meanwhile, the dog continued to sniff her shoes. Alejandra felt her anxiety level spike. The CBP agent asked Alejandra to go to a “special room” for additional questioning. Eventually, she was released. She crossed the Mexico-​US border and quickly caught a bus to UTEP. Alejandra told me that her border-​crossing experiences have affected her perceptions of her place in US society. “When something like that would happen to me, it would affect me for the rest of the day,” she said. “Even after I crossed the border, I would keep thinking and thinking about it. It would make me feel like I don’t really belong here, in the US.”

Introduction  3 “When I’m at the border, I follow my parents’ advice,” she further explained. “I keep my head down. I don’t talk more than I need to. I try to appear humble to the CBP agent. And it really bothers me, because you feel like you’re lesser than they are. But I never say anything.” Alejandra, who describes herself as neither “white passing” nor particularly dark or morena, also reflected on how her daily experiences crossing the border to go to school were “easy” in comparison to those of many others. She said that she often observed that fellow Mexican border-​crossers who appeared to be working class (i.e., their clothes and demeanor reflected the fact that they were headed to the United States to clean houses, do construction work, or perform other types of manual labor), who were dark-​skinned and/​or Indigenous were generally subjected to increased questioning. Even though all these border-​ crossers, like Alejandra, had legal permission to enter the United States, the CBP agents would frequently “test” them to see if they spoke English. They would also spend considerable time inspecting their persons and belongings. Meanwhile, Alejandra said, US citizens and white-​passing middle-​and upper-​class Mexicans could cross the border with relative ease. Reflecting on these experiences, Alejandra said, “I am very grateful to the United States for giving me the opportunity to study here. But I also don’t think that the treatment that we receive from some CBP agents is right. My mother taught me that you should try to be nice to people. Why can’t they do the same?” Alejandra’s story will likely inspire different reactions on the part of different readers. Some may not object to her treatment at the border. After all, one might say, she has a terrific opportunity to attend a university in the United States and she even gets to save money by living in Ciudad Juárez with her family. Furthermore, one might argue that the CBP agents are just doing their jobs in their dealings with her. The United States, like other sovereign nations, has to protect its borders, and Alejandra’s experiences are morally acceptable consequences of this fact. Others may find this story disconcerting. Should Alejandra, who has legal permission to enter the United States and is, after all, just trying to go to class, be subjected to treatment that makes her feel

4 Introduction “lesser than” CBP agents? It is right that Alejandra is made to feel that she is doing something wrong in her legally authorized border-​ crossings? Furthermore, is it morally and politically acceptable that some border-​crossers—​particularly those who appear working-​class, have darker skin, and/​or are “read” as Indigenous—​must contend with additional obstacles to crossing the border? One might agree that the United States has a right to its borders but still feel that there is something problematic about this story. I am introducing this book with Alejandra’s story partly because it is somewhat ordinary (bracketing Alejandra’s very impressive accomplishments). That is, this is not a particularly “dramatic” Mexico-​US border-​crossing narrative. Countless Mexico-​US border-​ crossers have experiences similar to those of Alejandra on a daily basis, and such experiences are widely regarded as normal (even by many of the border-​crossers themselves). And yet, I argue that this story, in all of its “ordinariness,” is indicative of something pernicious, widespread, and profoundly unjust about immigration policy and its enforcement in the United States. Alejandra feels demeaned, and she is treated as though she is doing something wrong or “illegal” in terms of US immigration policy, not on the basis of her legal status in the United States, but on the basis of a complex array of social factors. Alejandra may not be legally undocumented in the United States. I aim to argue that she and others similarly positioned are, however, socially undocumented, and that this is indicative of immigration injustice. In this book, I aim to establish that there are two core aspects of socially undocumented identity, both of which I  shall explore and unpack over the course of the ensuing chapters. First, the socially undocumented are presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance—​not by any fair and egalitarian confirmation of legally undocumented status. To be presumed to be undocumented is to be presumed to be “an illegal” in the United States. However, I will generally use the term “socially undocumented,” as I  argue, along with many others, that it is morally problematic to refer to people as “illegals” (a concern to which I return later in this chapter). Second, the socially undocumented are subjected to what I  call “demeaning immigration-​related constraints” or “illegalizing forces” (that is, they are “socially illegalized”) on that very basis. As Alejandra’s story seems

Introduction  5 to suggest, one can, in fact, have legal permission to be in the United States and nevertheless be socially undocumented. On the other hand, I  shall argue that one can lack legal permission to be in the United States and still be treated unjustly if one is oppressed on the basis of having a socially undocumented identity. To put it somewhat differently, I  shall argue that even if coercive state borders are not automatically and entirely “ruled out” as unjust—​that is, even if we assume, at least for the sake of argument, that states have a presumptive right to restrict some immigration into their territories—​it is still unjust that some people, including those who lack legal authorization to be in the United States, are presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance and are subjected to demeaning immigration-​ related constraints on that basis. While I suspect that most of my readers will be suspicious of borders and sympathetic to immigrant rights activism, I also hope to have in my audience some readers who support restrictions on immigration and the rights of states to maintain coercive and exclusionary borders. I aim to demonstrate to skeptics of what I have asserted thus far that even if one takes as one’s theoretical starting point the popular idea that states have a right to control immigration, the existence and perpetuation of socially undocumented identity and oppression requires us to reconceive dramatically US immigration policy as a matter of justice. While I introduced this book with Alejandra’s experiences crossing the Mexico-​US border, let me be clear that literal border-​crossings are not the only sites of socially undocumented experience in the United States. Indeed, in this country (and in other parts of the world—​an issue I turn to later), people are often presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearances and thus subjected to demeaning, immigration-​ related constraints in an alarmingly wide range of places and social situations. These contexts include, but are certainly not limited to, places of employment, sidewalks, one’s car as one is driving, places of worship, hospitals, grocery stores, and schools of all levels. They also include Native American reservations, for, as I also explore in this book, Indigenous peoples in the United States, and particularly those who live along the Mexico-​US border, regularly report being treated “like illegals” on their own land.

6 Introduction Indeed, in the context of the United States, socially undocumented oppression is not only widespread but is also an urgent social and policy concern. It is so pernicious, I shall argue, that is has generated a social group of people who, in Michael Walzer’s words (though he says this in a particular discussion of guest workers who lack citizenship), “are locked in an inferior position that is also an anomalous position; they are outcasts in a society that has no caste norms, metics in a society where metics have no comprehensible, protected and dignified place.”2 In addition to constituting an oppressed social group that is locked into such an inferior position, I shall argue that individuals who are made to feel “being socially undocumented” experience having a real, embodied social identity and corresponding hermeneutic (or interpretive) horizon via which they perceive and understand the world. This will show, first of all, just how profound, complex, and challenging socially undocumented oppression truly is in the United States. In addition, I argue that it demonstrates that socially undocumented people are epistemically well equipped to challenge, as part of the broad fight for immigration justice, many of the demeaning, immigration-​related constraints imposed on them. To make these arguments, I will be delving into the academic areas of both political philosophy and theories of social identity—​and, in so doing, putting into dialogue with one another two “branches” of philosophical literature that have often remained separate. In my explorations of the metaphysics and epistemology of socially undocumented identity, I shall focus phenomenologically on the racialized, class-​based, and gendered components of socially undocumented identity and oppression. Meanwhile, as a work of political philosophy, this book argues that achieving justice in immigration requires us to understand clearly how “being socially undocumented” is operative as a real (and oppressed) social identity, and also how “being undocumented” entails, in a wide range of cases, something different from a mere legal status. I aim to use these explorations to offer a new framework for achieving justice in immigration in the United States and

2 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice:  A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 59

Introduction  7 possibly on a global scale. Immigration justice, I argue, demands the undermining of oppressing socially undocumented people. Let me explain in a bit more detail just how the descriptive, phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity offered in this book contributes to my arguments about the social injustice of socially undocumented oppression. First, I  argue that understanding “the socially undocumented” as an oppressed social group will enable us to detect “patterns of inequality” that unfairly target the individual members who make up this group. In order to detect these patterns of inequality and injustice, we need to understand precisely who the socially undocumented are. My descriptive account of socially undocumented identity is designed to facilitate such understanding. Second, in exploring the ways in which socially undocumented identity operates along racialized, class-​based, and gendered lines—​ a process that is, I  shall argue, rendered conceptually difficult if not impossible under a purely “legalistic understanding” of being undocumented—​we arrive at a richer and more accurate understanding of the nature of socially undocumented oppression. Indeed, we learn that it entails far more than (and sometimes something different from) an ongoing lack of legal status. It is also often about physical embodiment and corporeality, gender discrimination, workplace exploitation, commonplace ways of speaking and seeing, and much more. Third, I  argue that in coming to understand “being socially undocumented” in terms of possessing a real social identity, we—​that is, those of us who, like me, are not socially undocumented—​are compelled to turn socially to undocumented people themselves for ideas and solutions for combating unjust socially undocumented oppression. As I explore below, the framework of justice adopted in this book maintains that achieving social justice often requires ground-​ up social mobilization, often waged by members of oppressed groups themselves and, when appropriate, their allies, and not exclusively state-​centric solutions. Thus, in coming to understand “being socially undocumented” as having a real social identity, we also establish a useful groundwork for dismantling socially undocumented oppression in cooperation with socially undocumented people.

8 Introduction

I.  Anti-​Latina/​o/​x Racism Considerations of anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism play an important role in the metaphysical and epistemological components of this project. We have seen that Alejandra, and many of her aforementioned fellow border-​crossers, are citizens of Mexico. As I shall explore in this book, Mexicans—​particularly those who are working class—​have come to represent the paradigmatic “illegal subject” in the United States. This often also holds true for Latina/​o/​xs and Latin Americans who are not Mexican. At the same time, I argue that not all Latina/​o/​xs and Latin Americans are socially undocumented. Furthermore, one need not be Latina/​o/​x or Latin American to be socially undocumented. Prior to embarking upon these arguments in this book, I want to make some early, clarificatory statements about the complex relationship between socially undocumented and Latina/​o/​x identities. To date, considerable work has been done in Latina/​o/​x philosophy to explore the interplay between immigration (in)justice and anti-​ Latina/​o/​x racism. Indeed, Manuel Vargas lists “broadly social and political questions about Latinxs, with a special eye toward immigration issues” as a “core area of concern” of this philosophical subfield.3 Gloria Anzaldúa famously wrote in Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza that for Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Chicana/​o/​xs in the Mexico-​US borderlands, “those who make it past the checking points of the Border Patrol find themselves in the midst of 150 years of racism in Chicano barrios in the Southwest and in big northern cities.”4 Carlos Alberto Sánchez explains that “among the Spanish-​ speaking immigrant community in the US, the answer to the question ¿tienes papeles? often marks the differences between subjects and non-​subjects.”5 Meanwhile, José Jorge Mendoza has analyzed the ways in which immigrant enforcement and expulsion strategies in the US

3 See Manuel Vargas, “Latinx Philosophy,” forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies, edited by Ilan Stevens (New York: Oxford University Press). 4 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), p. 12 5 Carlos Alberto Sanchez, “On Documents and Subjectivity: The Formation and De-​ Formation of the Immigrant Identity,” Radical Philosophy Review vol. 14 no. 2 (2011), p. 197.

Introduction  9 interior serve to marginalize US Latina/​o/​xs with legal permission to reside in the United States.6 In sum, philosophical work on Latina/​o/​x identity is now a core component of the ethics of immigration. My account of socially undocumented identity seeks to engage this important literature. In fact, almost all of the philosophical, historical, ethnographic, and artistic material I shall employ in my explorations of socially undocumented identity pertains to the experiences of working-​class Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States who are systematically treated “as illegals” irrespective of their actual legal status in the United States. In this sense, I seek to contribute to the growing philosophical literature on anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism. At the same time, this book seeks to complicate the relationship between socially undocumented oppression and anti-​Latina/​o/​ x racism. As mentioned previously, it is possible to be Latina/​o/​x or Latin American in the United States and not be “read” or treated as “an illegal,” just as one need not be a Latina/​o/​x to be socially undocumented. Thus, while this study of socially undocumented identity is necessarily a study of aspects of anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism, it also seeks to disentangle our understandings of socially undocumented oppression from discourse about anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism. This is not simply because socially undocumented oppression is not experienced by all Latina/​o/​xs. In addition, anti-​Latina/​ox racism itself has a number of features that are not necessarily operative in socially undocumented identity and oppression. For instance, Linda Martín Alcoff has explored ways in which US Latina/​o/​xs are often stereotyped as “pre-​modern” and thus incapable of assimilation.7 Anti-​Catholicism also frequently plays a strong role in anti-​Latina/​o/​x discrimination. In addition, Latin Americans and Latina/​ o/​ xs in the United States often experience anti-​ Latina/​ o/​ x racism on the basis of their accent or “sound.” Eduardo Mendieta has argued that “race is as much, if not more, in the voice than in the skin color,” and that “the racist dreams of a pure race at the same time that 6 See José Jorge Mendoza, The Moral and Political Philosophy of Immigration: Liberty, Security, and Equality (London: Lexington Books, 2017). 7 See, for instance, Linda Martin Alcoff, “Comparative Race, Comparative Racisms,” in Jorge Garcia, ed., Race or Ethnicity? On Black and Latino Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017).

10 Introduction she dreams of a pure language, a perfect sound, a harmonious white prosody.”8 Indeed, anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism often involves presumptions and accusations that one cannot assimilate, that one is pre-​modern (something that is often suggested about Catholics),9 and that one has a hopelessly “foreign” or “Spanish” accent. While many of those who experience anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism also experience socially undocumented oppression, note that one can experience these aspects of anti-​ Latina/​o/​x racism without being presumed to be in the United States without legal authorization and demeaned on that particular basis. In sum, this book is, in part, a study of anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism, for the “paradigmatic” socially undocumented or “illegal” person in the United States is a working-​class Mexican or Latina/​o/​x in this country. At the same time, this book aims to disentangle socially undocumented oppression from anti-​Latina/​o/​x racism for the aforementioned reasons. While this may seem contradictory, it is, I believe, consistent in spirit with the fraught terrain of Latina/​o/​x identity politics. As Cristina Beltrán notes in The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of the Political, “rather than striving to uncover the unitary core that binds Latinos, scholars and advocates should embrace, rather than resist or deny, the instability and incompleteness of the category ‘Latino.’ ”10 The relationship between socially undocumented identity and Latina/​o/​x identity is certainly complex, but so is Latina/​o/​x identity itself.

II.  Representing “The Undocumented” in Political Philosophy This book also seeks to engage representations of “the undocumented” in the political philosophy of immigration, and to explore the theoretical consequences such representations have for the scope of the immigration policies that political philosophers ultimately advocate. 8 Eduardo Mendieta, “The Sound of Race: The Prosody of Affect,” Radical Philosophy Reviewonline first. 9 I borrow this idea from Linda Martín Alcoff, personal conversation. 10 Christina Beltrán, The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of the Political (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 161.

Introduction  11 While specifically undocumented migration, as a philosophical topic, has received relatively little attention in political philosophy, those political philosophers who have advanced arguments for amnesty for undocumented migrants have defined what it means to be an undocumented (or irregular or unauthorized) migrant in what I describe as a legalistic sense. For instance, Joseph Carens defines “irregular migrants” as “noncitizens residing without official authorization” (and he then moves on to argue that they often deserve such official authorization).11 In his own argument for legalization of the undocumented, Adam Omar Hosein has described “unauthorized migrants” as those who “entered [the state in which they currently reside] in contravention of immigration laws.”12 Michael Blake, in arguing that undocumented migrants should often be granted amnesty on the basis of the political virtue of mercy, represents “the undocumented” as people who “are present within a society without a legal right.”13 In certain respects, these “legalistic understandings” of what it means to be undocumented make perfect sense. After all, the moral “problem” of undocumented migration tends to be represented in one of two ways, depending on one’s political beliefs about immigration. It is framed as either (1) the moral “problem” that occurs when legally undocumented people who live, work and build families in the United States are denied a legal right to remain (which they deserve); or (2) the moral “problem” that occurs when individuals choose to violate a state’s immigration laws by opting to live in that state without legal authorization. The dispute in question is certainly legalistic in nature. It refers to laws being broken and legal protections being denied to individuals who may be entitled to them. Thus, it is understandable that one would initially represent the undocumented themselves—​and the moral challenge associated with

11 Joseph Carens, “The Case for Amnesty: Time Erodes That State’s Right to Deport,” Boston Review:  A Political and Literary Form, accessible at http://​bostonreview.net/​ forum/​case-​amnesty-​joseph-​carens. 12 Adam Omar Hosein, “Immigration: The Argument for Legalization,” Social Theory and Practice vol. 40 no. 4 (October 2014), p. 609. 13 Michael Blake, “Equality without Documents:  Political Justice and the Right to Amnesty,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy vol. 40 (2010), p. 100.

12 Introduction being undocumented—​in terms of a certain legal status (or a lack thereof). The problem is, or so I shall argue in this book, that “being undocumented” in the United States is not merely or even necessarily about legal status. Rather, as I  have maintained, it often involves the possession of an oppressed social identity—​that of being socially, rather than legally, undocumented—​that does not neatly track whether one possesses legal authorization to be in the United States. Furthermore, the problem is not merely an incomplete description of the subjects in question. I argue that when we view what it means to be undocumented in a purely legalistic sense, we are philosophically compelled to focus on a limited range of policy concerns—​i.e., a disproportionate (though important) focus on whether legally undocumented migrants should be given legal permission to remain in the country in which they currently reside without legal authorization—​and not others. While I agree with Carens, Hosein, Blake, and others that legally unauthorized migrants are often owed a right to remain, and certainly regard their respective arguments as highly significant, I shall explore ways in which a focus on socially undocumented identity serves to broaden productively the scope of our ongoing conversations about immigration justice. Once again, it compels us to take on a far wider range of policies, social institutions, societal attitudes, linguistic practices, and ways of relating to each other that serve to perpetuate unjust socially undocumented identity. I  shall argue that it even compels us to reconsider the terms of the philosophical “open borders debate,” which responds to the difficult question of whether national borders are, or ever could be, just. Interestingly, political philosophers have, in certain respects, demonstrated sensitivity to the ways in which “being undocumented” seems to involve more than a mere legal status. In this sense, I conceive of this book as, in part, an engagement of representations of the undocumented in political philosophy and not simply a critique. For instance, as I shall soon explore in greater detail, Joseph Carens introduces The Ethics of Immigration with a vignette about Miguel Sanchez, a poor citizen of Mexico who, after entering the United States without legal authorization, works in construction and at Dunkin’

Introduction  13 Donuts while he raises a family in near-​constant fear of deportation.14 In addition, in his prominent argument for open borders, he writes of “Haitians in small, leaky boats confronted by armed Coast Guard cutters,” “Salvadorans dying from heat and lack of air after being smuggled into the Arizonan desert,” and “Guatemalans crawling through rat-​infested sewer pipes from Mexico to California.”15 When Michael Blake argues, contra Carens, that there is a range of conceivable circumstances under which one can justly be deported, he substitutes Carens’s story of Miguel Sanchez with that of Morgan, a Canadian artist (who is presumably white) who is drawn both to the “Portland art scene” and the “slightly higher hourly wages for manual labor.”16 I think the individuals that Carens describes are likely to be socially, and not just legally, undocumented. However, as I shall argue in Chapter 1, cases similar to that of Morgan seem to be about legally, but not socially, undocumented status. The social identities of Miguel and Morgan—​one a poor, Mexican laborer, and the other a white, middle-​class Canadian artist—​are clearly important in both of these arguments about justice in immigration. However, this work has yet to be rendered philosophically explicit in the philosophy of immigration. I aim to demonstrate that if we make such concerns of social identity central rather than peripheral to our philosophical conversations about immigration, we will alter the scope of our philosophical conversation, arriving at a more robust and accurate vision of immigration justice.

III. Justice: Relational Egalitarianism Prior to surveying chapters of this book and outlining the arguments I shall make therein, allow me to articulate the theory of justice employed in these arguments, namely, relational egalitarianism. I  am 14 Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 1. 15 Joseph Carens, “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders,” Review of Politics vol. 49 no. 2 (Spring 1987), p. 251. 16 Michael Blake, “Equality without Documents:  Political Justice and the Right to Amnesty,” p. 109.

14 Introduction particularly interested here in the relational egalitarian thought that has been developed, albeit in different ways, in the respective works of Iris Marion Young and Elizabeth Anderson. There are, I  believe, two fundamental ideas that these relational egalitarian theories share, and these features undergird my normative arguments about immigration. The first is a commitment to universal moral equality of all people, across the globe. Universal moral equality means, as the very least, that just states cannot permissibly regard their own citizens as morally superior to those of other countries.17 A great deal of philosophical debate about justice in immigration has revolved around the question of whether coercive borders and practices of immigrant exclusion undermine the moral equality of prospective migrants who are denied entry to the states to which they want to migrate. Second, relational egalitarians hold that just states are required to cultivate and maintain a “society of equals,” and that this involves taking steps to undermine unequal and oppressive social relations. The “point” of equality, Anderson argues, is not to ensure that any and all differences in wealth stem only from the responsible or irresponsible decisions that people make (and not from circumstances beyond their control, and for which they cannot be held responsible). Rather, Anderson describes the end-​goal of relational egalitarianism as a social system of “democratic equality” which “guarantees all law abiding citizens effective access to the social conditions of their freedom at all times,” and “integrates principles of distribution with demands of equal respect.”18 Such a system of democratic equality requires, Anderson maintains, that citizens be empowered as workers, as human beings, and as political agents. Such a society can productively be envisioned in contrast to what we would take to be a deeply inegalitarian society. In inegalitarian societies, Anderson maintains, “those of superior rank  .  .  .  [are]  .  .  .  thought entitled to inflict violence upon others, to exclude or segregate them

17 See Michael Blake, “Immigration and Political Equality,” San Diego Law Review vol. 45 no. 4 (2008), pp. 963–980. 18 Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics vol. 109 no. 2 (1999), pp. 289‒290.

Introduction  15 from social life, to treat them with contempt, to force them to obey, work without remuneration, and abandon their own cultures.”19 A society lacking relational equality, Anderson argues, is one that often features what Iris Marion Young has called the five faces of oppression, which include, on Young’s view, the “faces” of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.20 In sum, two core principles of relational egalitarianism employed in this book are (1) a respect for universal moral equality, and (2) a requirement that states and societies cultivate a society of equals and dismantle oppression in the pursuit of democratic equality. Upholding these two principles will require, on the relational egalitarian view advocated here, significant attention to issues of representation. Certain patterns of representation constitute what Debra Satz has called “images of inequality.”21 Such images, Satz explains, undermine the social status of the wrongfully represented group. For instance, in her discussion of the “five faces of oppression,” Iris Marion Young explores the way cultural imperialism “involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm.”22 Furthermore, under cultural imperialism, oppressed groups “find themselves defined from the outside, positioned, played, by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere.”23 Consequently, she argues, “the dominant culture’s stereotyped and inferiorized images of the group must be internalized by group members at least to the extent that they are forced to react to behavior of others influenced by those images.”24 As I shall explore over the course of this book, problematic representations of the socially undocumented in a variety of realms also promote other faces of oppression, such as exploitation, violence, and powerlessness. In sum, achieving relational equality requires attentiveness to harms of cultural imperialism and, more broadly, the sorts of “images

19 Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” p. 312. 20 See Iris Marion Young, chap. 2, “The Five Faces of Oppression,” in Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 48‒63. 21 Debra Satz, “Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor,” Ethics vol. 106 no. 1 (1995), p. 78. 22 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 59 23 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, p. 61. 24 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, pp. 62‒63.

16 Introduction of inequality” that contribute to inegalitarian social relations. I have focused on this element of relational egalitarianism in particular because, in the forthcoming chapters, several of my proposals for alleviating socially undocumented oppression will focus on the ways in which the socially undocumented are stereotyped and inferiorized at various levels in US society through such “images of inequality.” At this stage, in order to continue to articulate the relational egalitarian understanding of justice employed in this book, I think it would be helpful for me to use a dialectical method in which I respond to a series of possible objections to relational egalitarian theory. Many of these objections stem from the fact that relational egalitarianism, particularly as it has been developed by Anderson, is part of the philosophical tradition of political liberalism. I find Anderson’s account of relational equality lucid and helpful for the purpose of articulating the real “point” of equality. However, some of my replies to the following objections will entail delving more deeply into the thought of Iris Marion Young, whose relationship with political liberalism is somewhat more complicated (that is, I  take Young to further complicate aspects of political liberalism, albeit from a broadly relational egalitarian perspective). Prior to embarking on this dialectic, let me clarify two things. First, the “liberalism” in question is liberal egalitarianism. Liberal egalitarianism, as helpfully explained by Tommie Shelby, “takes seriously not only individual liberty and civic equality but also substantive economic fairness”—​much in contrast to neoliberalism, which “promotes the use of market rationality and business principles in all social institutions, prefers firms and private organizations to carry out public functions, and views citizens primarily as economic agents.”25 I will not, therefore, reply to objections connected to neoliberalism, for this is an ideology that I reject outright. Second, let me clarify that I am not offering the ensuing discussion as a robust or complete overview of all philosophical objections to liberal egalitarian thought. Such an overview falls out of the scope not only of this chapter but of this entire book. 25 Tommie Shelby, Dark Ghettos:  Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016), p. 10.

Introduction  17 Rather, this series of objections and responses is intended to further orient readers toward the understanding of justice that undergirds this book’s normative arguments. The first strand of objection is as follows. One might argue that inasmuch as relational egalitarianism is tied to liberal, and specifically Rawlsian, political theory, it is problematically individualistic. There are two important variations of this objection that I shall explore here. First, one might argue that liberal theories are inadequate for understanding structural injustice and the oppression of social groups. Stated differently:  given that liberal thought is concerned with the moral equality of individuals, it therefore cannot take seriously the interests and claims of social groups. Liberal theorist Ronald Dworkin, for instance, has developed a theory proposing “that equality is in principle a matter of individual right rather than group position.”26 Larry Temkin, meanwhile, argues that “concern about inequality between society’s groups must ultimately be understood as concern about inequality between groups’ members.”27 Since I am exploring what is owed to the socially undocumented, which I describe in terms of an identity and an oppressed social group, one might contend that relational egalitarianism, qua liberal theory, is an inadequate conception of justice for my stated purposes. The political thought of Iris Marion Young is particularly helpful for understanding how one can, in fact, regard the individual as the “primary unit of moral concern” while also employing an inherently group-​sensitive political philosophy. To begin with, note that Young’s theory of structural injustice is explicitly social group-​focused. Young has argued that “evaluating inequality in terms of social groups enables us to claim that some inequalities are unjust . . . because such group-​ based comparison helps reveal important aspects of institutional relations and processes.”28 Importantly, however, Young explicitly states that her political theory is motivated by a commitment to the universal moral equality of individuals. Indeed, she stipulates that “the 26 Ronald Dworkin, “What Is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs vol. 10 (1980), p. 340, my emphasis. 27 Larry Temkin, Inequality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 101. 28 Iris Marion Young, “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgements of Justice,” Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 1 (2001), p. 2.

18 Introduction ultimate purpose for making assessments of inequality is to promote the well-​being of individuals considered as irreducible moral equals.”29 Group-​based comparisons, Young maintains, can reveal “patterns of inequality” that affect not only social groups but the individuals who make up such groups.30 Young’s claims suggest that there is no reason a relational egalitarian committed to universal moral equality and the undermining of oppressive social relations could not evaluate inequality by way of invoking group-​based comparisons of well-​being and constraint. In fact, it seems that a relational egalitarian should do precisely this. There is a second important variation of the objection that liberal theories of justice are problematically individualistic, and it comes from a feminist political perspective. While I have already argued that liberal concern with the moral equality of individuals is consistent with a “group sensitive” approach to theorizing (in)justice, one might argue that any such focus on atomistic individuals misrepresents who we actually are. A very important insight of feminist philosophy is that human beings necessarily exist in relation to one another. In fact, on this view, we are constituted by our inter-​personal relations.31 The language of individual rights, individual autonomy, and equality of individuals—​language that is featured in the relational egalitarian tradition—​seems to obscure this fact. Indeed, liberalism’s individualism has led some feminist theorists to reject liberal political theories altogether. Illustrating this, in her 1983 book Feminist Politics and Human Nature, Alison Jaggar argued that “the liberal conception of human nature and of political philosophy cannot constitute the philosophical foundation for an adequate theory of women’s liberation.”32 I certainly agree with this insight about our fundamentally relational natures and “selves.” This insight is not, however, inconsistent with an adherence to the main goals of relational egalitarianism.

29 Young, “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgements of Justice,” p. 6. 30 Young, “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgements of Justice,” p.16. 31 See, for instance, Nel Noddings, The Maternal Factor:  Two Paths to Morality (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), and Virginia Held, The Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 32 Alison Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Lanham, MD:  Rowman & Littlefield, 1983), pp. 47‒48.

Introduction  19 Indeed, there are resources from within feminism that can help us to understand how a relational egalitarian understanding of equality, rights, and justice can be rendered consistent with a relational understanding of the self. Jennifer Nedelsky’s work is particularly helpful in this regard. She has argued that “understanding how to honor and nurture each individual is best done through a relational approach,” and that “relationship . . . must be central rather than peripheral to legal and political thought and to the workings of the institutions that structure relations.”33 Though liberalism, in practice, has historically obscured the fundamentally relational nature of the self, Nedelsky provides a framework for reforming liberalism in theory and practice through a ­relational approach. Articulating such an approach, Nedelsky explains that “rights structure relations of power, trust, responsibility and care.”34 This means that when engaging in debates about which rights ought to be distributed, and to whom, we must begin by exploring the ways in which current rights and laws may have contributed to ongoing, unjust patterns of social relations. We must then be forward-​looking, and ask:  “What interpretation or change in the existing law would help restructure the relations in a way that would promote a given value?”35 While I  cannot do justice to the full range of Nedelsky’s arguments here, I  provide this brief summary to convey that one can, indeed, make “relationship central” while making decisions about the distributions and very nature of rights in a liberal system. On Nedelsky’s view, it is not merely the distribution of rights that is at stake. Even more important, what is at stake is the way in which such distributions affect social and inter-​personal relations. In sum, regarding individuals as the “primary unit of moral concern” is not inconsistent with the feminist insight that we exist fundamentally in relation to one another, though we do need to take steps to,

33 Jennifer Nedelsky, Law’s Relations: A Relational Theory of Self, Autonomy, and Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 86. 34 Nedelsky, Law’s Relations, p. 74. 35 Nedelsky, Law’s Relations, p. 74.

20 Introduction in Nedelsky’s words, make relationship central rather than peripheral to our political thought. Let me now move on from critiques of liberalism’s individualism to consider a third possible objection. One might argue that all variations of liberal theory, including liberal and relational egalitarianism, are necessarily hostile to and at odds with anti-​racist, anti-​capitalist, and other liberatory objectives. Recall, for instance, Marx’s famous claim that under capitalism, a system that generates alienated labor, man “is unfree in relation to his own activity, he is related to it as bonded activity, activity under the domination, coercion, and yoke of another man.”36 Note that while relational egalitarian theory does require significant state intervention to curb or eliminate certain economic inequalities, it does not necessarily eschew any and all variations of capitalism. Thus, relational egalitarianism may be vulnerable to certain Marxist strands of criticism in particular. In addition, the silence of liberal political philosophy (and Western political theory more broadly) on matters of race and racism has been explicated and critiqued meticulously by Charles W.  Mills over the course of various works. For instance, he argues in The Racial Contract that “insofar as racism is addressed at all within mainstream moral and political philosophy, it is usually treated in a footnote as a regrettable deviation from the ideal.”37 He adds that “treating it this way makes it seem contingent, accidental, residual, removes it from our understanding.”38 With Mills’s words in mind, it becomes clear that any serious attempt to employ Western political philosophy (relational egalitarian or otherwise) for normative theorizing must contend with this history of philosophical silence on the injustices systemic racism. In sum, one might object that given that I am focusing on racialized and class-​based components of socially undocumented identity and oppression, my preferred theory of justice is, once again, inadequate for my stated purposes. 36 Karl Marx, “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844),” translated by Lloyd D. Easton and K. Jurt H. Guddat, from Allen W. Wood, ed. Marx:  Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988), p. 795. 37 Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 56. 38 Mills, The Racial Contract, p. 56.

Introduction  21 To begin with, it is not the case that relational egalitarianism is necessarily at odds with these objectives—​though it certainly must be acknowledged that the liberal tradition, taken as a whole, has historically been reluctant to theorize a range of injustices (race-​based, gender-​ based, and otherwise) that have been relegated to so-​called non-​ideal theory. As Charles Mills has explained, “liberalism in the United States has historically been complicit with plutocracy, patriarchy, and white supremacy, but this complicity is a contingent function of dominant group interests rather than the result of an immanent conceptual logic.”39 With Mills’s words in mind, recall what I presented as the two “core principles “of relational egalitarianism: (1) a commitment to universal moral equality, and (2) a commitment to the undermining of oppressive structural social relations in the pursuit of democratic equality. Once again, such a framework in fact requires us to work toward an anti-​racist society in which racial, gender-​based, and class-​ based oppressions are absent. An illustrative, liberal alternative to a liberalism that is silent on matters of race and racism is that of “black radical liberalism” which, as Tommie Shelby articulates, “embraces insights from black nationalism, feminism and Marxism.”40 Charles Mills, who introduced the term “black radical liberalism,” proposes a synthesis of both liberalism and black radicalism (understood to include both black Marxism and black nationalism). He explains that black radical liberalism both “(i) recognizes white supremacy as central to the making of the United States and (more sweepingly) the modern world,” and “(ii) seeks the rethinking of the categories, crucial assumptions, and descriptive and normative frameworks of liberalism in light of that recognition.”41 Though many liberals have, indeed, effectively ignored white supremacy in practice, relational egalitarian principles themselves also

39 Charles W. Mills, “Occupy Liberalism! Or, Ten Reasons Why Liberalism Cannot Be Retrieved for Radicalism (And Why They’re All Wrong),” Radical Philosophy Review vol. 15 no. 2 (2012), p. 306. 40 Shelby, Dark Ghettos, p. 11. 41 Charles Mills, “Black Radical Liberalism,” guest post at PEA Soup, originally published February 23, 2015 and accessible at http://​peasoup.typepad.com/​peasoup/​ 2015/​02/​black-​radical-​liberalism-​and-​why-​it-​isnt-​anoxymoron.html.

22 Introduction demand that people both recognize and come to understand the reality of (i) while working toward the objectives of (ii). While I do not claim to be working directly in the tradition of black radical liberalism (as I am not an African American political theorist myself), I have briefly presented Mills’s discussion to demonstrate that liberal political theorizing need not, and ought not, reject the fundamental insights of explicitly anti-​racist scholarly work. Note that this also holds true for scholarship that is critical of capitalism. Indeed, Mills also maintains that “liberalism is not in principle opposed to social democracy or market socialism.”42 Furthermore, Elizabeth Anderson explains that her relational egalitarian theory is “concerned with the relationships within which goods are distributed, not only with the distribution of goods themselves,”43 and that “goods must be distributed according to principles and processes that express respect for all.”44 Such relational egalitarian principles are clearly inconsistent with neoliberalism, unbridled capitalism, and the dehumanizing conditions of alienated labor to which Marx so forcefully objected. In sum, relational egalitarianism principles are not themselves hostile to anti-​racist, anti-​capitalist, and otherwise liberatory objectives. A fourth possible objection is that a relational egalitarian conception of justice—​ like many contemporary theories of justice—​ disproportionately emphasizes the obligations of states to alleviate injustice and inequality, while de-​emphasizing the vital contributions and obligations of non-​state political actors in this regard. As Iris Marion Young explains, “Contemporary theories of justice, along with much popular opinion, tend to assume that remedy for injustice is the responsibility of a particular agent, the state, and that the responsibility of citizens is to make claims upon government to bring about justice.”45 We should certainly place demands upon the state, the objection contends, but, as Iris Marion Young points out, “Individuals and organizations ought to take responsibility for undermining structural

42 Mills, “Black Radical Liberalism.” 43 Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” p. 314. 44 Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” p. 314. 45 Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 112.

Introduction  23 injustice by thinking about their positions of power, privilege, interest, and collective responsibility.”46 I agree with the objector that a great deal of philosophical work on social and global justice has, in practice, been overtly state-​centric. However, once again, there is nothing inherent in a relational egalitarian framework that bars us from attending to the moral and political obligations and actions of non-​state actors. Emphasizing the importance of non-​state actors and action for the pursuit of social justice, Young argues that “political struggle about state policy must involve vocal criticism, organized contestation, a measure of indignation, and concerted social pressure.”47 On her “social connection model,” individuals and not simply states are responsible for structural injustice regardless of whether they can be held personally “liable” for the injustice in question. She explains that “responsibility in relation to injustice . . . derives . . . from participating in the diverse institutional processes that produce structural injustice.”48 In relational egalitarian spirit, the focus here is not on determining exactly who ought to be held liable for unjust outcomes, but rather, on seeking to end oppressive relationships.49 Those of us who participate in diverse institutional processes that produce social injustice bear a form of responsibility for that injustice even if we never intended for the injustice to transpire in the first place. Along these lines, in this book I will also focus on ways in which non-​state actors can, do, and ought to play key roles in alleviating socially undocumented oppression. A fifth objection to relational egalitarianism, inasmuch as it is a liberal political theory, is that it is at odds with the interests of Indigenous peoples living under settler-​state regimes, as well as decolonization projects. Dale Turner has argued, in reference to the Canadian context, that liberal efforts to incorporate Indigenous interests into a “coherent [liberal] philosophical vision of political justice” “can be thought of as

46 Young, Responsibility for Justice, p. 147. 47 Young, Responsibility for Justice, p. 151. 48 Young, Responsibility for Justice, p. 105. 49 For an interesting response to how Anderson, in particular, contrasts the ideal of relational equality to what we might call the “liability model” of luck egalitarianism, see Richard Arneson, “Luck Egalitarianism and Prioritarianism,” Ethics vol. 110 no. 2 (January 2000), pp. 339‒349.

24 Introduction philosophical ‘peace pipes’ because they claim to respect Aboriginal peoples and their differences and to define not only the meaning and content of their rights but also their proper place in Canadian society.”50 Understandably, Turner’s view is that such liberal theories, when applied to Aboriginal/​ Indigenous rights, are definitively “not peace pipes,”51 as they generally misrepresent Aboriginal/​Indigenous peoples and their interests. Given that I shall discuss not only the ways in which Indigenous peoples of the Mexico-​US borderlands region are often rendered socially undocumented on their own land but also some of the implications of this at the bar of justice, this is a very important objection to consider. Let me be clear that I do not take myself to be offering a theory of Indigenous or minority rights in this book. I will also respectfully refrain from offering up my arguments to Indigenous peoples as a “peace pipe.” Rather, I aim to demonstrate that the United States, a colonial setter state, must be held accountable for undermining socially undocumented oppression affecting a variety of peoples in its territories, including Indigenous peoples who are systematically “illegalized” on their own lands. However, I should acknowledge and reflect on the fact that I am theorizing from within the settler state. Kim Tallbear has explained, in the context of a written, public dialogue with other Indigenous academic and activist colleagues, that “we live inside a colossal colonial structure that took most of the world’s resources to build. Does not every maneuver against colonialism occur in intimate relationship to its structures? There is no outside.”52 There is no denying that the relational egalitarian arguments offered here have been developed from within the settler state, and in “intimate relationship to its structures.” I acknowledge this, and want to clarify that I intend for these arguments to serve, at the very least, as a “maneuver against colonialism” by drawing attention to the ways in which many 50 Dale Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe:  Towards a Critical Indigenous Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,2006), p. 5. 51 Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe, p. 5. 52 Kim Tallbear, “Couple-​ Centricity, Polyamory, and Colonialism,” at The Critical Polyamorist, originally posted July 24, 2014, and accessible at http://​www. criticalpolyamorist.com/​homeblog/​couple-​centricity-​polyamory-​andcolonialism.

Introduction  25 Indigenous peoples are unjustly rendered socially undocumented on and nearby their own lands. I shall now briefly consider a final possible objection to relational egalitarianism—​though the bulk of my response will occur in the next chapter. Recall Anderson’s claim that states should pursue democratic equality among their citizens. In her words, democratic equality “guarantees all law abiding citizens effective access to the social conditions of their freedom at all times.” This inspires questions about whether relational egalitarianism is adequate for the purpose of delivering a theory of rights for immigrants and other non-​citizens. Going even further, the objector might argue that one needs an alternative theory that rejects the moral and political legitimacy of borders—​ what we might call an “open borders” perspective—​as opposed to the sort of “closure” featured in Anderson’s depiction of relational egalitarian justice. The first problem with this objection is that it fails to acknowledge the requirement of liberal theories of justice, including relational egalitarianism, to uphold universal moral equality. While Anderson’s view helps us to understand why states have certain special obligations to ensure the conditions of freedom of their own citizens, it cannot, qua liberal theory, neglect the requirement of states to treat as moral equals people across the globe, including those who reside within their own territories without legal authorization. Bearing this in mind, if the “point” of equality is, as Anderson maintains, to dismantle oppressive structural social relations, then relational egalitarian justice must require us to combat the unjust oppression of non-​citizens, particularly when this oppression is caused by citizens and institutions of the state in question.53 As Iris Marion Young explains, “An agent’s responsibility for justice is not restricted to those close by or to those in the same nation-​state as oneself, if one participates in social structural processes 53 In “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” Christopher Heath Wellman argues that a relational egalitarian conception of justice does not necessarily require states to alleviate global oppression for which they are culpable through immigration policies like open borders. Meanwhile, in “Do Duties to Outsiders Entail Open Borders? A Response to Wellman,” Shelley Wilcox argues, contra Wellman (and also from a relational egalitarian perspective), that immigration policy should, indeed, sometimes be developed in response to such oppression given the actual ways in which migration operates in the contemporary world.

26 Introduction that connect one to others far away and outside those jurisdictions.”54 This holds true even if one maintains that citizens are owed certain “conditions of freedom” (i.e., voting and serving on a jury in a particular state, for instance) for which non-​citizens may not automatically be eligible. In addition, I shall soon argue, from within a relational egalitarian framework, that the oppressive, immigration-​related constraints associated with socially undocumented identity are unjust—​including when they are experienced by legally undocumented people—​even if we assume the moral and political legitimacy of borders and a relational egalitarian conception of justice. That is, I shall argue, using the tools of relational egalitarianism, that the oppression of socially undocumented non-​citizens is (also) unjust. And while I  am personally very sympathetic to the idea of a world without borders as a matter of ideal theory, I shall assume here that states have a prima facie right to maintain a system of borders and exclude at least some prospective migrants for two reasons. First, as Joseph Carens has argued, philosophizing exclusively within an “open borders” framework serves to distance us from a wide range of immigration-​related ethical challenges that occur in our “real world,” with its very real borders.55 Along these lines, working exclusively within an open borders framework would simply make it impossible for me to theorize socially undocumented identity and oppression. Second, I shall argue that socially undocumented identity and oppression could feasibly occur in, and may even be exacerbated by, an “open borders world.” This means, I argue, that we need to rethink and reframe the terms of the philosophical open borders debate. When it comes to undermining the oppressive constraints of socially undocumented identity, rejecting borders is not necessarily the appropriate (or even most “radical”) choice.

54 Young, Responsibility for Justice, p. 142. 55 For further discussion, see, for instance, Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration, particularly the introduction and appendix.

Introduction  27

IV.  Some Final Notes on Language I should acknowledge that the term “socially undocumented” clearly deviates from standard usage of the term “undocumented,” which is often employed to refer to people who reside in a state without legal authorization, and also to a legal status that is made “official” and can be “proved” via physical, legal documents. Thus, the term “socially undocumented” may seem somewhat jarring to readers, as there do not appear to be any “social documents” (or any non-​physical documents) connected to immigration processes that one can possess or lack. My use of a linguistically unconventional and potentially jarring term is, however, intentional, for one of my central aims is to draw attention to the fact that “being undocumented” in the United States is not necessarily about “documents” or “papers” at all. There are additional reasons for my employment of the term “socially undocumented.” The expression “undocumented migrant” is widely acknowledged to be a preferred alternative to contested terms such as “illegal,” “illegal alien,” and “illegal immigrant,” and I  shall focus on the injustice and oppression associated with these three latter terms in this book. For the most part, I will employ the term “socially undocumented,” as it is widely acknowledged that calling someone an “illegal” is to commit a racial slur. In fact, even mentioning terms like “illegal” or “socially illegal”—​even without referring to actual people in any derogatory way—​can bring the offensive slur to mind. That said, I will, however, occasionally mention, rather than use, the terms “illegal” and “socially illegal” in order to call attention to and argue against their widespread use. This requires a bit of explanation. Many philosophers hold that there is an important distinction between using a word (i.e., “I saw a hummingbird in the garden this morning”) and mentioning it (i.e. “The word hummingbird contains eleven letters”). In the second sentence, the speaker, in employing the word “hummingbird,” is only referring to the word hummingbird; she is not saying anything about any actual or imagined hummingbirds. Along similar lines, one might argue that it is appropriate to sometimes mention slurs (i.e., the immigrant rights slogan “No Human Being Is Illegal”) while acknowledging that it is unacceptable to use them to insult and degrade others.

28 Introduction However, in their article “Slurring Words,” Luvell Anderson and Ernie Lapore have argued compellingly that in many cases, even mentioning a slur can cause morally significant offense.56 They explain, for instance, that if one were to utter the phrase “there are no [N-​word]s” (but, in so doing, use the actual N-​word)—​even with the anti-​racist objective of criticizing the use of the N-​word to degrade African Americans—​one risks offending one’s listeners with the mere mention of the word. Note that they do not call for a full prohibition on the mention of slurs, however. They maintain, first of all, that while the mention of a slur may, indeed, constantly provoke offense (and that this is morally significant), to mention a slur in this way not the same thing as derogating someone. Second, they hold that the offense caused can sometimes be mitigated by heavily conditioning the context of one’s slur-​mentioning and making explicit one’s didactic purposes in so doing.57 I agree with Anderson and Lapore that in mentioning slurs like “illegal”—​even with intentions that may themselves be morally sound—​ one risks morally significant offense and should therefore proceed with great caution. This seems even more important when one is mentioning a slur that targets a group of which one is not a member. In my own case, I am not “socially undocumented” or “socially illegal,” and I have never been referred to or treated as an “illegal.” Thus, with Anderson and Lapore’s words of caution in mind, I want to make clear that I am mentioning the offensive terms for the didactic purpose of illustrating the injustice of their use (and the ideology that supports their use) in our society. In so doing, however, I also acknowledge the troubled waters into which any act of slur-​mentioning may lead one, even when one has morally sound intentions.

V.  Structure and Outline of This Book Stylistically and methodologically, this book takes the form of a “bottom up” philosophical analysis through which I aim to engage the 56 Luvell Anderson and Ernie Lapore, “Slurring Words,” in Noûs vol. 52 no. 2 (June 2018), pp. 25‒48. 57 I am grateful to Luvell Anderson for discussing these ideas with me in personal conversation.

Introduction  29 perspectives of socially undocumented people themselves as conveyed in the contexts of music, poetry, ethnographic interviews, and historical research.58 I am also working in non-​ideal theory. Rawls argued that non-​ideal theory “is worked out after an ideal conception of justice is chosen.”59 Non-​ideal theory is needed, Rawls explained, because the just world articulated in ideal theory simply does match our actual social world; people and institutions are generally not in compliance with the requirements of justice. In Tommie Shelby’s words, non-​ideal theory “should guide efforts to transform an unjust social arrangement into a more just one.”60 I shall take as my starting point in this book the deeply inegalitarian world in which we live, and develop arguments that explore how we ought to go about achieving relational equality in the realm of immigration. In the chapters that follow, I integrate a descriptive, epistemological, and metaphysical account of socially undocumented identity with normative arguments about what the United States, non-​state political actors, and, to a lesser extent, Mexico and other states must do to address the oppressive constraints associated with socially undocumented identity. I should note that there are a range of philosophical problems in immigration that fall outside of the scope of this book but that are nevertheless relevant to understanding the ethics of immigration. These include, but are not limited to, questions of justice for refugees, debates about the very nature of citizenship, and growing theoretical concerns about methodological nationalism. This book is not intended to be an all-​encompassing theory of justice in migration, and I propose that it be read alongside and, when possible, in dialogue with this growing literature on immigration ethics.61 58 For a helpful overview of the nature of “bottom up” moral reasoning, see William J. Talbott, Human Rights and Human Well-​ Being (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2010). 59 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (rev. ed.) (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 216. 60 Shelby, Dark Ghettos, p. 12. 61 On the matter of justice for refugees, see, for instance, Serena Parekh, Refugees and the Ethics of Forced Displacement (New York: Routledge, 2017); Matthew Lister, “Climate Change Refugees,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy vol. 17 no. 5 (2014); and Max Cherem, “Refugee Rights:  Against Expanding the Definition of a ‘Refugee’ and Unilateral Protection Elsewhere,” Journal of Political Philosophy, vol. 24 no. 2 (2016). On citizenship see, for instance, Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of

30 Introduction In Chapter  1, “Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented,” I  begin to articulate a new framework for immigration justice on the basis of a more expansive conception of what it means to “be undocumented.” My main goals in this chapter are (1) to begin to distinguish “being socially undocumented” from “being legally undocumented” and (2) to show why this matters at the bar of justice. Employing a relational egalitarian conception of justice, I argue that while long-​term legally undocumented migrants may, indeed, be owed a right to remain after an extended period of time in the new society, simply “having” legally undocumented status does not necessarily violate one’s status as a moral equal and contribute to oppressive social relations. However, being socially undocumented does, indeed, involve being (unjustly) undermined and oppressed. This holds true, I argue, both for socially undocumented people who have legal permission to be in the United States and for those who are both legally and socially undocumented. Indeed, I argue that even if one grants that states may permissibly exercise a range of controls over immigration into their territories, those who are both socially and legally undocumented are often treated unjustly in the United States. In Chapter  2, “On Social Identity,” I  build on the insights of Chapter 1 by beginning to explore in greater depth what it means to have a socially undocumented identity—​a task to which I shall devote four chapters. As discussed in this introduction, comprehending the nature of socially undocumented identity provides for a fuller and more accurate account of both socially undocumented oppression itself and also the ways in which it should be alleviated. My primary goal in this chapter is to establish what I take social identities to be. I explore, and ultimately adopt, Linda Martín Alcoff ’s phenomenological account of “visible identities,” which she defines as socially constructed but also “real,” embodied interpretive horizons and sites of situated Others: Aliens, Citizens, and Residents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and David Miller, Citizenship and National Identity (Cambridge:  Polity Press, 2000). On methodological nationalism, see, for instance, Alex Sager, Toward a Cosmopolitan Ethics of Mobility: The Migrant’s Eye View of the World (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing for Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), and Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-​State Building, Migration and the Social Sciences,” Global Networks vol. 2 no. 4 (2002), pp. 301‒334.

Introduction  31 reason. While Alcoff focuses on race and gender as “visible identities,” I argue that class is also a visible identity. To make this argument, I supplement Alcoff ’s view with Pierre Bourdieu’s descriptive claims about habitus, or embodied class identity. In Chapter 3, “Socially Undocumented Embodiment,” I draw upon multidisciplinary sources (historical, artistic, ethnographic, and philosophical) to argue that “being socially undocumented” is embodied along racial and class lines. It therefore meets one of the criteria of a real, visible social identity established in Chapter  2 (namely, that of embodiment). In making this argument I also trace the history of socially undocumented identity development in the United States, focusing on the country’s earliest white supremacist immigration laws, the Mexican-​American War and subsequent Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the expansion of US agribusiness in the early twentieth century, the Immigration Act of 1924, Mexican Repatriation, and the Bracero Program. We shall see that understanding this difficult history is important not only to comprehend the nature of socially undocumented identity but also to grasp the alleviation of socially undocumented oppression as a matter of social justice. In Chapter 4, “Pregnant and Socially Undocumented,” I continue to explore phenomenologically the embodiment of socially undocumented identity. Here, however, I focus on how visible pregnancy impacts and intersects with socially undocumented experience and embodiment. I  draw on six months of ethnographic research I conducted in the El Paso-​Ciudad Juárez area with Mexican women who, while living in Ciudad Juárez, regularly crossed the Mexico-​US border into El Paso to seek prenatal care and give birth in the United States. While all the women I  interviewed had legal permission to do this, I  learned through my research that they were nevertheless subjected to a range of significant immigration-​related constraints before, during, and after their perfectly legal “pregnant border-​ crossings.” Thus, they were socially, but not legally, undocumented in the United States. I further argue that the pregnant, socially undocumented woman is perhaps the most socially “illegalized” of all subjects in the United States. In Chapter  5, “Socially Undocumented Horizons,” I  complete my argument that “being socially undocumented” constitutes a real

32 Introduction social identity by exploring possible aspects of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon (the second criterion for a real, visible identity as identified in Chapter 2). Note that in this chapter, I merely propose (rather than argue for) possible content of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. This is because, as I discuss in greater detail in this chapter, my own positionality is not that of a socially undocumented person. I  therefore do not have ­direct epistemic access to the situated reasoning of socially undocumented people. Thus, I present this chapter as a contribution to a conversation that must ultimately be led by socially undocumented people themselves. I propose, then, that the socially undocumented interpretive horizon involves a tendency to perceive and even resist a “double bind”—​ a concept I  borrow from Marilyn Frye—​in which US society puts socially undocumented people. On the one hand, the socially undocumented are compelled by social circumstances to perform certain types of labor that tend to be associated with legally undocumented status (e.g., agricultural labor, domestic work) given the historical development of socially undocumented identity explored in Chapter 3. On the other hand, socially undocumented people are often oppressed and “illegalized” on the very basis of performing that solicited labor. I propose that socially undocumented people are epistemically well-​ equipped both to perceive this double bind and sometimes to take steps to respond to it—​generating a unique interpretive horizon for those with this identity. In Chapter  6, “Rethinking ‘Open Borders,’ ” I  employ the understanding of “being socially undocumented” articulated in the preceding chapters to begin considering the question of what states (particularly the United States) must do to undermine anti-​socially undocumented oppression. I focus here on the “open borders debate,” or the question of whether eliminating coercive state borders is a just and appropriate means for achieving immigration justice. Socially undocumented oppression, I argue, would continue to exist even in—​and it may even be exacerbated by—​the sort of “open borders world” that has been proposed by several contemporary political philosophers. Furthermore, I  argue that a universal freedom of movement right, though a laudable ideal, is not the appropriate policy mechanism for

Introduction  33 alleviating socially undocumented oppression. Instead, we need a third option, which I propose in the next chapter. Chapter  7, “The Injustice of the Migrant Journey to the United States,” builds on the particular arguments of Chapter 6 by continuing to explore what kind of border politics is required in our efforts to undermine unjust socially undocumented oppression. Here, however, I take up a problem that has not been extensively explored by political philosophers: migrant journeys, and the particularly treacherous migrant journey to the United States from Latin America. I argue that the migrant journey that many Latin American migrants take to the United States without legal authorization, often toward and into the Sonoran Desert as a result of increased Mexico-​US border militarization, is unjust in the scope of US immigration policy. This is due in part to the role that the migrant journey plays on a representational level—​how it “socially illegalizes” and thus oppresses socially undocumented people. I argue that the United States is required, as a matter of relational egalitarian justice, to demilitarize the US-​Mexico border at urban ports of entry and respect Indigenous sovereignty in the US-​Mexico borderlands, as many Indigenous peoples are treated “like illegals” on their own lands due to the increased presence of immigration enforcement and weapons of war on Indigenous territories. I also briefly explore the obligations of Mexico and other states to attend to migrant journeys toward and into their territories due the images of inequality these journeys also represent. In relation to the “open borders” debate explored in the previous chapter, I present these proposals as a “third option” that does not fit neatly into an “open borders” or a “closed borders” philosophical framework. Finally, in my Conclusion, I draw on the arguments explored in all the previous chapters. I synthesize my frameworks for understanding the nature of socially undocumented identity and responding at the bar of justice to the oppressive constraints with which it is associated. While I do not aim to provide a full battery of policy proposals for alleviating socially undocumented oppression—​as this would fall outside of the scope of a single work of philosophy—​I explore ways in which these frameworks can be applied to a range of moral and political issues in immigration in the United States.

34 Introduction For instance, I argue that immigration justice demands that both states and non-​state actors directly address and alleviate socially undocumented oppression, or the social “illegalization” of a subset of the population as described over the course of this book. This will require careful engagement and understanding of socially undocumented histories, horizons, and corporealities by policymakers, academics, journalists, and activists at various levels. Returning to Anderson’s account of achieving relational egalitarian justice, I  also explore a number of concrete ways in which socially undocumented people can and should be empowered as workers, as human beings, and as political agents. I end this book by briefly discussing how these methods, though developed in reference to the US context, can and should be applied on a global scale.

1

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented Political philosophers working on immigration have too often considered only the justice of hypothetical people crossing hypothetical borders. As a result, questions of immigrant identity are frequently absent from philosophical debate about immigration justice and the ethics of borders. Fortunately, however, there are now some important exceptions to this: those philosophers who take as their philosophical starting point the interests and lived experiences of actual migrants in our actual social world. An important example of this approach comes from José Jorge Mendoza. He argues that immigration enforcement mechanisms in the United States interior—​ including surveying, identifying, interrogating, and apprehending—​are unjust inasmuch as they (further) marginalize Latina/​o/​x citizens and legal residents of the US.1 Given that approximately 80% of undocumented migrants in the United States are from Latin America, “aggressive internal enforcement strategies . . . disproportionately target citizens who are (or appear to be) of Latin American descent.”2 Mendoza argues that it violates the political equality of Latina/​o/​x citizens that they should bear this immense burden when other social groups, particularly whites, are largely exempt from it. He concludes by arguing that internal immigration enforcement strategies cannot be performed justly and should be stopped altogether. Mendoza’s conclusion is, I  believe, correct but incomplete. Immigration policies in the United States that marginalize Latina/​o/​x citizens are, indeed, anti-​egalitarian and impermissible. 1 José Jorge Mendoza, “Discrimination and the Presumptive Rights of Immigrants,” Critical Philosophy of Race vol. 2 no. 1 (2014), pp. 68‒82. For further exploration of the type of argument Mendoza is making, see Michael Blake, “Immigration, Association, and Anti-​Discrimination,” Ethics vol. 122 no. 4 (2014), pp. 748–​762. 2 Mendoza, “Discrimination and the Presumptive Rights of Immigrants,” p. 75. Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

36  Socially Undocumented However, his assessment of the moral wrong of internal immigration enforcement strategies is limited. This is because Mendoza’s argument—​ as it stands—​ depicts the “rights” of undocumented migrants strictly in terms of the rights of Latina/​o/​x citizens and legal residents of the United States. In other words, these immigration enforcement mechanisms are cast as unjust not because they wrong the undocumented migrants in question but because they contribute to or are the source of disproportional harassment of Latina/​o/​x citizens and legal residents. Mendoza’s argument, while powerful, thus circumvents a fundamental question of immigration justice: what rights and protections are owed to undocumented migrants themselves? Clearly, Mendoza is striving to develop a firm basis for articulating the rights of the undocumented. But he has encountered a conceptual barrier—​one that is attributable, I believe, to a widespread tendency in immigration philosophy and politics to understand the term “undocumented migrant” as referring strictly to legal status as opposed to a social group membership. While many immigration philosophers think of “Latina/​o/​xs” or “women” as social groups whose moral equality can be undermined by unjust immigration policies,3“undocumented migrants” are generally regarded legalistically—​as a collection of idiosyncratic individuals who happen to lack legal authorization to be in the state they currently inhabit. Working within this framework, Mendoza only has the means to argue that the oppression of undocumented migrants is wrong because it contributes to unjust treatment of “legal” Latina/​o/​x citizens and legal residents. In response to this conceptual barrier, I argue in this chapter that the term “undocumented migrant” should be taken by political philosophers and policymakers to refer not primarily, or even necessarily, to the legal status of being undocumented but to an oppressed

3 See, for instance, Uma Narayan, “Male-​Order Brides: Immigrant Women, Domestic Violence and Immigration Law,” Hypatia vol. 10 no. 1 (1995), pp. 104‒119; Alison Jaggar, “Transnational Cycles of Gendered Vulnerability: Rethinking Some Basic Assumptions of Western Political Philosophy,” in Alison Jaggar, ed., Gender and Global Justice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014), pp. 18‒39; and Shelley Wilcox, “Who Pays for Gender Institutionalization?” in Ana González, ed., Gender Identities in a Globalized World (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2008), pp. 53–​74.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  37 social group. I  call the social group of people who are oppressed as undocumented migrants the “socially undocumented.” The socially undocumented, I  shall argue, endure a common set of unjust, immigration-​related constraints on the basis of being perceived to be undocumented. Crucially, these are not constraints that necessarily stem from being legally undocumented. The understanding of “social group” that I employ is—​to borrow from Rawls’s old slogan—​political, not metaphysical. Importantly, the groups of socially and legally undocumented people are not comprised of exactly the same sets of individuals. As we shall see, one can endure unjust constraints on the basis of being perceived to be undocumented without being legally undocumented. Similarly, one can be legally but not socially undocumented. How will thinking of what it means to “be undocumented” in terms of social group status help us to understand the rights of undocumented migrants themselves—​and not strictly in terms of the rights of citizen and legal resident Latina/​ o/​xs? As we shall see, when we are restricted to understanding the term “undocumented migrant” as a legal status, it is conceptually very difficult, if not impossible, to identify the injustice of undocumented migrant oppression. Oppression is something that happens to people not as individuals but as members of social groups.4 Thus, in the absence of a satisfactory account of the social group of undocumented migrants, we can neither explain the injustice of undocumented migrant oppression nor develop adequate solutions for alleviating that injustice. In addition, there are political consequences to understanding “undocumented migrant” solely in terms of legal status. I shall argue over the course of this book that it often serves as a red herring, distracting policymakers from fully uncovering what is owed to the undocumented at the bar of justice. My argument proceeds as follows. I begin by motivating my claim that we should distinguish between the legally and the socially undocumented. Second, I develop and defend a political understanding of a social group. Third, I provide an account what it means to be socially 4 For further discussion, see Kenneth Clatterbaugh, “Are Men Oppressed?,” in Rethinking Masculinity:  Philosophical Explorations in Light of Feminism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996), pp. 289‒305.

38  Socially Undocumented undocumented. And finally, I show how this account enables us to understand the injustice of undocumented migrant oppression. Before I begin, let me review two important guiding assumptions that I make in this chapter and throughout this book—​both of which were discussed in greater detail in the introduction. First, recall that I assume that national borders are, in at least some respects, morally and politically justified. It follows from this assumption that undocumented migrants break just laws in crossing borders without legal authorization. I recognize that this is a contentious claim, and I shall explore in detail arguments for open borders and their implications for ongoing socially undocumented oppression in Chapter 6. For now, note that operating within such a framework need not entail a defense of the status quo in immigration policy. One can consistently hold that borders are, in at least some respects, just but also maintain that unduly physically harming undocumented migrants at the border and elsewhere—​or denying them access to health care or other vital social services—​unjustly oppresses them. Second, allow me to review briefly my understanding of justice in this chapter and throughout this book. Justice, as I understand it, entails respect for the moral equality of all people across the globe. Just states are duty-​bound to uphold universal moral equality; they cannot regard their own citizens as possessing more moral worth than citizens of other countries (even those who currently reside in other countries). In accordance with the aforementioned tenets of relational egalitarianism, I  assume that respect for universal moral equality requires dismantling oppressive structural social relations affecting not only individuals but also social groups. Thus, dismantling injustice will require, among other things, a thorough understanding of the deep social structures and the patterns of relationship that perpetuate inequality.

I.  “Undocumented Migrant”: Legal or Social Group Status? In both philosophy and contemporary politics, the term “undocumented migrant” has often been used to denote a person who lacks

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  39 legal permission to be in the state the individual currently inhabits. The most prominent example of this understanding of what it means to be an undocumented migrant comes from Joseph Carens. He argues that those legally undocumented migrants who have resided in their new society for over six years are entitled to a right to remain due to the de facto social membership that they have developed over time.5 Carens discusses the infamous case of Marguerite Grimmond, who was born in the United States but moved to Scotland with her family as a young girl. Grimmond remained in Scotland until the age of 80, at which time she took a vacation to Australia. She was told upon her return to the UK that she was, in fact, a legally undocumented migrant who needed to return to her “home” in the United States. Carens uses Grimmond’s story to highlight an intuition shared by many. After a certain amount of time, legally undocumented migrants develop a moral right to stay in the country to which they have migrated—​making it “cruel and inhumane” to deport them. There is much to admire in Carens’s social membership argument, and it is not my intention to argue against it. However, I do wish to convey that Carens’s influential position regards “undocumented” status primarily as a legal one. That is, for Carens, an undocumented migrant is someone who lacks legal permission to reside in the country in which she now resides. While this may seem like a minor observation, it has very important consequences for the manner in which we view the scope of immigration justice. To illustrate this, allow me to introduce the “cases” of Gary and Alicia, both of whom are legally undocumented migrants in the US. (These cases are hypothetical but inspired by commonplace “real world” narratives.) (1) Gary is a white, middle-​class citizen of the United Kingdom who plays in a punk rock band. While he enjoys a moderate level of success as a punk rocker in London, he has trouble distinguishing himself from the competition. He decides to try his

5 Joseph Carens, “Immigrants and the Right to Stay,” Boston Review, accessible at http://​bostonreview.net/​BR34.3/​carens.php. For an interesting and somewhat related discussion, see Elizabeth F. Cohen, The Political Value of Time: Citizenship, Duration, and Democratic Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).

40  Socially Undocumented luck in Washington, DC—​a city with a thriving punk scene. Gary is convinced that the fact that he is British will give him the artistic “edge” in DC that he had been striving for in London. However, Gary is quite unsuccessful in his efforts, and he spends the next six years performing what he considers to be uninspired children’s music at birthday parties (all the while lacking legal permission to be present in the United States). Gary feels that his lack of legal permission to be in the United States is thwarting his artistic progress, as he once had to turn down a well-​paying gig because of his “lack of papers.” Furthermore, he misses the U.K. and laments that he cannot travel there on a quick vacation without being “found out” as undocumented. In addition, U.S. politics angers Gary and he is annoyed that he cannot vote in U.S. elections. He eventually considers returning to the U.K. permanently. (2) Alicia, a citizen of Mexico, has been an undocumented migrant in Los Angeles, California, for a year. Her husband died while attempting to cross the U.S.-​Mexico border without authorization, after losing his livelihood as a small farmer. Since that time, Alicia found herself unable to make ends meet for herself and her children, so she decided to undertake the perilous journey on foot to the United States. She is now a domestic worker for a number of wealthy white families in Los Angeles.   She spends approximately four hours per day on public transportation to and from her employers’ homes, and she lives in a small room that she shares with several other families (all of whom are undocumented migrants from Mexico and Central America). Alicia’s employers frequently force her to work with dangerous chemicals and deduct from her wages if they are not completely satisfied with her work. Despite the fact that she moves around Los Angeles with great caution, after a year in the U.S. Alicia’s legally undocumented status is found out and she is threatened with deportation back to Mexico. Most people will acknowledge that Alicia has been wronged in ways that Gary has not.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  41 However, some may be reluctant to conclude that Alicia has been oppressed and treated unjustly. After all, Alicia lacks legal permission to be in the country where her wrongful treatment is taking place. Thus, one might argue that while Alicia is indeed being treated in a morally problematic manner, this treatment is simply not the stuff of oppression and injustice. She is “free to leave,” one might say, and so she cannot be oppressed. Furthermore, she lacks any legitimate legal recourse to a minimum wage and other workplace protections, so in denying her these things her employers cannot be said to act oppressively toward her. The problem here, I contend, is that we are conceiving of what it means to be an “undocumented migrant” solely in terms of legal status. I will now argue that while both Gary and Alicia are undocumented migrants in legal terms, Alicia—​but not Gary—​is socially undocumented. Clarifying what this means will enable us to articulate the injustice endured by Alicia as an undocumented person.

II.  Social Groups—​Political, Not Metaphysical Before I describe what it means to be socially undocumented I must provide a satisfactory conception of a social group. In this section I  turn to this task. Following Ann Cudd and Iris Marion Young, I submit that politically, we should try to understand our social world in terms of social groups because doing so is explanatorily useful for understanding and alleviating oppression.6 Recall that, as argued by Young, “evaluating inequality in terms of social groups enables us to claim that some inequalities are unjust . . . because such group-​based comparison helps reveal important aspects of institutional relations and processes.”7

6 Also, following Cudd, I bracket interesting metaphysical questions about the nature of groups. For further exploration of these interesting questions, see Sally Haslanger’s “What Are We Talking About? The Semantics and Politics of Social Kinds,” in Resisting Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 7 Iris Marion Young, “Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustice,” Journal of Political Philosophy vol. 9 no. 1 (2001), p. 2.

42  Socially Undocumented Similarly, Cudd argues that thinking in terms of social groups can enable us to understand “unjust group-​based hierarchies.”8 A “group-​ conscious practice of assessing inequality”9 can enable us to uncover why women lack social equality with men all over the world, Latina/​ o/​xs with whites in the United States and elsewhere, persons with disabilities with the able-​bodied, etc. In sum, in a political conception of a social group we posit social groups inasmuch as doing so enables us to uncover oppression, injustice, and inequality. But what is a social group? I employ Ann Cudd’s externalist account. Cudd argues that “what makes a person a member of a social group is not determined by any internal states of that person but rather by objective facts about the world, including how others perceive and behave toward that person.”10 She calls these objective facts about the world “constraints.” These constraints include “legal rights, obligations, burdens, stereotypical expectations, wealth, income, conventions, norms and practices.”11 Thus, just as the formal denial of equal rights is a constraint, so is the expectation that people dress and talk in a particular way in professional settings. Importantly, the constraints of which Cudd speaks also include incentives and rewards for certain behaviors. They are “facts that one does or ought to rationally consider in deciding how to act or plan one’s life, or facts that shape attitudes about other persons.”12 For example, the expectation that men not cry in public is a constraint that the social group of men rather uniquely face. But this constraint also brings with it social rewards—​namely, those that are associated with being perceived as masculine.13 In sum, I follow Cudd in understanding a social group to be “a collection of persons who share (or who would share under similar circumstances) a set of constraints on action.”14



8

Ann Cudd, Analyzing Oppression (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 28.

9 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 29.

10 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 36. 11 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 50. 12 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 1. 13

See Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1983).

14 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 44.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  43 The constraints themselves are put in place by social institutions. Social institutions exist in a variety of forms. They can include “government, legal systems, schools, banks, gender rules and norms, rules of etiquette, media outlets, stereotypical beliefs, class, caste systems, and racial declassification systems.”15 As Peter Higgins summarizes it, social institutions “create social groups by conditioning the lives of some people in one way, other people in another way.”16 They often serve to privilege some groups while marginalizing others. Importantly, “these social institutions and constraints can, but need not, give rise to thoughts and feelings on the part of the group member which serve to reinforce her membership in the social group.”17 In other words, while some people will wholeheartedly identify as being members of particular social groups, others will resist membership or be largely unaware of it. For instance, one can be identified by others as female and be subjected to constraints on that basis, even if one rejects that label and self-​identifies as male. Similarly, one can enter into the social group of Latina/​o/​xs if one is taken to be Latina/​o/​x by one’s fellow society members—​even if one strives to distance oneself from that ethno-​racial label and identity. With this conception of social grouphood in mind, we are now in a position to understand what an oppressed social group is. Cudd defines an oppressed social group as a collection of persons who share (or who would share under similar circumstances) a set of unjust constraints on action.18 How do we know whether the constraints that are placed on one’s action are, in fact, unjust? To answer this question, Cudd first notes how sets of constraints can fall disproportionately, or unequally, on some groups more than on others. She provides the example of segregated public restrooms. If, on average, the restrooms assigned to one group are of lesser quality (in terms of general wait time and cleanliness, for instance), then a certain set of constraints are being borne unequally by that group. Cudd then suggests—​a bit too quickly,

15 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 44. 16 Peter Higgins, Immigration Justice, (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2013), 112. 17 Higgins, Immigration Justice, p. 112. 18 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, pp. 36‒37.

44  Socially Undocumented I believe—​that the unequal constraints are unjust if the inequality in question is itself unjustifiable.19 While Cudd does not spend very much time establishing what it means for an unequally distributed constraint to be unjustifiable, I believe we can extract from her account the following guiding principles. First, some group-​based constraints on action are uncontroversially justifiable. For example, the social group of people who study philosophy rather than medicine are justifiably constrained by the fact that their local hospital denies them permission to perform open heart surgeries on its patients. Alternatively, unjust or unjustifiable constraints on action are those that stem from the ways that one’s social group identity leads to one’s interests being systematically thwarted by unjust group-​based hierarchies. In other words, an unjustifiable shared constraint on action for a social group is one that undermines the moral equality of members of that group (or that reinforces their extant inequality). It is a constraint that is imposed upon them as a result of morally arbitrary features that they possesses—​i.e. in terms of race/​ethnicity, gender, ability, etc.20 For instance, the expectation that women regularly wear uncomfortable clothing and shoes to “look attractive” is an unjustifiable constraint because it stems from the belief that women should devote themselves to their exterior beauty for the pleasure and acceptance of men. This systematically undermines and reinforces women’s inequality in relation to men. However, the expectation that medical doctors regularly read important medical journals to “stay on top of their fields” is not an unjust or unjustifiable constraint, as it does not respond to or reinforce any unjust group-​based hierarchies. I want to make clear, at this stage, that the distinction I have drawn, following Cudd, between “justifiable” and “unjustifiable” constraints on action does not mirror the distinction between “option luck” and “brute luck” that has motivated a great deal of luck egalitarian

19 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 51. 20 While I acknowledge that there will be debate about whether some features are indeed “morally arbitrary” in the relevant sense, the distinction nevertheless seems clear in paradigm cases such gender, race/​ethnicity, ability, economic class, etc.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  45 literature, and which Elizabeth Anderson has called into question in her arguments for relational egalitarianism. It is not the case that “unjustifiable” constraints are strictly those for which the individuals upon whom they are imposed can be held morally responsible. For example, on this view, the poor are an oppressed social group on the grounds that they endure a variety of unjust constraints. These include, but are not limited to, lack of opportunities to earn wages that support their capabilities; social attitudes that regard them as inferior; social attitudes that regard their work as unimportant, etc. On my reading of Cudd’s account, these constraints are unjust even if some of the poor can be held morally accountable or “liable” for their social position as poor/​economically disadvantaged. All that matters is that the poor/​economically disadvantaged are socially positioned as moral inferiors. In this sense, I perceive Cudd’s account of an oppressed social group as complementary to relational egalitarianism. Allow me to summarize the account of social groups—​and oppressed social groups—​that I employ. Social groups are collections of people who share, or who would share under similar circumstances, a set of constraints on action. These constraints are generated by a variety of social institutions. People can be members of social groups without knowing it or claiming it. An oppressed social group is “a collection of persons who share (or who would share under similar circumstances) a set of unjust constraints on action.”21 Unjust constraints on action are those that undermine one’s moral equality in relation to others, or that reinforce one’s extant inequality in relation to others, on the basis of one’s social group membership.

III.  The Socially Undocumented I now turn to the question of what it means to be socially undocumented. I will argue that (1) there is a social group of people facing similar constraints that stem from being perceived to be undocumented; and (2) these constraints are unjust. Let me begin, however,



21 Cudd, Analyzing Oppression, p. 44.

46  Socially Undocumented by arguing that being legally undocumented is neither necessary nor sufficient for being oppressed as an undocumented migrant. As we shall see, being legally undocumented does not, in and of itself, lead to unjust constraints. Thus, if the legally undocumented can be said to comprise a social group on the basis of a shared set of constraints, it is not necessarily an oppressed social group. To see why this is the case, let us consider some of the constraints on action that both Alicia and Gary share strictly as a result of being legally undocumented. Neither of them can vote in U.S. elections. They cannot serve on U.S. juries. They both lack a legal right to work in the United States. However, recall that only those constraints that are unjust entail membership in an oppressed social group. I have assumed national borders to be morally and politically legitimate. Thus, these are not (prima facie) unjust constraints. Alicia and Gary are not necessarily oppressed on the basis of the constraints that stem from being legally undocumented. This point is further illustrated by an example from Michael Blake. The fact that I, as a citizen of the United States, cannot vote in French elections is not unjust. That is, the French government, in denying me permission to vote in French elections, does not regard me as morally inferior to the citizens of France. Blake explains: The restriction recognizes  .  .  .  the distinct institutional contexts in which French and American citizens are situated. French citizens, being coercively ruled by a set of French legal and political institutions, are entitled to guarantees of political equality simply inapplicable to the set of both French and American citizens. Nothing here is a denial of moral equality. The different set of political entitlements reflects the distinct implications of moral equality in distinct institutional circumstances; it respects, rather than abandons, the notion of moral egalitarianism.22

In denying me the right to vote in French elections, the French government simply recognizes that I am a member of a distinct institutional 22 Michael Blake, “Immigration and Political Equality,” San Diego Law Review vol. 45 no. 4, (2008), p. 967.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  47 context. I am treated as neither superior nor inferior to the citizens of France. My inability to vote in French elections is thus not an unjust constraint on my action, for it does not undermine my moral equality to the French in any way. In the very same way, the constraints that Alicia and Gary face strictly on the basis of not being U.S. citizens—​i.e., lacking legal permission to vote and to serve on U.S.  juries, and to reside and work legally in the United States—​are not necessarily unjust and unjustifiable constraints. I conclude, then, that the social group of those who are oppressed as undocumented migrants (if it exists) is not the same as the group of legally undocumented migrants. Furthermore, the constraints stemming from being legally undocumented are not necessarily oppressive. I will now argue that Alicia is socially undocumented not on the basis of her legal status but because of how she is perceived on the basis of how she looks. I argue for this in terms of the following. First, Alicia faces a host of constraints (associated with immigration status) that Gary does not.23 Second, Alicia endures these constraints because she is perceived to be undocumented—​not because she is legally undocumented. Third, these constraints are unjustifiable and therefore unjust because they are imposed on the basis of morally arbitrary features such as race/​ethnicity and socioeconomic class, thereby undermining her moral equality with others. They are therefore different from legitimate constraints that are imposed because Alicia (and Gary) are ­legally undocumented—​i.e., being able to vote in United States elections. Because of this, Alicia—​and those similarly positioned—​share a set of unjust constraints. They therefore comprise an oppressed social group, the socially undocumented. I turn, then, to my first point. Alicia faces a host of constraints associated with undocumented status that Gary does not. For instance, she lives in greater fear than Gary does of being pulled over or otherwise targeted by the police in an encounter that could lead to her 23 I add the qualifier “associated with undocumented status” to distinguish the sorts of constraints that are relevant to undocumented migrant oppression, broadly conceived, from other unevenly distributed constraints that are imposed on the basis of other features of Alicia’s identity, such as gender. My aim is to uncover what is unique about undocumented migrant oppression in particular.

48  Socially Undocumented deportation. She thus moves around Los Angeles timidly, with a sense of limitation and caution. Gary, on the other hand, navigates Washington, DC, with general ease. He does not fear that his immigration status will be called into question if he gets pulled over at a traffic light, and he happily goes to boisterous parties and punk rock concerts on a regular basis. In addition, Alicia is subjected to a range of offensive stereotypes and assumptions in her interactions with many U.S.  citizens and institutions because people assume that she does not belong in the United States. Indeed, people assume that she cannot speak English and even tell her to go back to her country. This may have a disparaging impact on the way Alicia views herself. Gary, however, can interact with the Americans around him with far greater ease. People do not doubt his intelligence or English language ability when they come across him. Indeed, his English accent often leads people to assume that he is remarkably intelligent. Alicia is also compelled to engage in underpaid and sometimes degrading labor that most U.S.  citizens and legal residents would be reluctant to perform. When she seeks employment as a domestic worker or a farmworker, her employers will not think twice about paying her less than minimum wage and denying her basic workplace safety protections. On the other hand, when Gary applies for work as a musician at children’s birthday parties he gets paid more than the minimum wage. While he may not thoroughly enjoy this work, he is treated roughly the same way—​in terms of respect and workplace safely—​as a U.S. citizen in a similar position would be treated. Were Gary to apply for work in places traditionally associated with exploitable undocumented migrant labor (like a meat-​packing plant) he may even struggle to get hired because he does not seem to them to be undocumented. In sum, we have seen that Alicia faces a host of constraints that Gary does not. People assume that Alicia is an immigrant who does not belong in the United States and cannot speak English. They both underpay and under-​protect her in jobs that undocumented migrants usually perform because they assume that she will not complain for fear of deportation. Alicia constantly fears that she will be targeted by the police in an encounter that will eventually lead to her deportation.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  49 I now turn to my second claim. Alicia does not face these constraints because she is legally undocumented. When Alicia is harassed, demeaned, and exploited to by a range of U.S. citizens and institutions it is not because authorities have confirmed that she lacks legal permission to live and work in the United States. Rather, it is because of how she is perceived on the basis of how she looks, which includes how she comports herself. It will be easier to illustrate this by turning to “real world” examples of people who face the same constraints as Alicia. I will explore the grounds on which many people who are positioned in a way that is similar to Alicia are demeaned, harassed by the police and immigration enforcement, and exploited in worksites that are traditionally associated with undocumented migrant labor. As I explore these narratives, I will argue that this treatment is not in response to the fact that the people in question are legally undocumented. Rather, it is in response to how they are perceived on the basis of how they look. I end this section with a brief discussion of what it means to “look undocumented.” I have argued that Alicia is demeaned by U.S.  citizens and legal residents in ways that are associated with immigration status. The following statement from Alma, a Latina child, illustrates even more clearly what this often entails: Just last year I went into a store and I was paying for my groceries and the clerk didn’t think I  spoke English. She was out of plastic bags so she said to the bagger, “Just go ahead and put it in paper bags, they don’t care,” as if I didn’t know what she was saying. But I said, “But I do care. I like it in plastic better.” I think because we’re Hispanic and they know we do field work, and we’re new in the area, they think less of us. We’re human and we work hard. Maybe we don’t work in a store, but we’re picking apples for them to sell in the store.24

24 Ann Miles and Christina Sonneville, “The Cultural Construction of Poverty,” in Bruce Morrison and Roderick Wilson, eds., Ethnographic Essays in Cultural Anthropology:  A Problem-​Based Approach (Boston:  Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2001), pp. 157‒179.

50  Socially Undocumented In this statement we see that Alma was demeaned by a U.S.  citizen or legal resident. The clerk at the grocery store automatically assumed that Alma was a foreigner who could not speak English, and that she did not care about the quality of her grocery bags like a U.S. citizen would. Importantly, this demeaning treatment did not occur because the clerk somehow knew that Alma was legally undocumented. In fact, Alma is a citizen of the United States and speaks English as one of her first languages. Instead, this treatment occurred on the basis of how Alma was perceived by the clerk. On the basis of being taken to look like a Mexican farmworker, Alma was perceived as someone who does not belong in the United States. She then was demeaned and constrained on that basis. Similarly, when people assume that Alicia does not speak English, and when they tell her to go back to her country, this occurs because of judgments people make on the basis of how Alicia looks. This does not transpire because Alicia is legally undocumented. I have also claimed that the sense of trepidation with which Alicia navigates the city on the way to and from work is attributable not to her legally undocumented status, but rather to the way that Alicia is perceived. To further argue for this, let me begin by noting that Alicia’s experiences are shared by many others in the United States. In their chapter “Deportation in the U.S.-​Mexico Borderlands: Anticipation, Experience, and Memory,” anthropologists Victor Talavera, Guillermina Nuñez-​Mchiri, and Josiah Heyman discuss the ways that “deportability” is experienced profoundly by a subset of the population in the United States—​including people who have never been physically deported.25 The authors argue that many people feel “branded” as undocumented and deportable on the basis of how they look. This produces tremendous anxiety and trauma for those who feel thus branded. It constrains their movement and often forces them into a state of social isolation.

25 Victor Talavera, Guillermina Núñez-​Mchiri, and Josiah Heyman, “Deportation in the US Borderlands: Anticipation, Experience and Memory,” in Nicholas De Genova and Nathalie Peutz, eds., The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space, and the Freedom of Movement (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  51 To illustrate this, the authors discuss a series of 2005 raids that took place in El Paso, Texas, in which police officers used routine traffic stops to locate and apprehend undocumented migrants (eventually turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] agents).26 The El Paso County Sheriff ’s Department purposefully targeted neighborhoods that are heavily populated by Mexican farmworkers by putting a disproportionate amount of checkpoints in those areas. Talavera, Nuñez-​Mchiri, and Heyman interviewed an undocumented Mexican woman in El Paso who reported that people like her “move around the city like rats, quickly, hoping not to get caught.”27 Once again, this treatment is not a response to the fact that the targeted people in question are legally undocumented. To see why, note that Gary does not face similar constraints. While Gary’s case is hypothetical it nevertheless has argumentative force. It seems truly absurd—​at least, in the context of our current, xenophobic social world—​to imagine a white, middle-​class, legally undocumented UK citizen would move around Washington, DC, with trepidation, hoping that his immigration status will not be called into question if and when he gets pulled over at a traffic light. There is further evidence that the trepidation with which Alicia, and those similarly positioned, move about the cities and towns where they live does not stem from their legally undocumented status. Indeed, many U.S. citizens and legal residents endure this very same constraint. To illustrate this point, let us consider a passage from Gloria Anzaldúa in her Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza: In the fields, la migra. My aunt saying, “No corran, don’t run. They’ll think you’re del otro lao.” In the confusion, Pedro ran, terrified of being caught. He couldn’t speak English, couldn’t tell them he was a fifth generation American. Sin papeles—​he did not carry his birth certificate to work in the fields. La migra took him away while we watched. Se lo llevaron. He tried to smile when he looked back at us, to raise his fist. But I saw the shame pushing his head down, I saw the terrible weight of shame hunch his shoulders. They deported him

26 27

Talavera et al., “Deportation in the US Borderlands,” p. 169. Talavera et al., “Deportation in the US Borderlands,” p. 175.

52  Socially Undocumented to Guadelajara by plane. The furthest he’d ever been to Mexico was Reynosa, a small border town opposite Hidalgo, Texas, not far from McAllen. Pedro walked all the way to the Valley. Se lo llevaron sin un centavo al pobre. Se vino andando desde Guadalajara.28

As Anzaldúa’s passage demonstrates, one can be constrained to move about with trepidation even if one is a U.S. citizen or legal resident. Pedro’s deportation is in response to the way that he is perceived on the basis of how he looks (and, in turn, to the way that he has internalized himself as being perceived). Pedro was not legally undocumented, but he was certainly socially undocumented. Talavera, Nuñez-​Mchiri, and Heyman provide yet another powerful example of how U.S. citizens and legal residents can face this very constraint. They interviewed Gloria, a woman who had previously been undocumented but is now a legal resident of the United States. Gloria said: It has been twelve years since I have not been to Mexico. I lived many years in the United States as an illegal. Today I am a legal resident, but I feel the same. My mind-​set has not changed; I continue living in fear. I do not feel important. I live my life in hiding. I still do not go out in public much. I have no self-​confidence, and I continue to live my life as if I was still illegal. I want to live my life differently, but I just can’t.29

Like Pedro in Anzaldúa’s passage, Gloria has a legal right to be present in the United States. However, just like Alicia, who happens to be legally undocumented, Gloria is subjected to constraints on her movement as a result of the ways that her “deportability” was internalized. In sum, given that Gary does not navigate DC with a sense of ­trepidation, and given that many U.S. citizens and legal residents experience this constraint, I  submit that the (constraining) fear with which Alicia moves around Los Angeles stems not from her status as 28 Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/​La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 25th Anniversary ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987). 29 Talavera et al., “Deportation in the US Borderlands,” p. 184.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  53 legally undocumented but because of how she looks. Finally, I have also claimed that when Alicia is asked to do degrading work that U.S. citizens are not inclined to do (and, in many cases, should not be expected to do), and when she is paid less for that work than a U.S. citizen would be, this is not in response to the fact that she is legally undocumented. On what grounds can I make such a claim? Are Alicia’s employers not exploiting her explicitly in response to her legally undocumented status? It is important to note that many exploited legally undocumented migrants do, in fact, possess “working papers”—​they just happen to be false. Thus, it cannot be said that the exploitation is a direct response to their legally undocumented status, for they have presented paperwork that asserts that they have legal permission to work. I acknowledge that many employers willingly “accept” falsified documents from workers, all the while knowing very well that the documents were, in fact, falsified. This process “lets employers off the hook,” so to speak, because they do not get penalized for hiring legally undocumented workers if they can demonstrate that they were presented with “papers” that looked legitimate—​even if those papers turn out to be fake. Even though many employers are aware that they are being presented with false documents, however, the fact that so many employers choose simply to accept the documents presented to them rather than running them through a system like E-​verify (which uses databases to track documents) shows that employers are not purposefully seeking out legally undocumented workers in their efforts to obtain highly exploitable labor. On a related note, it is clear that Alicia could easily get hired for a position that is traditionally associated with undocumented migrant labor (i.e., field work, employment in a factory) without ever having to “prove” that she is legally undocumented. She would swiftly be hired for such positions on the basis of how she looks. Further evidence that exploitation that Alicia, and those similarly positioned, is not in response to their legal status comes from the fact that one can have legal authorization to work in the United States and still be exploited as an undocumented migrant. Mary Romero argues in her ethnography of the working conditions of domestic workers, Maid in the USA, that many Latina legal residents of the United States

54  Socially Undocumented who are employed as household workers often labor under the same conditions as legally undocumented household workers who are also Latina.30 They are in this respect “grouped in” with those who are oppressed as undocumented migrants. Alternatively, Seth Holmes, a white American anthropologist who worked alongside Oaxacan Triqui migrant workers in the state of Washington as part of his anthropological fieldwork, reports that he was paid more and treated better by his overseers on the basis of being perceived as educated and white. This occurred even though he had deliberately sought out the experience of working and being treated like a legally undocumented farmworker for ethnographic purposes.31 I have suggested that these constraints faced by Alicia, and others similarly positioned, are imposed not because they are legally undocumented but because of how they are perceived on the basis of how they look. José Jorge Mendoza has argued that immigration enforcement and expulsion strategies in the U.S. interior are imposed disproportionately on those who “look Latina/​ o/​ x” or possess “Mexican appearance.”32 Note, in addition, that all of the examples of mistreated undocumented migrants I have explored are themselves Latina/​o/​x. With this in mind, one might raise the following objection. Why have I opted to develop an account of a social group called the “socially undocumented” as opposed to referring to the social group of Latina/​o/​xs? I argue that just as the respective social groups of legally and socially undocumented people are not comprised of exactly the same groups of individuals, the respective social groups of Latina/​o/​xs and the socially undocumented are not coextensive. First, it is possible to be Latina/​o/​x without “looking undocumented”—​or even “looking Latino/​a/​x” in accordance with problematic and widespread 30 For further discussion see Mary Romero, Maid in the U.S.A. (New York: Routledge, 2002), particularly chap. 4, “Domestic Service and Women of Color in the United States,” pp. 101‒126. 31 See Seth Holmes, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). This theme is developed over the course of the ethnography. 32 Mendoza, “Discrimination and the Presumptive Rights of Immigrants,” p. 74. See also United States vs. Brignoni-​Ponce, 422 U.S. 873 (1975).

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  55 stereotypes about how a Latina/​o/​x “looks.” Jorge J. E. Gracia argues in his paper “The Nature of Ethnicity with Special Reference to Hispanic/​ Latino Identity”33 that many Latina/​o/​xs lack genetic linkages to most other Latina/​o/​xs. He explains that “for instance, some children of Welsh immigrants to Argentina are as Hispanic/​Latino as any other Hispanic/​Latino—​indeed, when they visit Wales they feel they do not belong there.”34 However, these children of Welsh immigrants to Argentina are unlikely to be “read” as Latina/​o/​x in the context of the United States. I  submit that just as one can be Latina/​o/​x without being taken to “look Latina/​o/​x,” one can be Latina/​o/​x without being taken to “look undocumented.” Furthermore, considerations of economic class also trouble the suggestion that these social groups are precisely coextensive. Take, for instance, this exchange in an ethnographic interview that Josiah Heyman conducted with an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) inspector: Q: How do you pick one Hispanic out of a crowd of Hispanics in downtown Nogales? A: That’s something I can’t tell you but after a year, in a crowd of ten, I can pick out the one illegal. Clothes are real important, their demeanor, how they present themselves, the way they walk around. Dirty clothes, ill-​fitted clothes. But the only way to really know was to ask, and we had that right, so we asked.35

As this example demonstrates, the socially undocumented are perceived to be undocumented not only on the basis of race and ethnicity but also on that of socioeconomic class. 33 Jorge J.  E. Gracia, “The Nature of Ethnicity with Special Reference to Latino/​ Hispanic Identity,” Public Affairs Quarterly vol. 13 no. 1 (1999), pp. 25‒43. See also Jorge J.  E. Gracia, Hispanic/​ Latino Identity:  A Philosophical Perspective (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). 34 Gracia, “The Nature of Ethnicity with Special Reference to Latino/​ Hispanic Identity,” p. 33. 35 Josiah Heyman, “State Effects on Labor Exploitation: The INS and Undocumented Migrants at the Mexico United States Border,” Critique of Anthropology vol. 18 no. 157 (1998), p. 166.

56  Socially Undocumented In sum, I  acknowledge that there is great overlap between the social group of Latina/​o/​xs and the socially undocumented. And I certainly agree with Mendoza that U.S. and legal resident Latina/​ o/​xs in the United States disproportionately bear the burden of U.S.  internal enforcement and expulsion strategies. However, I submit that the term “socially undocumented” refers not simply to or necessarily to being Latina/​o/​x but to a more complex interplay of racial/​ethnic and class identity. I return to this point in the ensuing chapters, in which I  argue that “being socially undocumented” entails having a “real” identity that embodies ethnoracial, class, and gendered lines. We have seen, then, that there is a social group that faces a common set of constraints associated with immigration status—​ the socially undocumented. Alicia, but not Gary, belongs to this group. This brings me to my final question. Is this an oppressed social group? That is, are these constraints—​restricted movement; workplace exploitation in worksites that are associated with undocumented migrant labor; and the general, demeaning presumption that the socially undocumented do not belong—​unjustifiable and unjust? Now that we have carefully distinguished between the (prima facie) justifiable constraints that one faces on the basis of being legally undocumented (i.e., lacking a legal right to work in the United States, to vote in U.S. elections, and to own property), it becomes clearer that the constraints that the socially undocumented face are, indeed, unjust. Indeed, unlike justifiable constraints that respond strictly to one’s legal status (and, as we have seen, do not undermine moral equality—​ just as my moral equality to the French is not undermined when I am barred from voting in French elections), the socially undocumented face unique constraints on the basis of morally arbitrary features such as race/​ethnicity and class. As such, these constraints are unjustifiable, for they reinforce unjust group-​based hierarchies. These constraints are inconsistent with the requirement of just states to uphold universal moral equality. The socially undocumented are therefore an (unjustly) oppressed social group consisting of many, but not all, legally undocumented migrants, as well as many “legal” U.S. citizens and residents.

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  57

IV.  Objections In the final chapters of this book, I explore what this means for immigration justice—​arguing for a new vision for immigrant rights in the United States and potentially on a global scale. For now, allow me to address a series of possible objections to my claim that Alicia—​and, more broadly, the socially undocumented—​is unjustly oppressed. (1) I have argued that it is not unjust that Alicia lacks a right to be present in the United States (at least at first, as I discuss in more detail below), but that it is unjust that she is oppressed while in the United States. One might insist that if Alicia lacks a right to be in the United States, then the oppression she endures simply cannot be unjust. In response to this objection, let me clarify that one’s moral equality cannot permissibly be violated even in response to one’s having engaged in an unauthorized activity. I  will illustrate this point with a comparatively trivial example. If a police officer catches me running a red light, he may permissibly force me to pay a fine or endure some other just penalty. This responds to the fact that I have broken a just law. It respects me as a moral equal to the officer himself, and to other U.S.  citizens. It would be impermissible, however, for the police officer to respond to my running a red light by loudly proclaiming to me and others that women (myself included) are incompetent drivers. This undermines, rather than respects, my moral equality with men. Clearly, the fact that I broke a just law does not give the police officer a right to undermine me this way. It is equally absurd to suggest that Alicia can be oppressed because she crossed the US-​Mexico border without legal authorization. (2) The objector might respond that Alicia’s unauthorized border crossing should be likened not to the act of running a stop sign but to the act of breaking into someone’s house without permission. Imagine that Jane breaks into Bill’s home and he finds her sitting in his living room, calmly drinking what remains of his orange juice. He repeatedly asks her to leave, and she refuses. Bill could use a reasonable amount of force to extract Jane from his home, but instead he decides to act oppressively toward her. He tells her that as long as she remains in his home, Jane will have to cook and clean for Bill while reflecting upon what it means to be properly feminine.

58  Socially Undocumented Here, the objector may make two different arguments:  (a) Bill is allowed to treat Jane this way while she is on his property; and (b) since Jane is free to leave whenever she wishes, Bill’s demands do not constitute an “unjust constraint” on her action. Similarly, Alicia has “broken into the United States” and can, like Jane, justifiably be oppressed. Given that she is free to leave the United States whenever she wishes, her disagreeable experiences do not constitute “unjust constraints” on her action. The first strand of objection relies on a false analogy. The relationship between individuals and their property is not the same as the relationship between states and their territories. States do not “own” the land in the same way that a homeowner owns her property—​nor do the citizens of the United States collectively “own” the U.S. national parks and other public spaces.36 The relationship between states and their territory is not one of ownership but of sovereignty; this is a crucial distinction. Just states are required to uphold universal moral equality in ways that individual citizens are not (at least not in their homes). While parents can favor their sons over their daughters (legally, not morally)—​perhaps by paying for their sons, but not their daughters, to go to college—​legitimate, just states are not allowed to discriminate in this fashion.37 I now turn to the second strand of objection. The fact that one is “free to leave” an undesirable context does not make the constraints one faces in that context unjust. A  person suffering the constraints associated with racism in his place of work, or in his neighborhood, is“free to leave” in hopes of finding a kinder neighborhood or office. But this does not mean that the constraints he faces in his place of work and neighborhood can be justified. The test of whether someone faces unjust constraints is not whether they are free to leave but whether those constraints violate one’s moral equality. Thus, though Alicia entered the United States without authorization and is “free to leave,” the oppressive constraints she faces are still unjust. 36 For further discussion, see Phillip Cole, Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political Theory and Immigration (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000). 37 Susan Okin has argued that just states cannot permissibly permit gender-​based discrimination even in the private realm. See Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  59 (3) One might object that my account neglects difficult (and even unjust) experiences that some people have on the basis of being legally, rather than socially, undocumented. For example, I previously explored Carens’s discussion of Marguerite Grimmond, who, upon taking a vacation in Australia, was not permitted to reenter Scotland after living there for 80 years. Marguerite Grimmond did not, presumably, have a socially undocumented identity, and yet it seems extraordinarily unjust for Scotland to have denied her permission to reenter. Furthermore, in the U.S.  context, many argue that “Dreamers”—​ or those who were previously protected under President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, having been brought by adult relatives to the United States as children without legal authorization to be in the United States—​should be given a right to remain in the United States. While many different types of arguments have been made in support of granting a right to remain to Dreamers,38 a commonplace argument is that the Dreamers grew up and built lives for themselves in the United States. To invoke Carens’s arguments, it seems wrong that their de facto social membership in U.S. society is not recognized in the form of amnesty and the right to remain. Once again, such arguments do not hinge on socially undocumented oppression. Rather, they focus on the perceived injustices associated with living as a legally undocumented migrant for an extended period of time. I have two responses to this objection. First, let me once again clarify that I am not arguing against Carens’s argument that long-​term legally undocumented migrants deserve a right to remain in the society in which they live. Socially undocumented oppression is not the only form of immigrant oppression, and my account is certainly not intended to detract from the importance of arguments that focus on other elements of immigration injustice. I am arguing that we should substantially broaden our understanding of what it means to be “undocumented” or “illegal” in the United States—​not that we should cease to focus on legally undocumented status entirely. Furthermore, I think 38 See, for instance, Michael Blake, “Why Deporting Dreamers Is Immoral,” Salon, March 1, 2018, accessible at https://​www.salon.com/​2018/​03/​01/​why-​deporting-​the-​ dreamers-​is-​immoral_​partner/​.

60  Socially Undocumented that Carens’s argument provides valuable resources for articulating why Dreamers, for instance, should be granted a right to remain in the United States. Second, I  believe that an attentiveness to socially undocumented oppression could, in fact, strengthen arguments for legalization for long-​term (legally) undocumented migrants. This is because living as a long-​term, legally undocumented migrant can certainly exacerbate the effects of socially undocumented oppression, which connects Carens’s arguments to the present analysis. As I noted in the introduction, it is no accident that Carens initiates his argument for amnesty for long-​term legally undocumented migrants with the story of Miguel Sanchez—​ who is, in my view, not only a long-​term legally undocumented migrant but also socially undocumented. I believe—​and I think it is quite feasible to assert—​that Sanchez’s story brings up, for readers, complicated moral intuitions that are not simply connected to the wrongness of residing in a country as a long-​term undocumented migrant. Carens writes that Miguel Sanchez and his wife live “under constant threat of deportation,” as “a traffic stop or an accident could lead to Miguel’s removal from the country.”39 Something certainly seems wrong here—​but the “wrong” is not exclusively or even necessarily about long-​term legally undocumented status. Miguel Sanchez’s story is (in part) morally compelling, I submit, because Miguel is socially undocumented. After all, we have seen that Gary—​a white, middle-​class citizen of the U.K.—​does not live with a constant threat of deportation and does not move around his city with trepidation. Thus, Carens’s argument would lose some of its force were he to substitute Miguel’s story with that of Gary. But it seems right to say, once again, that long-​term legally undocumented status can exacerbate one’s socially undocumented oppression over time. Furthermore, this may help to ground a case for amnesty for the long-​term socially undocumented who lack legal authorization to be in the United States (including most Dreamers). In this sense, I present these arguments as an extension of and engagement with those of Carens. Furthermore, I believe that those who, like Carens, argue for



39

Carens, “Immigrants and the Right to Stay.”

Socially, Not Legally, Undocumented  61 amnesty for long-​term legally undocumented migrants should consider whether socially undocumented people, like Miguel Sanchez, have somewhat stronger claims to amnesty than their non-​socially undocumented counterparts, like Gary. To conclude, I have argued in this chapter that understanding the injustice of undocumented migrant oppression requires us to distinguish between being socially and legally undocumented. The socially undocumented, I have maintained, are those who are presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis. Legally undocumented status is not necessarily unjust (though long-​term legally undocumented migrants may be owed a right to remain, among other things), but socially undocumented oppression always is. We have also seen that “being socially undocumented” often overlaps with “being Latina/​o/​x” and working class. However, more work needs to be done to establish the precise nature of socially undocumented identity (which is not the same thing as Latina/​o/​x or working-​class identity), as well as the importance of understanding socially undocumented identity in the pursuit of immigration justice. In the ensuing four chapters, I offer a descriptive, phenomenological account of socially undocumented identity with the ultimate goal of articulating a forward-​looking framework for dismantling socially undocumented oppression. To begin, in Chapter 2, I address the question of what socially identities actually are.

2

On Social Identity I.  Introduction In Chapter 1 I explored the importance of distinguishing between being socially and legally undocumented. I argued that the socially undocumented, in particular, are an oppressed social group characterized by (1) being presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance; and (2) being subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis. In this chapter, I build on this discussion by beginning to explore ways in which “being socially undocumented” is operative not merely in terms of social grouphood but also as a “real” social identity. In order to make this argument, I must discuss what I understand social identity itself to be. This chapter is devoted, in the main, to this task. I begin, however, by outlining three specific advantages that stem from a political and philosophical focus on identity rather than mere social grouphood. Second, I set out to define what I mean by “social identity.” I engage Linda Martín Alcoff ’s phenomenological and hermeneutical account of social identity, which she applies both to racial and sex/​gender identities. Alcoff ’s account helpfully focuses on the ways in which racial and sex/​gender identities function as “visible,” embodied identities that are constitutive of “interpretive horizons” for those that possess them. Third, I shall argue that class identity is also a “visible” identity as described by Alcoff—​though Alcoff herself does not explicitly describe class identity as a visible identity. To support my claim, I turn to Pierre Bourdieu’s account of class identity and “habitus,” which I shall put into dialogue with Alcoff ’s account of social identity. Having established here both why I  choose to focus on socially undocumented identity (and not just socially undocumented social grouphood), and also what I take social identity to be, I will then be Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

On Social Identity  63 positioned to argue over the course of the next three chapters that socially undocumented identity is, indeed, a “real,” embodied, identity and interpretive horizon that operates along racial, class-​based, and gendered lines. I  shall eventually argue that such an understanding provides us with enhanced tools for undermining ongoing socially undocumented oppression as a matter of immigration justice.

II.  Why Socially Undocumented Identity? Why should we want a theory of socially undocumented identity in the first place? Recall that in Chapter 1 I explored Ann Cudd’s account of social groups. On Cudd’s view, one can be a member of a social group without knowing that one is a member and without self-​identifying in terms of that group. On the other hand, we often think of social identities in terms of what Alcoff describes as their “powerful salience and persistence . . . as self-​descriptions and as predictors for how one is treated and what one’s realistic life options are.”1 Alcoff ’s statement indicates one important way in which social identity differs from social grouphood:  unlike social identity, social grouphood does not necessarily entail self-​description and self-​identification. With this important distinction in mind, I shall now identify three reasons why it is important to explore “being socially undocumented” in terms of a possible “real” social identity. First, it compels us to seek out explicitly the perspectives and self-​descriptions of the socially undocumented themselves. While I described social groups in externalist terms of constraints on action that one may or may not acknowledge, and with which one may or may not personally identify, we have seen that to speak of social identity is often to speak in terms of self-​description and very intimate, lived experience. Indeed, as Paul Taylor tells us about racial identity in particular, “to speak of a racial identity is to speak of an individual’s perspective and location on a field of racializing social forces.”2 As we 1 Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 87‒88, my emphasis. 2 Paul C. Taylor, Race: A Philosophical Introduction (2nd ed) (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2013), p. 90.

64  Socially Undocumented try to think in terms of socially undocumented identity, then, we are compelled to explore the field of social forces that create and perpetuate social “illegality.” In other words, a focus on socially undocumented identity is a focus on social illegality as experienced from the “inside looking out.” Second, a focus on identity rather than (just) social grouphood productively compels us to raise questions about the kind of identity to which we are referring. For instance, we are compelled to ask if socially undocumented identity is a racial, ethnic, class-​based, gender or sexual identity, or if it is a combination or intersection of two or more of these identities. Raising these sorts of questions can render more accessible an array of philosophical resources that explore the relationship between various social identities and a range of embodiments, social locations, socioeconomic resources, and more. This means that an identity-​based approach to theorizing socially undocumented oppression may be theoretically richer, more expansive, and even more descriptively accurate than one that is merely social group–​based. Third, a theory of socially undocumented identity may be more useful for anti-​racist and immigrant rights activism than a theory of socially undocumented social grouphood. Positing a set of experiences as constitutive of a social identity, and not merely in terms of a social group status, carries a significant degree of weight in our contemporary society. As Alcoff writes of identity politics, “the constitutive power of gender, race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and other forms of social identity has finally, suddenly, been recognized as a relevant aspect of almost all projects of inquiry.”3 It is clear that claims about social identities are now particularly salient (though not without controversy) in the contemporary sociopolitical context of the United States. Thus, if socially undocumented identity is, indeed, a social identity, it may be particularly useful on a sociopolitical level to articulate it as such. I conceive of this final, obviously pragmatic reason for understanding “being socially undocumented” in terms of social identity as in line with Sally Haslanger’s description of her own approach to theorizing race and gender. She describes her work in this domain



3 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 5.

On Social Identity  65 as a “critical analytic project,” the goal of which is “to consider what work the concepts of race and gender might do for us in a critical—​ specifically feminist and anti-​racist—​social theory, and to suggest concepts that can accomplish at least important aspects of that work.”4 In a similar vein, my 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. With all this in mind, I now turn to the task of defining social identity by engaging Alcoff ’s account of real, visible identities.

III.  Alcoff on “Visible Identities” A.  Introduction In Visible Identities:  Race, Gender and the Self, Linda Martín Alcoff provides a theory of social identity that is focused on what she calls “visible identities” like race, sex, and gender. This work is framed, at least in part, as a response to critics of identity politics who maintain that the language and politics of social identity are problematically divisive, essentialist, and undermining of individual autonomous agency. Against such criticisms, Alcoff develops an account of social identity as “relational, contextual and fundamental to the self.”5 She argues that her theory of “visible identities” demonstrates, contra aforementioned identity politics criticisms, that identities are historically fluid and unstable, and that there are important differences within social identities. She also argues that greater attentiveness to social identity is, in fact, required in order to achieve truly progressive political coalitions. With this in mind, let us turn to Alcoff ’s substantive metaphysical account of social identity. Alcoff argues that visible social identities contain the following key features. First, they are “horizons,” “positionalities,” and “perspectival locations” via which the subjects 4 Sally Haslanger, “Race and Gender: What Are They? What Do We Want Them to Be?,” Noûs vol. 34 no. 1 (2000), pp. 31‒55. 5 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 90.

66  Socially Undocumented that have them see and understand the world and their place in it. Second, Alcoff argues that these “horizons” and “perspectives” are definitively embodied; that is, they are a “view from somewhere,” which is the human body. Third, the human body in which one’s “horizon” and “perspectival location” are situated is a visibly sexed and racialized human body. Alcoff further explores how these facts combined render sexed/​gendered and racialized identities both ontologically real and fundamental to the self. Let us explore in turn each of these aspects of Alcoff ’s metaphysical account of social identity.

B.  Identities as Horizons Once again, according to Alcoff, a social identity is a horizon, or “a substantive perspectival location from which the interpreter looks out into the world, a perspective that is always present but that is open and dynamic, with a temporal as well as a physical dimension, moving into the future and into new spaces as the subject moves.”6 She employs here the philosophical tradition of hermeneutics, and, in particular, Gadamer’s concept of a horizon, which he defines as “the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point.”7 Alcoff argues that we should understand social identities as sites of situated reason and the social location of knowledge. One’s horizon, Alcoff argues, is one’s “particular substantive position.”8 It includes one’s “background assumptions,” one’s way of living, and one’s “social position within the social structure and hierarchy.”9 To illustrate the concept of a horizon and how it comprises one’s “particular substantive position,” Alcoff describes the difference in perspective between the queen of a castle and the servants of a castle. The servants of a castle will have knowledge of quarters of the castle

6 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 95. 7 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p.  95. See Hans-​George Gadamer, Truth and Method (2nd ed.), translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad Press, 1991). On this point, see also Linda Martín Alcoff, “Sotomayor’s Reasoning,” in the Southern Journal of Philosophy vol. 48 no. 1 (2010), pp. 122‒138. 8 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 96. 9 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 96.

On Social Identity  67 that the queen herself will never see. In addition, required as many of them are to clean and cook, they will possess greater knowledge of every nook and cranny of the castle: where drafts come in, where dust accumulates, the quantity of chandeliers, etc. The queen, on the other hand, will lack knowledge of such things. She will, however, have a sense of which rooms are best for entertaining distinguished guests, of where it is most comfortable to lounge, etc. In sum, the servants and the queen have different horizons with regard to the castle. They see the castle from different vantage points, and thus they actually see different things. They bring to these perceptions of the castle different ways of life and background assumptions. The differing horizons are shaped by the different places in the social hierarchy that the subjects in question respectively occupy.

C.  The Embodiment of Interpretive Horizons Alcoff ’s account of social identities as interpretive horizons features an important second “step.” She argues that horizons are not merely “housed in” our bodies in the way that our minds are said to be “housed” in material bodies in a dualist Cartesian picture. Rather, our social identities are also comprised of material human bodies. She explains that “the hermeneutic concept of a horizon signifies a locatedness that in reality is a metaphor for the body, but it is often conceptualized as an abstract body without attributes other than its location in a specific time and space.”10 She goes on to articulate the intimate relationship between horizons and our real, fleshy, material bodies. In doing so, Alcoff employs the tools of phenomenology, emphasizing the work of Merleau-​Ponty to describe subjectivity in terms of “lived, embodied experience.”11 On Merleau-​Ponty’s view, the fleshy human body (which is, according to Alcoff, the site and source of our interpretive horizons) sees and perceives in ways that are “below the level of conscious articulation.”12 This “non-​discursive knowledge” 10 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 102. 11 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p.  111. See Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, translated by Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962). 12 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 114.

68  Socially Undocumented that the body bears and perceives is illustrated in his notion of the “habitual body” which, while in its “default position,” demonstrates knowledge of things like driving a car.13 Alcoff then argues, further engaging Merleau-​Ponty’s phenomenology, that the perceiving, knowing body sees because it is seen. That is, it is a “view from somewhere,” for we necessarily construct and even receive our subjectivities out of the stuff of our corporeal experiences. Alcoff explains that “knowing is a kind of immanent engagement, in which one’s own self is engaged by the world—​touched, felt and seen—​ rather than standing apart or above. One not only changes but is changed as well.14 In sum, one’s consciousness, subjectivity, and interpretive horizon come from, and are of, one’s visible body that is necessarily in the world as it is perceived. Importantly, the seeing body does not “master” the external world through a “detached, objectifying gaze.” Rather, “it is our own objectification, our own embodiment in the world, and thus the opposite of mastery, that grounds the possibility for seeing.”15 Alcoff motivates this phenomenological picture of embodied subjectivity and rationality in two ways. First, calling upon cognitive science research, she explores the use of bodily metaphors in everyday speech. For instance, we use expressions such as “I see what you are saying.”16 The term “up” is often used to express “more,” as indicated in expressions like “prices keep rising.”17 In addition, the mind itself is often described in material and bodily terms, as in expressions such as “my mind was racing,” and “you are putting ideas into my head.” These studies demonstrate, Alcoff argues, that “the structure of our rational activity operates within and through systems of metaphors that arise out of embodied experience.”18 Second, Alcoff further articulates her phenomenological picture of embodied subjectivity and rationality by exploring manifestations of what Sir Henry Head has articulated as the “postural model of the

13 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 108. 14 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 112. 15 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 112. 16 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 104. 17 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 104. 18 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 105.

On Social Identity  69 body.” The postural body is “that nonlinguistic imaginary position of the body that manifests its imagined relation to itself and to other bodies.”19 In other words, the knowledge we “carry” in our bodies is of things as fundamental as our “selves,” “others,” and our knowledge of the social and structural relations that hold between them. Take, for instance, female body experience, which has been explored in detail by Iris Marion Young and Simone de Beauvoir. Young argued that women experience (1) our own bodies; (2) the space that surrounds these bodies; and (3) in turn, our very “selves” as sites of restriction and confinement.20 To illustrate this, Young explored how women do not generally make full “use” of our bodily strength when lifting heavy objects and throwing softballs. Nor do we take up as much physical space as we might; recall recent discussions of the “manspreading” phenomenon on public transportation, and of how this illustrates significant differences in how women and men respectively take up space. Furthermore, in a study in which young girls and young boys were asked to draw pictures, young girls tended to draw pictures of “closed spaces” (particularly houses), while young boys tended to draw open fields and “outdoor” spaces. Many women’s postural body schemas, then, possess and convey intimate, non-​linguistic knowledge of the women’s social status in relation to that of men. Alcoff also engages Franz Fanon’s exploration of how colonized Black people develop a “third-​person consciousness” of being a “body-​ for-​others” in order to demonstrate how the postural body possesses knowledge of self-​other social structural relations and corresponding knowledge of the “self.” As Fanon wrote in a famous passage, “I came into the world imbued with the will to find a meaning in things, my spirit filled with the desire to attain to the source of the world, and then I found that I was an object in the midst of other objects. . . . In the white world the man of color encounters difficulties in the development of his bodily schema.”21 In this quote, we see that Fanon’s bodily schema, which he can only develop as “negating activity” in the white 19 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 107. 20 See Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience:“Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 21 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p.  107. See Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967).

70  Socially Undocumented world, is a horizon of understanding of the objectification of Black colonized people in white/​colonizer society. In sum, we have seen that Alcoff ’s picture of social identities as interpretive horizons is one in which such horizons are necessarily embodied. Alcoff calls upon Merleau-​Ponty’s phenomenology to demonstrate how the acts of seeing and perceiving are corporeal in nature; the body is a seer because the body is seen. In addition, she employs cognitive science research to show how our rational capacities are not only depicted through, but are also reliant upon, material and bodily metaphors. Finally, Alcoff uses the notion of the postural body to show how self-​other relations—​and, in turn, the very construction of the “self ”—​are embodied. In the next section, I complete my exposition of Alcoff ’s account of social identity by showing how she employs this hermeneutical and phenomenological picture to articulate the nature of “visible identities.”

D. Visible Identities Let us now explore in greater depth Alcoff ’s general theory of racial and sex/​gender identities, which she calls “visible identities.” Alcoff argues—​noting once again that “we perceive and process and incorporate and reason and are intellectually trained in the body itself ”22—​that “this helps us to understand why race and gender are integral to the self: bodies are positioned and located by race and gender structures and have access to differential experience, and may also have some differences in perceptual orientations and conceptual assumptions.”23 In this section, I  survey three important components of Alcoff ’s theory of “visible identities”: (1) her discussion of identities and self-​ other relations; (2) her application of her general framework to racial identity; and (3) her application of her general framework to gender identity. Then, in the following section, I shall argue that class identity also functions as a “visible” social identity as articulated by Alcoff, though Alcoff herself does not apply her analysis to class.

22 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 114. 23 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 114.

On Social Identity  71 First, Alcoff describes social identities in terms of how they shape and are shaped by self-​other relations. Following Hegel, she asserts that we rely upon the other to confirm our sense of who we think we are, as well as how we understand the world. Indeed, she argues that individual agency depends upon others; individual autonomy, on this view, is fundamentally relational. Alcoff explains that “one way that the self depends on the other is for their very substance, their very characteristics, their sense of themselves in the world.”24 She also engages the work of social psychologist George Herbert Mead to argue that from the time we are children, we come to understand who we are—​that is, we come to understand who our “selves” are—​through absorbing, engaging, and coming to understand ourselves as part of already existing narratives about people and groups in our social world. Alcoff explains that “one important way to understand the relationship of identity to the other is through the necessity of history to the articulation of an individual’s life . . . categories always signify historical relationships and processes.”25 On this view, we “borrow ourselves from” and “become ourselves” thanks (at least in part) to extant social identity categories and how we are socially positioned with regard to them. Because of all this, social identities are both fundamental to the self and real. That is, social identities are really “out there” in the world—​ they are not merely in our minds. We develop and fashion our “selves” in conversation, so to speak, with the historically, politically, and culturally significant categories with regard to which we are differentially positioned. This, in turn, affects our very corporeality. Of course, we are not reduced to the already existing social meanings attached to the social identities we have been involuntarily “assigned,” and we are free to (try to) reject these labels or redefine their significance. However, this does not make social identities any less real or any less fundamental to the self.

24 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 116. See George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1934). 25 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 114.

72  Socially Undocumented What can this tell us about racial and sex/​gender identities? Recall that for Alcoff, our interpretive horizons are embodied, just as race and gender are. Alcoff argues that “bodies are positioned and located by race and gender structures and have access to differential experiences, and may also have some differences in perceptual orientations and conceptual assumptions.”26 Our bodies—​the very sites of our interpretive horizons—​impact our perceptions by exposing us both to differential experiences (particularly differential social reactions to different types of bodies) and also by exposing us to differential, already existing social narratives with regard to social identity categories. In this sense, “embodied” social identities like race and gender both function in the same way as non-​embodied identities (such as ethnic identities) do through connecting people to already existing social histories and narratives. At the same time, however, they have a deep, body-​related impact on the self that does not seem to apply to other social identity categories. Indeed, Alcoff argues that race and sex/​gender are perspectival locations where tacit body knowledge occurs, affecting how one sees and is seen. She explains that “racial and sexual difference is manifest precisely in bodily comportment, in habit, feeling, and perceptual orientation. These make a part of what appears to me as the natural setting of all my thoughts.”27 Race and sex/​gender, as social identities, are real and fundamental to the self, and for Alcoff their embodied dimensions warrant further analysis. Alcoff explores racial identity both in terms of public status and “experienced selfhood,” for it influences “both . . . the way we read ourselves and the ways others read us.”28 Indeed, she partially defines race in terms of “a structure of contemporary perception” (which includes self-​perception).29 We engage in “racial seeing” as a result of histories of colonialism, enslavement, racial discrimination, and an array of other injustices that were “justified” through the carving out of hierarchical racial categories that were then deemed “natural.” This



26 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 114. 27 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 126. 28 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 191. 29 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 188.

On Social Identity  73 “racial seeing” generates racial identities that “work through” visible embodied features such as hair texture, skin pigment, and the shape of cheekbones. These racial identities, operating on this “visual registry,” are then “correlated with rational capacity, epistemic reliability, moral condition, and of course, aesthetic value.”30 Such racial “perception” is itself “unconscious, present in tacit body knowledge, and thus inaccessible for rational debate.” Furthermore, it occurs even among those of us who consider ourselves anti-​racists. An informed anti-​racism, Alcoff argues, needs to “make visible the practices of visibility itself, to outline the background from which our knowledge of others and of ourselves appears in relief.”31 Alcoff also suggests that the validity and usefulness of racial concepts depends on context, as race is “socially constructed, historically malleable, culturally contextual, and reproduced through learned perceptual practices.”32 Alcoff further argues that gender also operates through a visual registry (though gender does not operate primarily through visibility, as I briefly explain below). Indeed, she claims that both race and gender are the “penultimate visible identities.”33 Gender’s visibility is partially attributable to its profound embodiment and the relationship of that embodiment to a gendered division of reproductive labor in society. Alcoff describes “sexed identities” as “objective types based on a biological division of labor in human reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-​feeding, involved in one’s own body.”34 This differential relationship to the biological division of labor in human reproduction also applies to trans* women, women who do not wish to reproduce, women who have had hysterectomies, and/​or women who are infertile. Alcoff argues that “those classified as women will have a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction, no matter what their actual relationship of possibility is to it.”35

30 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 191. 31 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 194. 32 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 182. 33 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 6.

34 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 172. 35 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 172.

74  Socially Undocumented Here, once again, we see the connections between embodiment, visibility, and interpretive horizons. Gender’s “visibility,” which tends to be perceived in connection to differential human reproductive capacities between men and women, is used to naturalize social hierarchies that generally position men above women. I shall return to Alcoff ’s account of sex/​gender identity in particular in Chapter 4, in which I  explore the experiences of Mexican women who legally cross the Mexico-​U.S. border to seek prenatal care and give birth in the United States but are nevertheless rendered socially undocumented on the basis of how they (and their bodies) are seen by immigration enforcement officials and others.

D.  Summary Thus far I have explored Alcoff ’s theory of social identity that focuses in particular on the “visible identities” of race and gender. We saw that Alcoff describes social identities in terms of interpretive horizons: the very sites from which we perceive, understand, and rationalize the world. Importantly, these interpretive horizons are comprised of, and are located in and through, the body. Our postural and habitual bodies are sites of non-​discursive knowledge that is often inaccessible at the level of conscious and rational debate. The embodiment of social identities like race and gender, then, can have, and frequently does have, significant implications in terms of the impact of these identities on our perspectives on the world, the ways in which our bodies and rational capabilities are perceived by others, and our very “selves.” Indeed, being racialized as a person of color in a racist society, or sexed/​gendered as female in a sexist society, will influence how one is treated by others and how one experiences one’s own body and “self.” This makes race and gender the “penultimate visible identities,” according to Alcoff. They are real—​for they are “really embodied” identities constructed from identity-​based narratives that exist in our actual social world. In what remains of this chapter, I shall explore the extent to which class identity operates as a “visible identity” as articulated by Alcoff.

On Social Identity  75 On this point, I perceive a tension in Alcoff ’s view. On the one hand, it appears that her account of social identity is amenable to the task of theorizing class identity, as demonstrated in her invocation of the contrast between a queen’s perspective on a castle and that of her servants. On the other hand, it sometimes appears as if Alcoff ’s theory of “visible identities” excludes socioeconomic class, as she writes that “class and nationality are also embodied identities, but their relationship to the body is less intimate and more easily alterable than the relationship with one’s race or one’s gender.”36 I shall now argue that class identity is also a visible, embodied identity that is ontologically real and fundamental to the self. To make my case for this, I turn to the work of Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction, which I shall ultimately use to supplement Alcoff ’s own account of “visible identities.”

IV.  Pierre Bourdieu on Class Identity A.  Introduction There are several reasons why I am assessing Pierre Bourdieu’s work on class identity, particularly as developed in his influential work Distinction, in light of and in dialogue with Alcoff ’s theory of “visible identities.” First, like Alcoff, Bourdieu emphasizes both internal and external—​or, in Bourdieu’s words, subjective and objective—​aspects of social identity. Second, Bourdieu also focuses on the embodiment of identity, though, once again, his focus is on class. In doing so, Bourdieu also explores the ways in which embodied class identity often serves a perspectival location and interpretive horizon (though he does not use this terminology). In particular, Bourdieu’s notion of “habitus,” which he develops in depth in Distinction and a range of other works, is illustrative of how class identity is both embodied and a horizon via which one interprets the world.



36 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 86.

76  Socially Undocumented

B.  Subjective and Objective Aspects of Identity To begin with, let us explore Bourdieu’s views on the “subjective and objective” aspects of identity. He understood economic and political power partially along Marxist lines, as he conducted class-​based analyses that emphasized the ways in which consciousness itself is produced by powerful forces of socialization. However, his account of class identity should not be understood in terms of “class consciousness” as articulated by figures such as Marx and Lukács. For Bourdieu, a key characteristic of class identity is not a growing awareness of one’s status as an exploited worker in a capitalist social hierarchy, but rather, possessing false beliefs and misrecognition. As Rogers Brubaker helpfully explains, “the objectivist [or orthodox Marxist] devaluation of the significance of agents’ self-​ understandings overlooks the crucial role that false beliefs—​what Bourdieu calls . . . misrecognition—​play in maintaining the power and privilege of the dominant classes.”37 I raise this point in order to highlight that Bourdieu’s conception of “subjective,” “internal,” and “symbolic” class identity—​particularly as applied to working-​class/​proletariat-​class identity—​should not be reduced to an orthodox Marxist conception of class that often devalues the significance of false beliefs or misrecognition. As we shall see, such false beliefs play a key role in Bourdieu’s account of embodied class identity. With this in mind, I now turn to Bourdieu’s discussion of habitus, which will illuminate Bourdieu’s understanding of the embodiment of class.

C.  Habitus In Distinction, Bourdieu defines habitus as both the generative principle of objectively classifiable judgements and the system of classification  .  .  .  of these practices. It is the 37 Rogers Brubaker, “Rethinking Classical Theory: The Sociological Vision of Pierre Bourdieu,” Theory and Society, vol. 14 no. 1 (1985), pp. 745‒775.

On Social Identity  77 relationship between the two capacities which define the habitus, the capacity to produce classifiable practices and works, and the capacity to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (taste) that the represented social world, i.e., the space of life-​styles, is constituted.38

In this complex definition of “habitus,” Bourdieu is attempting to combine the “material” and the “symbolic,” or the “objective” and “subjective,” elements of human experience. Here, Bourdieu refers to a “capacity,” which we might also call a “disposition,” to interpret and appreciate the material and “objective” social world. Habitus is taste—​which sometimes, but does not always, get described in terms of distinction—​appreciating, interpreting, and interacting with the outside world. Through habitus, different “life-​styles” are developed and sustained. Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of habitus is very helpful for the purpose of understanding his unique approach to theorizing class identity. Bourdieu defines class as a set of biological individuals who, being the product of the same objective conditions, are endowed with the same habitus: social class (in itself) is inseparably a class of identical or similar conditions of existence or conditions and a class of biological individuals endowed with the same habitus, understood as a system of dispositions shared by all individuals who are products of the same conditions.39

In other words, we see in a given “class” a shared set of dispositions in terms of perceiving, interpreting, and interacting with the material social world. To employ Alcoff ’s terminology, we might say that class, and also habitus, constitute interpretive horizons that render certain things visible and salient to one, while also inclining one to interpret those things in a particular way.

38 Bourdieu, Distinction:  A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 170. 39 Pierre Bordieu, Le Sens Pratique (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1980), p. 8, quoted in Brubaker, “Rethinking Classical Theory,” p. 762.

78  Socially Undocumented Moving on, note that Bourdieu’s understanding of class/​habitus is also embodied. This is rendered particularly clear in Bourdieu’s analysis of “The Habitus and Space of Life-​Styles.” Therein, Bourdieu provides clear examples of the embodiment of class identity. He writes, for instance, that In the ordinary situations of bourgeois life, banalities about art, literature or cinema are inseparable from the steady tone, the slow, causal diction, the distant or self-​assured smile, the measured gesture, the well-​tailored suit and the bourgeois salon of the person who pronounces them.40

Here, the embodiment of class identity is evinced in the way one smiles, the speed at which one speaks, one’s tone of voice, and one’s style of decorating one’s body or home. Another example Bourdieu provides of the embodiment of class identity is as follows: the economy of practices is found in body language:  here, too, ­agitation and haste, grimaces and gesticulation are opposed to slowness—​the “slow gestures, the slow glance of nobility,”, ­according to Nietzsche—​ to the restraint and impassivity which signify 41 ­elevation.

Here, slowness, restraint, and impassivity, as demonstrated in one’s body and verbal language, is associated with upper-​class or “elevated” social status. On the other hand, agitated, hasty, and grimacing bodily movements are associated with lower-​class, “un-​elevated” social status. Furthermore, Bourdieu explains that Tastes in food also depend on the idea each class has of the body and of the effects of food on the body, that is, on its strength, health and beauty; and on the categories it uses to evaluate these effects, some of which may be important for one class and ignored by another, and which different classes rank in very different ways. Thus, whereas the

40 Bourdieu, Distinction, 174.

41 Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 177.

On Social Identity  79 working classes are more attentive to the strength of the (male) body and its shape, and tend to go for products that are both cheap and nutritious, the professions prefer products that are tasty, health-​giving, and light and not fattening. Taste, a class culture turned into nature, that is, embodied, helps to shape a class body. It is an incorporated principle of classification which governs all forms of incorporation, choosing and modifying everything the body ingests and digests and assimilates, physiologically and psychologically. It follows that the body is the most indisputable materialization of class taste.42

For Bourdieu, food and exercise are governed by taste—​that is, they are part of one’s habitus—​and this leads to the materialization of class taste in the form of embodiment. Class identity is embodied, on Bourdieu’s view, not simply in terms of the cost and “look” of one’s clothing, but also in one’s bodily shape, how one cares for and feeds one’s body, the “thinness” or the “fatness” of one’s form, and even certain people’s coloring (Bourdieu, referring exclusively to a white French/​Western European context, describes a fondness for large portions of red meat on the part of the working classes as leading to a certain “redness of face”). Conveying in fuller detail the embodiment of class identity, Bourdieu further explains: There are no merely “physical” facial signs; the color and thickness of lipstick, or expressions, as well as the shape of the face or the mouth, are immediately read as indices of a “moral” physiognomy, socially characterized, i.e. of a “vulgar” or “distinguished” mind, naturally “natural” or naturally “cultivated”. . . . The legitimate use of the body is spontaneously perceived as an index of moral uprightness, so that its opposite, a “natural” body, is seen as an index of laisser-​aller (“letting oneself go”), a culpable surrender to facility.43

As we can see, then, on Bourdieu’s view, habitus/​class embodiment is also connected to how one is viewed on a moral, rational, and

42 Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 190.

43 Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 192‒193.

80  Socially Undocumented intellectual level. We might say, using Alcoff ’s words, that one’s socioeconomic class impacts both how one sees and is seen. In sum, I submit that Bourdieu’s descriptive account of habitus/​class embodiment demonstrates that class identity is, indeed, a “visible” and “real” social identity as articulated by Alcoff in her theory of “visible identities.” Like racial and sex/​gender identities, class is also embodied. It is the source and site of an interpretive horizon, affecting both how one sees and is seen. And while it may be easier for one to distance oneself from a particular class identity (say, through wearing cheaper or more expensive clothing, and frequenting cheaper or more expensive establishments), Bourdieu’s analysis casts some doubt on the idea that we are truly free to “rid ourselves” of our class embodiment. For one’s class can impact not only one’s clothing choice and other expressions of “taste,” but also one’s bodily shape, comportment, rapidity of speech, and sense of “moral uprightness.” In this chapter I have aimed to accomplish two things. First, I have explored both why I consider an exploration of socially undocumented identity—​and not just social grouphood, as discussed in the previous chapter—​to be useful. A focus on social identity, I have argued, has political, descriptive, and theoretical value. It also compels us to listen to the socially undocumented as they articulate and contest their own oppression “from the inside out.” Second, I have established how I understand “social identity.” I  follow Linda Martín Alcoff in viewing social identities in terms of visible, embodied interpretive horizons and positionalities that are fundamental to the self, impacting how ones sees and is seen. While Alcoff focuses on racial and sexed/​gendered identities as the “penultimate visible identities,” I have argued that Bourdieu’s analysis of habitus and embodied class identity demonstrates that class also functions as a “visible identity.” Thus, throughout this book I shall supplement Alcoff ’s account with that of Bourdieu, exploring the ways in which socially undocumented identity is visible and embodied along racial, class, and sex/​gender lines. In the next two chapters, I use this conception of social identity to argue that “being socially undocumented” in the United States is both visible and embodied. Thus, I argue, it meets at least one of the criteria for social identity established here.

3

Socially Undocumented Embodiment I. Introduction In Chapter 2, I articulated an account of “visible” social identities (including race, sex/​gender, and class). On this account, such identities are embodied sites of interpretive horizons impacting how one sees and is seen. In this chapter, I continue with my argument that “being socially undocumented” entails having such an identity. In particular, I shall argue here that “being socially undocumented” is embodied—​a task to which I shall devote two chapters (in the next chapter, I explore the impact of visible pregnancy on socially undocumented embodiment). To make this argument, I begin by engaging 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, I trace the development of socially undocumented embodiment over the course of United States history. These explorations will reveal, I argue, 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 the preceding chapter.

II.  Perspectives on Socially Undocumented Embodiment In Chapter  1, I  began to explore aspects of socially undocumented embodiment. Recall that Gloria Anzaldúa told the story of Pedro, a Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

82  Socially Undocumented “legal” Mexican-​American who was nevertheless deported. Anzaldúa narrated the story of how the very sight of the U.S.  border patrol compelled Pedro to run even as he was encouraged by family and friends not to do so, as he had legal permission to live in the United States. Once apprehended, Anzaldúa explains that Pedro tried to raise his fist but found that he could not. Socially, but not legally, undocumented, Pedro’s very corporeality was intimately affected by the sight of the U.S. Border Patrol. Clearly, someone who was not socially undocumented would not have this embodied experience. Socially undocumented embodiment was also illustrated in the aforementioned testimonios of Mexicans in El Paso who came to the United States without legal authorization, but then became U.S. citizens and legal residents (this was illustrated by anthropologists Victor Talavera et al. as discussed in Chapter 1). Recall that one legally documented Mexican woman in El Paso reported that she still finds it difficult to leave her house out of fear of being apprehended. She also said that she and her friends move around the city like rats, hoping not to get caught. Recall, furthermore, anthropologist Josiah Heyman’s ethnographic research with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), in which he reported how one INS agent said that he can “spot the illegal” in a group of Mexicans. The agent said that he looked for things like (embodied) demeanor, shoes, and clothes to “spot the illegal” in a group of Mexicans. In all of these examples, we can see how “being socially undocumented” affects how one is seen. We can also begin to see both the racial and class-​based components of this embodied identity: Anzaldúa’s Pedro was a Mexican farmworker; the El Paso resident interviewed by Talavera et al. lived in one of the poorest communities of El Paso—​the residents of which are almost exclusively Mexican, Mexican-​American, and Chicana/​o/​x; the INS agent interviewed by Heyman targets Latina/​o/​xs, but also looks for a humble demeanor, and a certain type of clothing that tends to be associated with the Mexican working class. With this in mind, let us delve even deeper into the nature of socially undocumented embodiment, getting clearer on its racial and class-​ based elements. In The Latino Threat, Leo Chavez explores the usage of images that ostensibly depicted “illegal aliens” in the 2010 Nevada

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  83 U.S. Senate campaign of Republican Sharron Angle.1 A political advertisement that claimed to warn voters of the “dangers of illegal immigration” showed a picture of two young men with brown skin who were both dressed in hoodies. Stamped across the front of the advertisement was the phrase “Illegal Aliens.” In fact, Chavez points out that this photograph was taken in Mexico, and that the two young men in the photograph had never lived in the United States. (Thus, they were not legally undocumented.) The popularity of this photograph as a representation of “illegality” demonstrates that in the United States, the “look” of the working-​class Mexican (the young Mexican men were, after all, wearing hoodies rather than business suits) is often taken without question to be that of a so-​called “illegal.” Additional evidence of what appears to be both racial and class-​ based embodiment of socially undocumented identity can be found in Juan Thomas Ordóñez’s ethnography Jornalero: Being a Day Laborer in the USA. Therein, Ordóñez explores aspects of the lives of a group of legally undocumented Central American jornaleros, or day laborers, who regularly gather on a street corner in Berkeley, California, in hopes that an employer might recruit them for a day’s work. Ordóñez’s ethnography provides, I believe, a rich account of the embodiment of this jornalero experience. Describing their embodiment, Ordóñez writes that these jornaleros “wear old and stained clothes, usually jeans, sweatshirts and hoods, and baseball caps,” and that “no matter the season, the early passerby will see jornaleros standing or sitting with their hands in the front pockets of their sweatshirts, hunched over with their faces covered by hoods and caps.”2 He says that the jornalero body often appears on the street corner as “dirty and destitute.” Such bodies are often subjected to various levels of injury as jornaleros doing dangerous work fall off roofs and ladders, getting hurt and sometimes dying. Ordóñez explicitly states that there is something about being both “visibly Latin American” and visibly poor—​ dressed in old and stained clothes

1 Leo R. Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation, 2nd ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 2. 2 Juan Thomas Ordoñez, Jornalero:  Being a Day Laborer in the United States (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), p. 1.

84  Socially Undocumented and hunched over on a street corner—​that causes one to be read as an “illegal.” As Ordóñez illustrates, these day laborers are recruited by employers specifically because their bodies are “read” as those of undocumented people who can be hired for underpaid, undervalued work. While most (but not all) of them are, in fact, legally undocumented, no one asks them to “prove” that they are legally undocumented (and thus exploitable). The mere “look” of the jornalero—​of the socially undocumented person—​on the street corner is enough to determine that he can be hired for particular types of underpaid and often dangerous labor that tends to be associated with legally undocumented migrants. Images and understandings of what I have described as socially undocumented embodiment are not merely evident in academic scholarship; they are also to be found in popular art and culture. For instance, the Grammy-​award winning song ICE/​El Hielo by La Santa Cecilia chronicles some of the difficulties of living as a legally undocumented person in the United States. The lyrics of the song and corresponding music video provide insights into the corporeality of the socially undocumented: Eva is passing the rag over the table, there she is. She is taking care that everything shines like a pearl. That way when the boss comes, she [the boss] won’t complain again. Don't let it be that she accuses her of being illegal . . .  . José is tending to the gardens. They look like they're from Disneyland. He drives an old truck without a license. It does not matter if he was a taxi driver over in his home country. That does not count for Uncle Sam.3

These song lyrics depict the experience of “illegality” in terms of fear of ICE and deportation. However, they also describe “illegality” in terms of engaging in explicitly working-​class labor—​i.e., physically scrubbing a table, tending to a garden, and transporting oneself to work sites in an old truck. The corresponding music video shows the entanglement of 3 La Santa Cecilia, “ICE El Hielo,” from album Treinta Días (2013). Universal Music Latino/​Arju Productions.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  85 visible racial and class markers, as (generally) darker-​skinned Latin Americans are shown putting on aprons, cleaning, gardening as they endure the constraints associated with “illegality.” Native American and Chicana/​o/​x artists have also pointed to embodied elements of social “illegality” on the part of some Native Americans, particularly in the U.S. Southwest. The Native American/​ Chicano hip-​hop trio Shining Soul, fronted by MC Liaison of the Tohono O’odham Nation, rap the following lyrics in their song Papers, which discusses the impact of U.S.-​Mexico border militarization on Indigenous groups like the Tohono O’odham, Yaqui, and Lipan Apache Nations who live at the border: I don’t know what’s worse: Gringos constructing another green zone Or Republican Latinos The persecution is three-​fold: We’re broke, brown is the pigment, and they assume we speaka-​no English We are heathens in the eyes of the State.4

Here, Shining Soul conveys that “looking poor” and “looking brown” can give Native Americans an “illegal look,” leading to extensive harassment of Native Americans by immigration officials, despite the fact that Native Americans not only have a legal right to be in the United States but in fact often hold group rights over the very land on which they are persecuted and harassed. Clearly, having the “look” of a working-​class Mexican or Central American is enough to be “read” as “illegal,” regardless of the particularities of one’s national and ethno-​ racial background. In sum, I submit that these insights serve to illustrate the embodiment of “being socially undocumented.” It is clear that certain bodies are “read” as “illegal” due to visible race and class markers. In turn, the experience of being “read” in this way often leads socially undocumented people to experience a certain corporeality. In fact, there 4 The Bronze Candidate and MC Liaison/​Shining Soul, “Papers,” from album We Got This (2011).

86  Socially Undocumented appears to be a socially undocumented “postural body.” Since, as we have seen, real and “visible social identities” are worn on and experienced through the body, I submit this makes “being socially undocumented” a candidate for this type of social identity. But how did the “look” of a so-​called illegal alien come to be that of a working-​ class  Mexican in the United States? And, furthermore, what might this teach us about the nature of socially undocumented oppression? In the next section, I begin to respond to these questions by exploring the historical origins of socially undocumented embodiment.

III.  The Historical Origins of Socially Undocumented Embodiment Socially undocumented embodiment (and, eventually, socially undocumented identity) emerged historically through a process of both racial formation and class formation. Omi and Winant define racial formation as “the socio-​historical process by which racial projects are created, inhabited, transformed and destroyed.”5 They define a racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or ­explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to reorganize and ­redistribute resources along particular lines.”6 I shall argue that socially undocumented embodiment came about as part of a socio-​ historical racial project that served to reorganize and redistribute resources by means of branding certain bodies as “illegals” in the United States. In addition, I argue that socially undocumented embodiment emerged through a process of what we might call “class formation,” or a “class project.” To begin with, it is important to note that early U.S. immigration laws were developed in the context of white supremacy and what Charles Mills described as a “Racial Contract”—​a real historical, moral, political, and epistemological contract through which people designated 5 Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 55. 6 Omi and Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, p. 56.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  87 as “white” get to categorize and ascribe inferior moral and political status to those designated as “non-​white.”7 Explaining the origins of the Racial Contract, Mills writes that “Europeans . . . emerge[d]‌as ‘the lords of human kind,’ and ‘the lords of the world,’ with the increasing power to determine the standing of non-​Europeans who are their subjects.”8 We shall see that white supremacy—​the “unnamed political system” through which people designated as white are empowered to categorize and ascribe inferior moral and political status to those designated as non-​white—​also made socially undocumented embodiment what it is today. The white supremacist nature of early U.S.  immigration law, and its role in crafting and perpetuating an “illegality”-​producing Racial Contract, is evinced in the original Naturalization Act of 1790, which notoriously declared that only “free white persons” of “good character” were eligible to be naturalized as U.S.  citizens. Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, slaves, and indentured servants were consequently rendered ineligible for U.S. citizenship. Later, white supremacy in the form of U.S. immigration law came in the form of the first restriction on immigration in the United States: the first Chinese Exclusion Act of 1992, which prohibited Chinese immigration to the United States for a period of 10 years. The Act was renewed for an additional period of 10 years, and its geographical scope was expanded in 1902. These Acts were not repealed until 1943. Shortly thereafter, the Immigration Act of 1917 banned immigration from the Asia-​Pacific region, creating an “Asiatic Barred Zone,” and it also required prospective migrants to take and pass literacy tests. It was not until 1952 that the Immigration and Nationality Act officially prohibited discrimination in naturalization on the basis of race and gender, thereby invalidating the Act of 1917. While these laws do not speak specifically to the “illegalization” of a subset of the U.S. population, they did create conditions for the emergence of socially undocumented embodiment (and, eventually, socially undocumented identity). Indeed, such immigration laws helped to make it the case that the United States remained, at least on 7 See Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 11. 8 Mills, The Racial Contract, p. 28.

88  Socially Undocumented a normative level, a country of “white persons.” White supremacy and the Racial Contract, then, set the context in which today’s socially undocumented embodiment began to emerge. A key moment in the developing “illegalization” of Mexicans in particular occurred in 1848, when the United States stole approximately half of Mexico’s territory—​including California, most of Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, about half of New Mexico, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado—​through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby ending the two-​year Mexican-​American War. The treaty also established the Rio Grande/​Rio Bravo as the boundary between Texas and the United States. Mexican nationals were, at least in theory (though not always in practice), given the option to either leave (now-​)U.S. soil and maintain their Mexican citizenship, or to remain on U.S. soil and become naturalized U.S. citizens. As argued by Mae Ngai, the signing Treaty of Guadalupe-​Hidalgo “gave Mexico and Mexicans the status of a conquered population,”9 just as it rendered Mexicans “foreign” on their own native land. Thus, with the signing of the Treaty, Mexicans were both rendered foreign and subjected to a set of demeaning, immigration-​related constraints. Note, furthermore, that the Treaty served to bifurcate lands of Native peoples whose traditional land is located along what is now the U.S.-​Mexico border, thus contributing to the development of Native American socially undocumented embodiment. The subsequent Gadsden Purchase of 1854 once again redrew the U.S.-​Mexico border, and in so doing it bifurcated the territories of Indigenous groups like the Tohono O’odham. Like the Treaty of Guadalupe-​Hidalgo, the Gadsden Purchase subjected Native peoples of what is now the U.S.-​Mexico borderlands region to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints. Despite these restrictions on naturalization—​and with the glaring exception of the Chinese Exclusion Acts—​migration into the United States was generally permitted, and unregulated, in the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. Mexican migration into the United States from 1910 to 1920 generally featured open migration 9 Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects:  Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 51.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  89 policies toward Mexico and its “conquered population,” as rapidly expanding U.S.  agribusiness generated a need for cheap, working-​ class Mexican labor. During this time, migration to the United States from Mexico was generally perceived to be controlled by labor markets; thus, the U.S. government did not feel that it needed to intervene.10 Denied their previous claims to their native land and, in many cases, access to the full battery of rights associated with U.S. citizenship that they were promised, poor and working-​class Mexicans came to the United States as laborers rather than as U.S. citizens or Mexican natives. The first “wave” of Mexican migration is therefore a significant period for emerging socially undocumented emodiment, as the very presence of Mexicans in the United States came to be associated with agricultural, working-​class, and racialized labor. At this stage, the beginnings of a complicated social “illegalization” of Mexicans occurred, and it did not depend on whether the “illegalized” Mexicans in question were actually residing in the United States. Illustrating this point, in his autobiographical novel Ulises Criollo, Mexican philosopher José Vasconcelos describes his experiences growing up in a Mexico-​U.S. border town during this period. Born in Oaxaca in 1882, as a very young child Vasconcelos moved with his family to the Mexican border town of Sasabe, Sonora. Sasabe, a small village in the Sonoran Desert at the Arizona border, had suddenly become U.S. territory as a result of ongoing disputes over where to “draw” the Mexico-​U.S. border following the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-​Hidalgo. Vasconcelos writes of the forced removal of his family and the other residents of that village by the U.S. armed forces. Note that Vasconcelos and his family were living in Mexico when they were forcibly removed: It was a strange morning. From our beds, through the open window, over a nearby, uneven patch of terrain, a group of foreigners in blue uniform. Flying over the small tent they had set up was the starred and striped flag. From the creases of the flag flowed a hostile purpose. I  vaguely understood that these recent arrivals were part



10 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 64.

90  Socially Undocumented of the North American commission on boundaries and borders (la  comisión norteamericana de límites). They had decided that our village, with its waterwheel, was under Yankee jurisdiction, and they threw us out. “We have to go,” explained the people from our village. “And worst of all,” they added,” is that there aren’t any waterwheels in the nearby villages; we’ll have to keep watching and searching for water.11

Vasconcelos further narrates: The men in the blue uniforms did not come close to us. Reserved and distant, they awaited our departure to take what they wanted. The telegraph worked, but the Mexican government ordered our departure; we were the weak ones and it was useless to resist. The invaders were not in a hurry; they smoked in their small camp with the serenity of the powerful.12

Mexicans in Mexico were clearly a “conquered population,” and those who, like Vasconcelos, resided in the Mexico-​U.S. borderlands were acutely aware of this. It was not very long before people like Vasconcelos went from being rendered “foreign,” “conquered,” and “not belonging” on their own land to being rendered explicitly socially undocumented or “illegal” on U.S. soil. As argued compellingly by Mae Ngai, the Johnson-​ Reed Act, or the Immigration Act of 1924, played a vital role in the establishment of widespread perceptions that Mexicans are “paradigmatic illegals.” In Impossible Subjects, Ngai studies two overarching implications of the Act of 1924. First, she argues that it “classified the world’s population in terms of nationality and race, ranking them in a hierarchy of ‘desirability’ for admission to the United States.”13 It did this by establishing a strict system of quotas that were to govern immigration admissions in the United States. The United States would

11 José Vasconelos, Ulises Criollo (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982; originally published 1936), p. 10. 12 Vasconelos, Ulises Criollo, p. 10. 13 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 17.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  91 now only admit for admission to the United States 2% of the number of people from each country that were resident in the United States as established on the 1890 census (note that Latin American immigration was exempted from the new quota restrictions). It also “discounted all Chinese, Japanese and South Asians as ‘ineligible to naturalized citizenship,’ including those with American citizenship by native-​birth.”14 The second main purpose and implication of the Johnson-​Reed Act is that it “led to enforcement of borders and paperwork,” thus making “ ‘illegal immigration’ the central immigration problem/​creation of border control.”15 While Mexicans and Latin Americans were exempted from the quota system, Mexican migration to the United States became heavily regulated. This swiftly ended the (relative) “open borders” period experienced by Mexican citizens in the preceding years. Ngai explains that the Johnson-​Reed act “led to a reimagining of borders,” and also a “new focus on protecting borders.” It made deportations a key mechanism of U.S. immigration policy and enforcement, “creating the notion of deserving and ‘illegal’ immigrants,” and “just and unjust deportations.”16 Indeed, the Johnson Reed-​Act marked the creation of the U.S. Border Patrol, the agents of which were granted sweeping discretion with regard to U.S. immigration enforcement and expulsion strategies. Many U.S. Border Patrol agents abused and otherwise mistreated Mexican-​origin peoples in the U.S.-​Mexico borderlands, and some had ties to the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).17 Class-​based discrimination was also highly prevalent in the coercive control of U.S.-​Mexico border crossings. Most working-​class Mexican citizens who wanted to cross the border were required to bathe and get inspected in the nude by immigration officers prior to crossing (a system that was once in place at Ellis Island, but had been discontinued). At the El Paso, Texas, port of entry, however, wealthy Mexican and European border-​crossers arriving by first-​ class rail were exempted from the humiliating inspections.18

14 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 26.

15 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 26. 16 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 68. 17 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 68. 18 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 58.

92  Socially Undocumented Reflecting on the implications of the Johnson-​Reed Act, Ngai argues that “the processes of territorial redefinition and administrative enforcement informed divergent paths of racialization.” 19 In particular, she argues that “Europeans and Canadians tended to be disassociated from the real and imagined categories of illegal alien, which facilitated their national and racial assimilation as white American citizens,”20 while Mexicans emerged as iconic “illegal aliens.” Furthermore, during this time, wading or walking across the U.S.-​Mexico border “became the quintessential act of illegal immigration.”21 As U.S. immigration restrictions and constraints came to be associated rather uniquely with the Mexico-​U.S. border, “illegal status became constitutive of a racialized Mexican identity and of Mexicans’ exclusion from the national community and polity.”22 Immigration officials, who were assigned the very new task of “defending’ a border that had previously been extremely porous, exercised tremendous power to coerce and exclude. Ngai argues that given that they were clearly “operating within the contingencies of contemporary politics and social prejudices, the exercise of administrative discretion,” these processes “served to racialize the specter of the illegal alien.”23 This “racialization of the illegal alien” is also evinced in the subsequent repatriation of Mexican and Mexican-​American citizens between 1929 and 1936. During the Great Depression, “Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a scapegoat,”24 and they found such a scapegoat in Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans in the United States. The methods of repatriation were complex. Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans were either forcibly deported or coerced and/​or manipulated into “voluntarily” leaving the United States. Many sectors of U.S. society contributed to repatriation efforts, including the INS, city governments (particularly in places like Los Angeles, Detroit, Kansas City, and Denver), state governments,

19 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 58. 20 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 58. 21 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 89. 22 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 89. 23 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 90. 24 Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1999), p. 2.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  93 public agencies, thugs who attacked and otherwise harassed Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans to encourage them to leave, and private donors who paid for repatriated Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans to return home under dangerous and even inhumane conditions. Given the complex nature of repatriation—​ and the fact that many Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans went to Mexico “voluntarily” (stated more accurately:  as a result of threats, coercion and violence)—​it is impossible to generate a precise figure of how many people were repatriated to Mexico. However, the “official combined total” of repatriated people is 1,186,099.25 It is estimated that 60% of these repatriates were, in fact, U.S. citizens.26 In other words, regardless of one’s actual citizenship status, merely “looking Mexican” was often sufficient to get one forcibly relocated or coerced into relocating to Mexico. The personal and economic costs of repatriation were extreme for all repatriates, but repatriated Mexican-​Americans who had never been to Mexico often experienced alienation and culture shock. This is indicated in the following testimonio of Theresa Martinez Southard, a U.S. citizen who was repatriated to Mexico: So we stayed with my aunt. Can you imagine we had one bedroom for all of us. Since it was still summer time when we arrived that of having only one bedroom didn’t bother us too much. So with the warm weather we couldn’t fit in that one bedroom, we slept outdoors. While we were living with my aunt she would make those corn tortillas. They looked good, but I didn’t like them. I had to eat my flour tortillas. Poor Dad he would sacrifice himself and buy a special sack of flour so I could make my own tortillas. Otherwise, I wouldn’t eat. Everything was so different. I wasn’t used to this life. It was so tough on me. I used to play baseball with my high heels on. I wore them when I carried water and everything, I loved heels. The people didn’t like the way I dressed.

25 Balderrama and Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal, p. 121. 26 See Terri Gross and Francisco Balderrama, “America’s Forgotten History of Mexican-​American ‘Repatriation,’” NPR (Fresh Air), accessible at http://​www.npr.org/​ 2015/​09/​10/​439114563/​americas-​forgotten-​history-​of-​mexicanamerican-​repatriation.

94  Socially Undocumented They didn’t like for us to wear lipstick, rouge, anything. I would always say, oh what if I could go back to my country, again. . . . I always had intentions of going back home.27

Theresa Martinez Southard’s testimonio demonstrates the high costs to U.S. citizens who were repatriated during this period—​not because they lacked legal permission to be in the United States, but because they were taken to “look like” working-​class Mexicans. The repatriation of countless Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans to Mexico is yet another key period of the racial and class formation of socially undocumented embodiment in the United States. On the heels of its repatriation efforts, the United States government began to encourage poor and working-​class Mexican men to move into the United States to meet it labor needs through the Bracero Program, contributing even further to socially undocumented embodiment. The nation’s first guest worker program, the Bracero Program operated from 1942 through 1964 under the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement of 1942, and, later, under the Migrant Labor Agreement of 1951. Approximately 4.6 million contracts were signed by braceros, and most of these contracts were for agricultural labor. The term bracero itself refers to “one who uses his arms,” or brazos, generally in the context of physically taxing, manual labor—​suggesting that the U.S. government was merely importing “arms” for underpaid manual labor that U.S. citizens did not want to do themselves. As Paul Spickard explains, “braceros, in the eyes of employers and policy makers, were literally arms for temporary hire, not human beings to whom American society owed anything.”28 Braceros were issued temporary work visas that did not permit them to vote or bargain collectively. Participants in the Bracero Program were told that they would be paid a minimum wage (then 30 cents an hour), that they would receive adequate food and shelter, and that they would be protected from racial discrimination. These 27 Christine Valencia with Teresa Martínez Southard, “Trying to Survive in Mexico: Teresa Martínez Southard,” in Balderrama and Rodriguez, Decade of Betrayal, p. 213. 28 Paul Spickard, Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 302.

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  95 guarantees were not upheld in practice, however. Many braceros traveled to the United States—​frequently after borrowing money for and/​ or using up all their savings to cover travel costs—​only to find that their employers had no intention of paying them a minimum wage and providing them with free, decent living quarters. Braceros were also subjected racial discrimination and other forms of humiliation. Mae Ngai describes the Bracero Program as part of “the construction of ‘Mexican’ into a one-​dimensional ‘commodity function and utility’ ” that “devalued nearly everything that held meaning to Mexicans—​the individual self, the family, culture, and political experience.”29 Upon finding themselves in such unexpectedly hard circumstances in the United States, many braceros began to seek employment opportunities outside the Bracero Program. Meanwhile, employers competing for bracero contracts became frustrated by their inability to continuously acquire cheap human sources of manual labor. Thus, they began to hire undocumented workers. At this stage, the line between “documented” bracero and “undocumented” Mexican farmworker became blurred. Regardless of whether individual Mexican farmworkers had legal authorization to be in the United States, merely “looking Mexican” and working -​class rendered them exploitable and vulnerable to a range of immigration-​related restrictions (i.e., unsafe working conditions based on the presumption that one would not complain about one’s unfair treatment due to fear of deportation). Braceros, who had legal permission to live and work in the United States, therefore became socially undocumented—​presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of appearance, and subjected to demeaning immigration-​related constraints on that basis. The Bracero Program should be understood as both a racial and a class project, as poor and working-​class Mexican men were systematically reduced to exploitable and deportable “arms” for U.S. agribusiness. In sum, I submit that the historical origins of emergent socially undocumented embodiment include (1) early white supremacist immigration laws, established as part of an ongoing racial contract; (2) the Mexican-​American War and subsequent signing of the Treaty of



29 Ngai, Impossible Subjects, p. 132.

96  Socially Undocumented Guadalupe-​Hidalgo, which rendered Mexicans “conquered” and “foreign” on their own land; (3) the first “wave” of Mexican migration to the United States, where Mexican laborers were recruited by rapidly expanding U.S. agribusiness; (4) the Johnson-​Reed Act of 1924, which generated a U.S. border patrol, required Mexican border-​crossers to acquire “papers” in order to enter the United States, and saw the crossing of the Rio Grande emerge as the “quintessential ‘illegal’ act”; (5) the repatriation of over 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans, over 60% of whom were U.S.  citizens, during the Great Depression; and (6) the essential “importation” and the exploitation of over 4 million Braceros, or Mexican worker “arms,” to satisfy the needs of U.S. agribusiness, followed by a “blending” of “documented” Braceros and undocumented Mexicans in the United States. This historical overview puts into perspective socially undocumented embodiment as explored in the previous section. Why should La Santa Cecilia’s narration of Eva, a brown Latina cleaning a table with a rag, be associated with “illegality” in the United States? Why is the expected “look” of the (“illegal”) jornalero that of a Central American wearing dirty, ripped clothes while standing on a street corner with an injured body? Why did Pedro, a young Mexican-​American farmworker, run away from the Border Patrol despite having legal p ­ ermission to be in the United States? Why did an INS officer report that he looks for working-​class clothes and a working-​class demeanor when trying to “spot the illegal” in a group of (racially profiled) Latina/​o/​xs? These embodied experiences of being seen as “an illegal,” as a socially undocumented person, are understandable when viewed against the backdrop of these aspects of U.S. history. On this basis of the preceding discussion, I submit that “being socially undocumented” is embodied, and particularly along racial and class lines. To call upon the ideas explored in the previous chapter, it is clear that “being socially undocumented” entails the possession of a real, fleshy, material body—​one that has been rendered “illegal” on the basis of a widespread racial and class-​based “seeing” that has developed over centuries of white supremacist racial and class projects in the United States. Furthermore, those who have socially undocumented bodies seem to have access to embodied, non-​discursive

Socially Undocumented Embodiment  97 knowledge that may be “below the level of conscious articulation.”30 Indeed, we saw that Pedro, from Anzaldúa’s narrative, knew that the U.S. Border Patrol would view him as “illegal” despite his U.S. citizenship, and that socially undocumented U.S. citizens who are taken to “look illegal” often confine themselves to their houses for fear of deportation. Pedro’s running away from the U.S. Border Patrol, and the ways in which many working-​class Mexicans with legal authorization to be in the United States physically confine themselves to their homes, show that there exists a socially undocumented “postural body” that sees itself as “illegalized”—​at least in certain, hostile contexts—​because it is seen that way by others. In addition, the ways in which U.S.  immigration enforcement officials target Latina/​o/​xs who are working-​class-​presenting (which involves not only a certain type of clothing but a certain type of demeanor), conveys that the socially undocumented person experiences, in Bourdieu’s words, an embodied, class-​based habitus. While I have yet to develop normative arguments for addressing socially undocumented oppression (a task to which, once again, I turn in the final chapters of this book), the arguments developed here provide some clues about the sorts of policies that should be developed in order to achieve this goal. First, we have seen that socially undocumented people simply do not feel safe in the United States—​even in ostensibly “safe spaces” like their own neighborhoods. Thus, we may need to find ways to help diminish this embodied fear among the socially undocumented, in part through reviewing what sort of presence and roles immigration enforcement can have both at the border and in the U.S. interior without violating the requirements of relational egalitarian justice. Second, we may need to explore what public institutions, linguistic practices, laws, symbols, and practices are serving to perpetuate the sort of “racial seeing” that causes certain bodies to be “illegalized” in the aftermath of public spectacles like the repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans in the United States, and the humiliation of so many braceros. Third, given the role that class-​ based oppression plays in the development of socially undocumented 30 Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 114.

98  Socially Undocumented embodiment, we may need to explore what changes need to be made to existing labor laws and workplace practices to diminish the class-​based oppression that foments one’s “being socially undocumented.” Fourth, we could explore the role that the border itself plays in perpetuating a socially undocumented embodiment, given that, as explained by Ngai, wading across the Mexico-​U.S. border (and perhaps even approaching the border) has come to be seen as the “quintessential illegal act.” I merely propose these ideas here, and I shall return to them in the final chapters of this book. Moving on, in the next chapter I continue my phenomenological exploration of socially undocumented embodiment by focusing on how pregnancy impacts socially undocumented corporeality. I argue that people who are both visibly pregnant and socially undocumented may be the most “illegalized” of all subjects in the United States.

4

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented I.  Introduction A. Salma’s Story Salma wonders how much longer she can stay in this position without arousing suspicion: lying down in the car, her passenger seat pushed back as far as it can go, her obviously pregnant belly pointing upward.1 Her husband, seated next to her in the driver’s seat, flips through a series of radio channels while muttering a complaint about the heat of the sun that is sharply beating down on them through the car windows. They have been in their car for about 45 minutes, all the while inching their way toward the Ciudad Juárez-​El Paso port of entry of the Mexico-​U.S. border. They are completely surrounded, boxed in, by a swarm of cars that are also inching in the same direction. Positioning her hands protectively on her belly, Salma feels simultaneously nervous and grateful. On the one hand, she is grateful because her baby is still alive. A few days ago, after spending a joyous day, mostly on foot, hosting a birthday party in Ciudad Juárez for her eight-​year-​old daughter, she awoke in the middle of the night in an astonishingly large puddle of blood. So frightened was she that she barely has any memory of her husband rushing her to the closest emergency room in Ciudad Juárez. Salma does, however, remember being diagnosed in the ER with a threatened miscarriage—​which meant, she eagerly gathered, that her baby could still live. However, this



1

“Salma” is a pseudonym, and this vignette is a narration of Salma’s experience.

Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

100  Socially Undocumented threatened miscarriage, occurring on top of her previous diagnosis of placenta previa (her placenta that was covering the opening of her cervix, causing trouble), compelled her OB-​GYN in Ciudad Juárez to put her on complete bed and pelvic rest. Salma was told that standing up, or sitting upright, posed serious and even life-​threatening risks both to her and to her baby. This is part of why she is now lying down in her car that is approaching the Mexico-​U.S. border. While she is grateful, Salma is also nervous. She barely notices that her husband has given up on finding something desirable to listen to on the radio and is now complaining about a driver who just aggressively cut in front of him in hopes of getting across the border a few minutes earlier. Ignoring all this, Salma is now hyper-​ focused on Customs and Border Protection agents who have become visible at the end of the line. She is certainly not close enough to see their faces, but she knows, after having crossed and re-​crossed the Mexico-​U.S.  border countless times for nearly her entire life, that while most of them are probably making semi-​friendly chit-​chat while assessing the work visas, tourist visas, passports, and other documents that are constantly being handed to them, some may be going a step further. Some may be peering into car windows and demanding that car trunks be opened in order to assess their contents. At least one is surely interrogating would-​be border-​crossers with an intimidating tone of voice and an air of suspicion. Ojalá y no nos toque uno de esos que son bien mala onda, she inaudibly whispers. It is at that moment that Salma decides to go against her doctor’s orders and pull her passenger seat—​and, in turn, her pregnant body—​ into an upright, seated position. She just cannot risk arousing suspicion at the border by looking like a sick, pregnant woman on verge of giving birth in the United States. Her husband grows quiet and looks at her with concern, but he says nothing; this is Salma’s decision. She remains seated that way for an additional thirty minutes, trying to ignore her fear and calm her shaking body. Luckily, she and her husband “get one of the nice ones” at the border. Their Customs and Border Patrol Agent checks their documents (primarily her husband’s NAFTA work visa), asks them why they are going to the United States (“to shop at Walmart,” she says, though this is false), and they drive into El Paso. The next day, Salma finds an OB-​GYN in El Paso who will serve as

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  101 her prenatal care provider for the rest of her high-​risk pregnancy. Two months later, Salma and her husband, both citizens of Mexico, welcome to the world a healthy U.S. citizen daughter in El Paso. She fears that her daughter may disparagingly be called an “anchor baby” by some hostile members of U.S. society. Salma also doubts that such anti-​immigrant rhetoric will diminish anytime soon. In addition, Salma reports that she has already been criticized by some in Mexico for her decision to attain U.S. citizenship for her daughter: “Let me tell you, I love Mexico,” she said to me during an interview as she scrubbed fruit in the spotless kitchen of her new home in El Paso. “But in Mexico some people have compared me to rats that abandon a sinking ship. So I tell them: Guess what? This rat has baby rats, and I’m going to do what’s best for them.”

Salma’s words bring to mind Mariana Ortega’s discussion, inspired by the work of Gloria Anzaldúa, of being “a self inhabiting the borderlands, a self in-​between the United States and Mexico, who experiences a lived struggle because she is split between two cultures, races, languages and genders, all tugging her, pulling her to one side or another, demanding alliances.”2 Despite the criticisms and the alliances being demanded of her, Salma remains convinced that she made the right decision for her family.

B.  Methodology In this chapter I  employ the tools of ethnography and philosophical analysis to develop a partial descriptive account of female, socially undocumented embodiment. This analysis is informed by the intersectionality theory of Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Crenshaw has prominently argued that in feminist and anti-​racist discourse and activism, a “focus on the most privileged group members marginalizes those who are multiply burdened and obscures claims 2 Mariana Ortega, In-​Between: Latina Feminist Phenomenology, Multiplicity, and the Self (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016), p. 26.

102  Socially Undocumented that cannot be understood as resulting from discrete sources of discrimination.”3 This chapter aims to move beyond what Crenshaw has called a “single-​axis framework” of theorizing race and gender oppression that focuses strictly on the particular experiences of the most privileged members of marginalized social groups, like white women, in the category/​group of “women,” and men of color, in the category/​ group of “people of color.”4 I will explore the first-​ person narratives of “pregnant border-​ crossings” offered in the context of interviews I personally 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. The methodology employed in this chapter is thus somewhat experimental, as ethnography, which has been defined as “a ‘portrait of a people’ that captures broad cultural patterns from the finest details of everyday life,”5 has generally been the business of anthropologists and not philosophers. However, I believe and hope to show that the tools of ethnography enhance a philosophical project that aims both to center and philosophically engage the perspectives of women who border-​cross while pregnant. As Kathleen and Billie Dewalt explain, ethnographic methods are useful to those “looking for ‘new insights into the point of view of the participants’ as they engage in their quotidian activities.”6 Centering the points of view of participants in this study seems especially important in light of the fact that, as Leo Chavez has argued, “national magazines  .  .  .  have consistently represented the fertility levels of Latinas, especially Mexicans and Mexican Americans, as ‘dangerous’, ‘pathological’, ‘abnormal’, and even a threat to national security.”7 Natalie Cisneros argues that “political discourses surrounding ‘anchor babies’ and ‘alien maternity’ construct the ‘problematic of 3 Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” in Adrien Katherine Wing, ed., Critical Race Feminism: A Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University Press, 2003), p. 23. 4 Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex,” p. 23. 5 L. Kaifa Roland, Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha: An Ethnography of Racial Meanings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. ix. 6 Kathleen DeWalt and Billie Dewalt, Participant Observation:  A Guide for Fieldworkers, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2001). 7 Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens and the Nation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), pp. 74–​75.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  103 alien sexuality’, thus constituting the ‘alien subject’ as always-​already perverse.”8As we shall see, many Mexican women who border-​cross while pregnant offer points of view on the philosophical and political significance of their actions that differ strikingly from how such border-​crossings are depicted in such anti-​immigrant rhetoric. Ethnographic research for this chapter officially began in December 2016, when I  began a series of thirty semi-​structured interviews conducted with two groups of interview subjects located in either El Paso, Texas, or Ciudad Juárez, Mexico (or in both places). Ciudad Juárez-​El Paso is the largest metropolitan, binational area along the Mexico-​U.S. border, and many of its residents lead their lives on both sides of the border. The first group of interview subjects consists of Mexican women who are citizens of Mexico and who, while living in Ciudad Juárez, crossed the Mexico-​U.S. border while pregnant to seek prenatal care and/​or give birth in El Paso, Texas. For the most part, the women interviewed for this study are middle-​class, cisgender, and had legal authorization to enter the United States from Mexico on a tourist or work visa (and even, in one case, with U.S. residency).9 Engaging the narratives of middle-​class Mexican citizen women who could afford the legal documents that granted them legal authorization to enter the United States enables me to focus on how these legally documented women were nevertheless rendered socially undocumented while crossing the border in certain pregnancy-​related medical encounters. The second group of interview subjects consist of prenatal care providers, including OBGYNs, midwives, labor and delivery nurses, and other qualified medical professionals working with pregnant people in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. Prenatal care providers, we shall see, often play an important, under-​explored role in the pregnant border-​crossings in question. While some prenatal care providers assist pregnant Mexican women in the border-​crossing process, others were perceived by the women in question to be frustrating their aims. 8 Natalie Cisneros, “Alien Sexuality: Race, Maternity and Citizenship,” Hypatia vol. 8 no. 2 (Spring 2013), p. 290. 9 Because all the women interviewed as Cisgender, and given that the prenatal care providers identified all their patients/​clients as cis-​gender when asked, I will generally use terms like “women” and “pregnant women” to identify my interview subjects. It is important to recognize that trans* men and other people with non-​normative gender identities can get pregnant; hence, I will sometimes use the term “pregnant people” when speaking generally, and not in reference to interview subjects.

104  Socially Undocumented Ethnographic research for this chapter also took the form of the participant-​observation in which I engaged since research began officially in December 2016. As part of this, I visited and toured birth centers, hospitals, and the offices of OB-​GYNs and midwives in private practice located in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez. I also spent time in the homes of women caring for their newborns. I should note, however, that as a few of the interview subjects in both groups are members of my own extended family, this ethnographic account is also the product of many years of participant-​observation in the El Paso-​Ciudad Juárez binational area. For years, I  have witnessed interview subjects to whom I am personally close giving birth, raising families, and caring for pregnant people near the Mexico-​U.S.  border. The other interview subjects consulted for this study (in both groups) were identified through the snowball method. This is remarkably easy in a place like El Paso-​Ciudad Juárez, where nearly everyone knows someone who has crossed the Mexico-​U.S. border to seek prenatal care and/​or give birth in the United States.

C. Philosophical Framework In exploring the question of how being pregnant impacts or “intersects” with socially undocumented embodiment, I shall once again employ the work of Linda Martín Alcoff and Pierre Bourdieu. In Chapters 2 and 3, I engaged their respective works to argue that socially undocumented identity is embodied along racial and class lines. Before I can begin to explore pregnant, socially undocumented embodiment in particular, I should delve a bit deeper into Alcoff ’s work on social identity—​this time on specifically sex/​gendered identities—​as her account will inform the ensuing analysis. First, recall Alcoff ’s view that sex/​gender identity10—​a paradigmatic “visible” identity—​bears the general characteristics of visible identity explored in the preceding chapters. That is, for Alcoff, sex/​gender 10 Alcoff joins a number of other philosophers of gender in calling into question the sex/​gender distinction. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore this important, and extensive, philosophical literature. I do, however, follow Alcoff in referring to sex/​ gendered identities.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  105 identities are also real, embodied identities that serve as sites of knowledge and perception that often influence how we view and experience the world. Explaining how this applies to the case of sex/​gender, Alcoff argues that “women and men are differentiated by virtue of their different relationship to the possibility of biological reproduction, with biological reproduction referring to conceiving, giving birth, and breast-​feeding, involved one’s own body.”11 That is, women, but not men, are generally expected to (and sometimes do) get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed with their own bodies. Alcoff specifies that this “differential relationship to the biological division of labor in human reproduction” also applies to women who do not wish to reproduce, who have had hysterectomies or are infertile. Recall that this differential, “female” relationship to biological reproduction can also be experienced by trans* women who may not be able to become pregnant and carry a pregnancy but are socially classified as women. It can also be experienced by trans* men who are often socially classified as female (possibly due to visible pregnancy) despite the fact that they are men. Explaining all this, Alcoff argues that “those classified as women will have a different set of practices, expectations, and feelings in regard to reproduction, no matter how their actual relationship of possibility is to it.”12 Here, it is not only bodily experience of things like pregnancy and breastfeeding, but also the expectation that those classified as female do these things based upon how their bodies are “read,” that serve to generate and sustain an embodied, ontologically real sex/​gender identity and (often) corresponding interpretive horizon. Indeed, on Alcoff ’s view, women’s material bodies—​understood in this picture as a body that breastfeeds, gets pregnant, carries a pregnancy, gives birth, and/​ or has a social expectation to do these things (regardless of whether this is something one intends or is biologically/​physically capable of doing)—​are highly relevant to the embodiment, positionality and interpretive horizon of “woman.”

11 Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 172. 12 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 172.

106  Socially Undocumented Note, however, that this is not all that matters for the purpose of understanding the category of “woman.” Alcoff clarifies that It is implausible to suggest a one-​way linear, causal story from the objective fact of a differential relationship to biological reproduction to the richness of cultural genders; rather I would develop a holistic analysis in which this differential relation of possibility is one objective factor always at play, but one that can be moved about the web, from the center to the periphery, made more or less determinate over the construction of gender depending on cultural context.13

In other words, Alcoff has identified an important causal factor of the positionality of “woman”—​an embodied, differential relationship to biological production—​but this is not the only causal factor influencing the ways in which this gender identity is constructed in a variety of cultural contexts. It is, however, the particular causal factor that I shall emphasize in this chapter. With this philosophical framework in mind, I shall explore the relationship between pregnancy and socially undocumented embodiment. I  will argue that to be visibly pregnant, socially classified as female, and socially undocumented makes one susceptible to unique forms of demeaning, immigration-​related constraint, including (and perhaps particularly) when crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border to seek pregnancy-​related medical care in the United States. I will explore how visibly pregnant, socially undocumented women are often compelled to “perform” middle-​class identity at the U.S.-​Mexico border—​even if they are, in fact, economically middle-​class and legally authorized to enter the United States. This means, I submit, that 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

13 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 172.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  107 enforcement as belonging to a lower class-​bracket. Given all this, I shall argue that the pregnant, socially undocumented women may be the most “illegalized” of all socially undocumented subjects in the United States.

D. Some Clarifications Prior to initiating my analysis, allow me to make a few clarificatory statements. First, to reiterate, I do not pretend to offer a complete account of socially undocumented, female identity and embodiment. I  have chosen to focus on narratives of pregnant border-​crossers because they have much to teach us about the relationship between gendered “expectations of child-​bearing” and immigration-​relation constraint in the United States. In addition, I do not explore, in this chapter, the important issues of sexuality and trans* identity in the context of “pregnant border-​crossings.” I want to flag to readers, however, that additional research is urgently needed to explore the ways in which being visibly pregnant and queer and/​or trans* can impact one’s authorized and unauthorized border crossings to the United States.14 Second, I acknowledge that the women interviewed for this study are economically and legally privileged in comparison to many legally undocumented and economically underprivileged pregnant people in the United States. It is very clear that to be poor, pregnant, and legally undocumented in the United States is quite often a devasting predicament. For instance, in 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government on behalf of a 17-​year-​old girl from Central America who sought and was initially denied an abortion while being held in federal custody after entering the United States without legal authorization (in 2018, a federal judge ruled that legally undocumented women and girls being held in federal custody should be able 14 For an analysis of some aspects of sexuality and U.S. border-​crossings, see Eithne Luibhéid, Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

108  Socially Undocumented to receive abortions upon request).15 Had the 17-​year-​old had legal permission to be in the United States, it very likely would have been easier for her to access safe abortion care. In addition, between April 19 and May 31, 2018, nearly 2,000 legally undocumented minors were forcibly separated by the U.S.  government from their mothers and fathers who had also entered the United States without legal permission, demonstrating once again why legal status matters quite a lot in terms of how well one fares in the United States in matters of maternity.16 And during my own ethnographic research for this chapter, an El Paso–​based OB-​GYN told me about how he recently treated a legally undocumented pregnant woman who had literally ripped her stomach open while traversing a jagged border fence in order to enter the United States. In sum, having, or not having, legal permission to enter and reside in the United States is often of great significance for pregnant people, not to mention others. In arguing that the pregnant, socially undocumented woman is perhaps the most “illegalized” of all subjects in the United States, I am not suggesting that the particular women interviewed for this study are more oppressed or “illegalized” than pregnant women who are legally undocumented and poor/​working class. Rather, my aim is to explore just why pregnancy seems to exacerbate and modify socially undocumented oppression in the United States. In focusing on the experiences of pregnant, middle-​class Mexican women with legal permission to enter the United States, we begin to see, or so I shall argue, that the enhanced oppression in question is not necessarily about legal status (though legal status often matters). Instead, it often involves a complex intersection of social factors—​race, gender, and class-​based—​that serve to further “illegalize” the pregnant, socially 15 See Maria Sacchetti and Sandhya Somashekhar, “An Undocumented Teen Is Pregnant and in Custody. Can the U.S. Stop Her from Getting an Abortion?,” Washington Post, October 17, 2017, accessible at https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​immigration/​an-​undocumented-​teen-​is-​pregnant-​and-​in-​custody-​can-​the-​us-​stop-​her-​from-​ getting-​an-​abortion/​2017/​10/​17/​6b548cda-​b34b-​11e7-​9e58-​e6288544af98_​story. html?noredirect=on&utm_​term=.c53a1a3007e1. 16 See Camila Domonoske and Richard Gonzalez, “What We Know: Family Separation and ‘Zero Tolerance’ at the Border,” NPR (online), June 19, 2018, accessible at   https://​w ww.npr.org/​2018/​06/​19/​621065383/​what-​we-​know-​family-​s eparation-​ and-​zero-​tolerance-​at-​the-​border.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  109 undocumented body. Understanding how this operates in the case of the women interviewed for this study can, I submit, also prove helpful for understanding some aspects of the oppression of pregnant people who are both socially and legally undocumented in the United States. With all this in mind, I now turn to the task of exploring the relationship between pregnancy and socially undocumented embodiment at the Mexico-​U.S. border. In Section II, I engage and contextualize the perspectives of interview participants on their pregnant border-​ crossings. I  argue that being visibly pregnant and Mexican/​Latina renders them socially documented even though they are not legally undocumented, subjecting them to a range of enhanced immigration-​ related constraints. In Section III, I  sketch a partial descriptive account of female, socially undocumented embodiment. Returning to the framework of social identity articulated in Chapter 2, I argue that despite being economically middle class, the (previously) pregnant, socially undocumented women interviewed for this study experienced an embodied working-​class identity, for their pregnant bodies are “read” as economically dependent and even immoral at the Mexico-​U.S. border.

II.  Contextualizing Mexican Women’s Perspectives on Pregnant Border-​Crossings A.  A Complicated “Legality” This chapter began with Salma’s story. Salma’s experience, and the stories of other women interviewed for this study, illustrate the “complicated legality” that surrounds such pregnant border-​crossings to the United States. On the one hand, the pregnant border-​crossings of all women interviewed for this study are entirely legal. On the other, women reported experiencing significant anxieties about the possibility that their actions of crossing the border, seeking prenatal care, and giving birth in the United States would be perceived and even treated as illegal. Getting clear on why this is happening is important for understanding how the women in question are socially undocumented.

110  Socially Undocumented Let me begin by establishing clearly that their pregnant border-​ crossings are entirely legal. First, as previously mentioned, all the women I  interviewed had legal permission to enter and spend time in the United States from Mexico on workers’ visas, tourist visas, and, in one case, through U.S. residency. Second, it is enshrined in U.S. law that their babies, upon being born in the United States, should become U.S. citizens, and this holds true not only for the babies of women interviewed for this study but also for the babies of legally undocumented mothers. As discussed in the introduction to this book, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution guarantees “birthright citizenship” or jus solis, as it is stipulated in Section 1 that all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state where they reside. Third, note that it is entirely legal for both legally “documented” and legally “undocumented” Mexican women, not to mention people from other countries, to seek out medical care in the United States. According to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Care Act of 1986, U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare payments (or virtually all public hospitals in the United States) are required to provide emergency care to all patients regardless of citizenship or ability to pay. This includes, of course, legally undocumented pregnant people who may turn up at U.S. emergency rooms while in labor. Even if a pregnant person enters the United States without authorization, it is not illegal for that person, even with an irregular immigration status, to seek out medical care while in the United States. It is also worth noting that medical tourism into and out of the United States (for an array of medical treatments, not just those connected to reproduction and fertility) is a multi-​billion-​dollar industry in which U.S.-​ based medical industries actively compete with other popular medical tourism destinations across the globe. Indeed, in the north of Mexico, close to the Mexico-​U.S. border, U.S. hospitals of the borderlands advertise their services to prospective Mexican clients. In sum, all women interviewed for this study were engaging in behaviors that accord with U.S. immigration laws and U.S. medical practices. In spite of this, interview participants experienced significant anxieties about widespread perceptions that they were doing

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  111 something illegal. For instance, Salma, whose border-​crossing narrative was shared at the outset, said this about her experiences crossing the border regularly to receive prenatal care in El Paso over the course of two pregnancies: Sometimes, depending on [who the customs agent is at the border attending to you when you’re trying to cross into the U.S.], they sort of get upset with you because you’re from Mexico and you’re trying to come to the U.S. to have your baby. Once [at the border] I said to the agent, “if this was illegal, they wouldn’t have allowed me to register to give birth at the hospital. They wouldn’t have allowed me to pay in the hospital. It is legal and I can go legally. I never broke any rules. I went, I’m allowed to, I paid, and that’s that.” I told him: I never broke any rule or any law.

Here, Salma reports that when she could not hide her pregnancy, she was compelled to defend the legality of her (legal) actions when crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border while pregnant. Commenting on the perceived illegality associated with such pregnant border-​crossings by Mexican women, María, a Chicana, El Paso–​ based midwife and labor and delivery nurse (the majority of whose patients come from Ciudad Juárez), shared the following about her experiences working at an El Paso midwifery center: We even had a letter that we would give them to show the Border Patrol. To show that they were clients at the [midwifery] center. That they had paid all their bills . . . that they had an appointment and were able to cross. I had to explain to clients all the time that what they were doing was not illegal. That is was not a secret birth center, and that Border Patrol knew that we were there . . . that they were not to expect or normalize any harassment, because they were not doing anything wrong. That they were not criminals. This was a source of stress for so many women. So, even though they knew all this, they would still get harassed, so they would often say “I’m going shopping,” or “voy a ver a mi tía,” or hide their pregnancy. That sort of thing.

112  Socially Undocumented Here, María reports on the anxieties of her patients and clients, and she also shares ways in which she would personally support them in their pregnant border-​crossings by providing them with letters about their pregnancy to show at the border. Note that Maria is certainly not alone in giving such a letter to her patients/​clients (“client” is the particular term used by midwives to refer to pregnant people under their care). Indeed, it is common practice for pregnant people crossing from El Paso into Ciudad Juárez to present a note from their prenatal care provider to customs agents at the Mexico-​U.S. border, despite the fact that these doctors’ notes are not “legal” border-​crossing borders as are visas and passports. In conducting this research, I  regularly requested and received from the OB-​GYNs and midwives I interviewed copies of such letters with all patient-​identifying information removed. These are, in general, short letters addressed to U.S.  immigration officials stipulating that (1)  the Mexican border-​crosser is a patient or client of the medical provider who authored the letter; (2)  she (the patient or client) had already paid for the prenatal care or delivery she was going to obtain in the United States; and (3) the medical provider in question would appreciate that she receive courteous treatment and be allowed to cross the border. This is one important sense in which some prenatal care providers in the El Paso-​Ciudad Juárez region choose to assist Mexican women in their pregnant border-​crossings. In addition, some women I  interviewed felt that their pregnant border-​crossings were delegitimized in certain medical encounters with prenatal care providers. In fact, some even likened their prenatal and birth experiences at El Paso hospitals to their experiences being “treated as illegal” when crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border. Monica, for instance, received prenatal care from an OB-​GYN in Ciudad Juárez but arranged to deliver her baby in an El Paso hospital. She told me that she was extremely frustrated that the prenatal care she received in Ciudad Juárez (which included, as is customary, a significant amount of blood tests) was not acknowledged in El Paso: I didn’t like the fact that my prenatal care from Ciudad Juárez wasn’t acknowledged in the hospital in El Paso. I mean, I know it’s another

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  113 country, but to not “count” any exam results? They just write in your chart that you haven’t had any prenatal care. I don’t know if it was racism, but I  think that everything would have been a thousand times easier if I had been a U.S. citizen. In that hospital, I felt more foreign than I ever had before—​even more foreign than I did when I was crossing the border. I don’t know if it was racism, but . . . you’re made to feel that you’re not at home.

Monica reported that she experienced a long, difficult labor in El Paso, after 30 hours of which she was encouraged to have a Caesarian section for her baby’s safety. While she consented to the Caesarian s­ ection, she believes that had her prenatal care from Ciudad Juárez been acknowledged, she may have had a shorter, easier labor and given birth vaginally. Meanwhile, María, the aforementioned midwife and labor and delivery nurse, also objects to the fact that El Paso hospitals do not acknowledge their patients’ prenatal care from Ciudad Juárez. She told me she regularly engages in a quiet attempt to oppose this convention: So like a woman gets prenatal care throughout her whole pregnancy in Juárez, she comes here and they call her “no prenatal care.” So I always write [in their charts] “no prenatal care in the US/​prenatal care in Mexico”—​because there’s a big difference between “no prenatal care” and “prenatal care in another country.”

This discussion from Maria helps to put Monica’s aforementioned quote into context. For Mexican women who, while pregnant, cross the border into the United States to seek prenatal care and give birth, hospitals can also serve as exclusionary sites with which they must contend on their journeys. Furthermore, they are sites in which their medical “papers” and prenatal care “documentation” may be rendered insignificant. Indeed, for Mexican women, hospitals themselves may be experienced as sites of border-​crossing and “illegalization.” I quickly learned through conducting interviews and other aspects of my fieldwork that legacies of racism and colonialism in U.S. hospitals are not lost on El Paso midwives and doctors,

114  Socially Undocumented many of whom are themselves Latina/​o/​x-​identified, and who have had to experience other manifestations of anti-​Latina/​o/​x discrimination in their work. The first-​person narratives explored in this section show, I argue, that many Mexican women who border-​cross from Ciudad Juárez to El Paso while pregnant in order to seek prenatal care and/​or give birth are contending with a “complicated legality,” both at the Mexico-​ U.S. border, and in the context of certain medical encounters. On the one hand, we have seen that their actions are completely legal; that is, they have authorization to cross the border and give birth in the United States. On the other hand, they may be compelled to defend the legality of their actions at the border itself. Encounters with prenatal care providers are similarly complex. On the one hand, some prenatal care providers provide doctors’ notes for border-​crossings and even give them advice on how to cross the border successfully while pregnant. On the other hand, some women report feeling “not at home” and discriminated against as pregnant, Mexican women in their encounters with prenatal care providers on both sides of the border, particularly when their records of Mexico-​based prenatal care are disregarded in U.S. hospitals. Again, this demonstrates that the border itself is not the only potentially exclusionary site with which visibly pregnant Mexican women must contend. On the basis of this discussion, I submit that the women interviewed for this study were socially, not legally, undocumented in their pregnant border-​crossings. That is, they were perceived to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearances (appearances of being both pregnant and Mexican), and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis. Despite the fact that they had legal permission to enter the United States to seek prenatal care and give birth, they nevertheless felt compelled to defend the “legality” of their actions at the border. They even used letters from their doctors and midwives to aid them in the border-​crossings—​despite the fact that they possessed legal “documents” (i.e., visas and passports) that, in theory, validated their right to enter. Their anxieties about being perceived to be undocumented even presented themselves in medical contexts, where some interview subjects felt that their health care providers’ refusals

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  115 to acknowledge their prenatal care records or “papers” from Mexico constituted problematic exclusionary acts.

B.  The Broader Context It is entirely reasonable, I argue, for the women interviewed for this study—​not to mention other women of color who border-​cross while pregnant—​to experience such anxieties about the perceived illegality of their “pregnant border-​crossings.” These anxieties stem, at least in part, from elements of U.S.  immigration history that have rendered them socially undocumented. To get a clearer sense of this, let us explore the broader sociopolitical and historical context that surrounds the actions these women are undertaking. Note, first, that while the women I interviewed had legal permission to enter the United States (and to seek prenatal care and give birth there), U.S. Customs and Border Protections agents have legal authorization to question, interrogate, and even deny entry to visibly pregnant non-​citizens at U.S. borders on the grounds that they may be “Liable to Become a Public Charge.” This discretionary power granted to certain U.S. immigration officials was first articulated in the Immigration Act of 1882. While anyone who is perceived to lack ability and means to sustain themselves economically in the United States can be deemed liable to become a public charge, pregnant women, and particularly those who are unmarried, are one of the groups to be prominently singled out by this legislation. This helps to explain why pregnant, Mexican women are regularly presenting doctors’ notes at the Mexico-​ U.S. border stipulating that they have pre-​paid their bills, and why they are sometimes compelled to defend themselves at the border when trying to cross while pregnant. Additional, key moments in the history of U.S. immigration law also provide insight into why the women in question revealed anxiety about perceived illegality. Eithne Luibhéid gives an overview of the origins of sexuality-​based immigrant exclusions at U.S.  borders in her book Entry Denied: Controlling Sexuality at the Border. Therein, she traces the ways in which family reunification policies, which are now a staple of

116  Socially Undocumented U.S. immigration law, were firmly established when U.S. federal control of immigration was created in 1891. She argues that family reunification policies are, in fact, connected to race, gender, class, and sexuality-​ based immigrant exclusions—​ including the exclusion of pregnant women—​in U.S. immigration history during the years 1875–​1890. For instance, in 1875, the U.S. Congress established the Page Law, “which banned the entry of contract laborers, felons, and Asian women brought to the United States ‘for lewd and immoral purposes’—​a provision that greatly hampered the ability of Asian women to enter the United States.”17 The very same year that the Act of 1882 was passed, the Chinese Exclusion Acts barred from entry nearly all Chinese immigrants to the United States. Luibhéid traces the legal origins of family reunification priorities in federal U.S. immigration policy to the Contract Labor Law of 1885, which was established shortly after federal control of immigration in the United States was established. This law “forbade the entry of immigrants who were contracted in advance to perform labor of any kind,” but it included the proviso that “nothing in this act should be construed as prohibiting any individual from assisting any member of his family or any personal relative or friend to migrate . . . to the United States.”18 While this proviso may seem benevolent, Luibhéid argues that it served to establish in U.S.  immigration law “an exclusionary sexual order that was integrally tied to gender, race and class inequalities.”19 In part, this is attributable to the fact that the “families” prioritized in family reunification policies were white/​Anglo-​Saxon; recall the ongoing laws barring the entry of Asian immigrants. In addition, the exclusionary order established by family reunification law is derived from the fact that “the model of the family codified in immigration law involved a husband, a wife, and children born to the couple.”20 Those who did not “abide by” that model—​including pregnant women deemed LPC—​could legally be excluded. To illustrate this point, Luibhéid provides the following transcript of the exclusionary hearing of Catherine Dolan, a pregnant Irish woman,



17 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, p. 2.

18 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, p. 2. 19 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, p. 3. 20 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, p. 3.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  117 the biological father of whose future child was a married man with whom she had an affair. Dolan unsuccessfully attempted to gain entry to the United States in 1890, just before federal control of immigration was established in the United States. I share this transcript to provide helpful historical context for understanding the narratives of Mexican women like Salma, who continue to feel compelled to defend their pregnant border-​crossings at the Mexico-​U.S. border: By Commissioner Stephen: Q: Why did you come to this country? A: To work, sir. Q: Who paid your passage out here? A: My father. Q: Your father did? A: Yes, sir. Q: Did your father know your condition before you left Ireland? A: I don’t know. Q: You have no relatives in this country? A: No, sir. Q: How much money have you? A: Fourteen dollars. From Commissioner Ridgeway: Q: How long are you pregnant? A: I don’t know Q: When do you expect this child to be born? A: I don’t know. Q: You don’t know? A: No, sir. By Commissioner Star: Q: Have you ever had a child? A: No, sir. Q: Never? A: Never.

118  Socially Undocumented By Commissioner Ridgeway: Q: You knew the father of your child was a married man, didn’t you? A: I did, sir. On the motion of Mr. Stephenson, it was voted that the immigrant be not permitted to land, on the ground that she had no relatives or friends in the United States, and was unable to take care of herself.21

Luibhéid rightfully points out that the married man with whom Dolan had an affair would not have been subjected to such interrogation were he to have attempted to immigrate to the United States. Furthermore, she argues that while Dolan attempted to present her intended immigration to the United States “primarily as a labor issue,” “the commissioners reframed her immigration within a familial discourse that reduced her to her reproductive functions.”22 Pregnant immigrant bodies were, in Cisneros’s words, being rendered “always, already perverse” in U.S. immigration policies. The year after Dolan’s exclusion from the United States, the Act of 1891 also excluded those “accused of crimes of moral turpitude,” including “adultery, bigamy, rape, statutory rape, sodomy,” and even the possession of “abnormal sexual appetites” and venereal disease. In light of all this—​and of the fact that women like Dolan could now be excluded on the basis of pregnancy and LPC—​medical doctors began to play a complicated role in U.S. immigrant admissions. For it suddenly became challenging for U.S. immigration officials to be able to “detect” which would-​be immigrant women were, in fact, pregnant. Thus, the support of medical doctors was often solicited for this purpose. Luibhéid reports that one Ellis Island physician explained his method of “identifying” pregnant women for exclusion from the United States: On the side of any immigrant woman’s head there was strand of hair which under normal conditions, was more or less lustrous. If it

21 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, p. 3.

22 Luibhéid, Entry Denied, pp. 4–​5.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  119 hung dull and lifeless over her ear, it marked her at once as possibly pregnant.23

Shortly after Dolan was denied admission to the United States, federal control of immigration was established, the Immigration Act of 1891 officially excluded those “liable to become public charges,” and the Act of 1903 officially targeted polygamists, prostitutes, and pregnant women for exclusion from the United States. We can now see that when federal control of immigration was established in 1891, patriarchal, racist, sexist, and heteronormative values were simultaneously concretized at U.S. borders. This history of U.S. immigration law and pregnancy-​based immigrant exclusions, I submit, puts into perspective the anxieties about “perceived illegality” experienced by pregnant, socially undocumented Mexican women at the U.S.-​Mexico border. Today, the United States admits a higher percentage of migrants on family reunification grounds than any other wealthy state.24 Family reunification policies surged in the 1960s, when the U.S.  abolished its national origins quotas. Considering that up to the 1960s most immigrants in the United States were of European origin, the goal of these policies was to maintain a European/​white majority in the United States by allowing Europeans to “send for” their families.25 This plan largely failed, however, as European immigration rates to the U.S. dropped considerably. Now, the majority of those who apply for admission to the United States through family reunification mechanisms are from Latin America and East Asia.26 Note that certain aspects of the discriminatory nature of U.S. family reunification policies have been diminished. For instance, since overturning Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the Supreme Court has allowed members of same-​sex couples to apply for admission for their partners under family reunification. This does not mean, however, that U.S.  immigrant admissions no longer represent, in Luibhéid ’s words, “an exclusionary sexual order that was 23 Luibheid, Entry Denied, p. 9. 24 Peter Higgins, Immigration Justice (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Press, 2013), p. 216. 25 See Joseph Carens, “Who Should Get In? The Ethics of Immigrant Admissions,” Ethics and International Affairs vol. 17 no. 1, 95–​110. 26 Higgins, Immigration Justice, p. 216.

120  Socially Undocumented integrally tied to gender, race and class inequalities,” privileging a “certain type of family.” Indeed, Donald J. Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to submit a report outlining “the steps they are taking to combat the birth tourism phenomenon.”27 Shortly thereafter, in El Paso, I purchased a copy of the local Spanish-​language newspaper El Diario de Juárez featuring a bold, front-​page headline: “Trump Goes against ‘Transborder Mothers.’ ”28 That same day, a woman who had previously agreed to be interviewed for this study—​a woman with legal authorization to enter the United States, and who understood that she would only be identified in this study via a pseudonym—​declined to do so for fear that she would be denied entry to the United States to give birth. In light of all this, I conclude that it is entirely reasonable—​in fact, it is prudent—​for Mexican women to continue to experience anxieties about a “perceived illegality” associated with pregnant border-​ crossings. In these contexts, the women in question may not be legally documented. They are, however, socially undocumented: presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance, and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis.

III.  Pregnant, Socially Undocumented Embodiment With the preceding considerations in mind, I shall now sketch a partial, descriptive account of some aspects of pregnant, socially undocumented embodiment. Recall, first, that this focus on embodiment as a core aspect of “visible” social identities draws from Linda Martín Alcoff ’s account of visible identities explored in Chapter 2 and at the beginning of this chapter. Once again, Alcoff has argued that “racial 27 Abigail Hauslohner and Jannell Ross, “Trump Administration Circulates More Draft Immigration Restrictions, Focusing on Protecting U.S. Jobs,” Washington Post, January 31, 2017, accessible at https://​ www.washingtonpost.com/​ world/​ national-​ security/​ t rump- ​ a dministration- ​ c irculates- ​ m ore- ​ d raft- ​ i mmigrationrestrictions-​ focusing-​on-​protecting-​us-​jobs/​2017/​01/​31/​38529236-​e741-​11e6-​80c230e57e57e05d_​ story.html?utm_​term=.bb2f91b99612. 28 Associated Press, “Va Trump vs. ‘Mamas Transforonterizas,” El Diario de Juárez, February 3, 2017.

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  121 and sexual difference is manifest precisely in bodily comportment, in habit, in feeling, and perceptual orientation. These make a part of what appear to me as the natural setting of my thoughts.”29 In assessing how the definitively embodied experience of pregnancy both impacts and intersects with socially undocumented embodiment, then, my intention is to further develop my descriptive account of socially undocumented identity, which also regards bodily comportment, habit, feeling, and one’s very perceptual orientation as core components of socially undocumented identity. Second, note that socially undocumented women—​ both pregnant and non-​ pregnant—​ must endure many of the demeaning, immigration-​ related constraints associated with socially undocumented identity as described in the previous chapters. In Chapter 3, I explored how the history of United States immigration laws and their enforcement, such as the earliest white supremacist immigration laws in the United States, the Treaty of Guadalupe-​Hidalgo, the expansion of U.S. agribusiness in the early 20th century, the Immigration Act of 1924, and the Bracero Program, served to shape the now-​dominant idea and “racial seeing” of the “illegal subject” in the United States. Tracing this history, I argued that socially undocumented identity is both racialized and class-​based, and that the paradigmatic “illegal” subject is taken to be a working-​class Mexican. It is safe to assume, I submit, that many pregnant, Mexican women crossing the Mexico-​ U.S.  border must contend with this history that often serves to “illegalize” their bodies in previously explored ways. Third, on the basis of the ethnographic research conducted for this chapter, I argue that for the pregnant, socially undocumented women, the class-​based components of socially undocumented identity and oppression are often more pronounced than they are for their non-​ pregnant, socially undocumented counterparts. This is because, as we have seen over the course of this chapter, it can be considerably more difficult for pregnant, socially undocumented women to “distance” themselves from the class-​based constraints of socially undocumented oppression by becoming or being economically middle class. Though the women interviewed for this study could afford to purchase the

29 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 126.

122  Socially Undocumented legal documents necessary to cross the border, just as they could afford to pay out-​of-​pocket to give birth in El Paso hospitals, their visibly pregnant and socially undocumented bodies compelled them to perform their economically middle-​class status at the border. Indeed, they wore sophisticated clothes and drove nice cars as they crossed the border. They also presented notes from their doctors indicating that they had already paid for their prenatal care and labor and delivery management. However, we have seen that all of this was not enough. Recall that Salma, an economically middle-​class woman, sat up straight in the car before crossing the border in defiance of her doctor’s orders in hopes of conveying to immigration enforcement that she was not sick, destitute, and liable to become a public charge of the United States government. In addition, we have seen that other women received coaching from their midwives and letters from their OB-​GYNs to help them defend the “legality” of their pregnant-​border crossings despite their middle-​class status. It seems, then, that visibly pregnant, Mexican women crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border are often working-​class-​presenting—​that is, they present a working-​class habitus—​even if they are economically middle class. They are seen as having working-​class bodies, and this, in turn, causes them to endure enhanced immigration-​relation constraints that ultimately impact their embodied experiences. Because of the fact that pregnant, socially undocumented people cannot distance themselves from class-​based oppression by being middle class, I submit that the pregnant, socially undocumented person may, in fact, be the most “illegalized” of all subjects in the United States. Here, one might object that this discussion demonstrates that socially undocumented identity is not truly a class-​based identity (and, in particular, a working-​class identity) as I have maintained thus far in this book. For after all, one might argue, even middle-​class Mexican women come to experience demeaning immigration constraint. How can an identity that is, at least in part, working class in nature be experienced by those who are not economically working class? In response to the objector, I  contend that this analysis demonstrates that class identity is fundamentally operative in socially undocumented identity. For it is not the case that the middle-​ class  Mexican women in question did not experience class-​based

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  123 discrimination at the border and in some of the spaces in which they sought prenatal care. Rather, being pregnant and Mexican caused them to be perceived as working class—​as Liable to Become a Public Charge—​despite their other class markers (i.e., sophisticated clothing, relatively “nice cars”) that would seem to indicate middle-​class status. The first-​person narratives engaged in this chapter convey that visibly pregnant, Mexican women at the border cannot simply be middle class to avoid immigration-​related constraints that are both racial and class-​based in nature. For their pregnant bodies are perceived by immigration enforcement as both dependent and impoverished despite their economically middle-​class status. To further understand how economically middle-​class  Mexican women can be oppressed as working-​class people, and even experience aspects of a working-​class identity, in the context of pregnant border-​ crossings, it would be helpful to return briefly to the discussion of Pierre Bourdieu’s account of embodied class identity that was explored in Chapter 2. Bourdieu, in an otherwise expansive treatise on the physical embodiment of class identity, disappointingly neglects to take up the relationship between what he calls “distinction” (or lack thereof) and the visibly pregnant body. However, I believe that his descriptions of what he calls the “class body” do provide resources for making sense of the constraints imposed upon pregnant, Mexican, socially undocumented women at the Mexico-​U.S. border who are economically (but not necessarily visibly) middle class. Recall that Bourdieu argues that “the legitimate use of the body is spontaneously perceived as an index of moral uprightness, so that its opposite, a ‘natural’ body, is seen as an index of laisser-​aller (‘letting oneself go’), a culpable surrender to facility.”30 A “legitimate body” is toned, useful, and therefore moral, while a “natural” body lacks usefulness and is thus morally suspicious. Applying Bourdieu’s analysis to the perceptions of pregnant, socially undocumented bodies in the United States as explored in this chapter, it seems that the pregnant, socially undocumented body is being deemed problematically “natural” and “facile” by immigration enforcement and other 30 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), p. 193.

124  Socially Undocumented members of U.S. society. Indeed, they are bodies that are considered to have “let themselves go”; they are not considered “useful” in their cumbersomely pregnant states. This may be seen by immigration enforcement as particularly egregious given that visibly Mexican and working-​class bodies have come to be associated with particular types of “illegalized” labor in the United States as explored in the previous chapter. If the pregnant, socially undocumented body does not seem capable of performing this labor, then it may be deemed a culpable body that complicates certain patterns of racial and class-​based “seeing” of the socially undocumented. On this basis, then, I submit that many pregnant, socially undocumented women at the border experience an embodied working-​class identity despite being economically middle-​class. Thus far I  have argued that pregnant, socially undocumented women experience the socially “illegalization” of their bodies due to two key factors: (1) the history of socially undocumented oppression in the United States and its effects on socially undocumented embodiment as explored in Chapter 3; and (2) the ways in which pregnant bodies—​and, in particular, the pregnant bodies of socially undocumented women—​are perceived as overtly “natural” and “facile,” and thus culpable and liable to become a public charge. I  have also suggested that the pregnant, socially undocumented body complicates racialized and class-​based patterns of “seeing” that automatically associate visibly brown, working-​class bodies with labor that the brown, visibly working-​class and pregnant body may seem unable to perform. Moving on, I  argue that the narratives engaged in this chapter also demonstrate that this embodied experience of being “seen” as potentially liable to become a public charge also affects aspects of pregnant, socially undocumented women’s perceptual practices at the border and elsewhere. This accords with Alcoff ’s arguments that our embodied experiences of our social identities can impact how we view the world. In particular, it seems that pregnant, socially undocumented embodiment yields a heightened awareness of one’s own “illegalization” at the Mexico-​U.S. border. Recall that many women interviewed for this study engaged in physically risky activity in hopes of avoiding being perceived as engaging in illegal activity, despite the fact that what they were doing was perfectly legal. Once again, we saw that

Pregnant and Socially Undocumented  125 Salma violated her doctor’s orders in sitting up straight in her car when crossing the border, thereby putting her very life at risk. Other women felt compelled to defended the legality of their perfectly legal actions in their interactions with Customs and Border Protection agents. Meanwhile, some sought help from their prenatal care providers in securing medical “documents” that proved that they had paid their medical bills. Additional examples of this heightened awareness of one’s own “illegalization” abounded in my research. For instance, an OB-​GYN in Ciudad Juárez told me that he has coached Mexican women through the process of crossing the Mexico-​U.S. border on foot while in advanced labor, when their goal is to conceal their labor from U.S. immigration enforcement in hopes of (legally) giving birth in the United States. Clearly, then, to be pregnant and socially undocumented impacts not only one’s bodily comportment and habit (i.e., by compelling one to conceal one’s pregnancy at the border, etc.), but also one’s “feeling” and “perceptual orientation” (i.e., by deepening one’s awareness of one’s own “illegalization”) in significant ways. In sum, in this section I have sketched a partial descriptive account of pregnant, socially undocumented embodiment. First, I noted that many pregnant, socially undocumented women who attempt to cross the Mexico-​U.S.  border may be forced to contend with the difficult history of embodied “illegalization” explored in Chapter  3. Second, I argued that for those who are both pregnant and socially undocumented, the class-​based components of their socially undocumented identity are particularly pronounced. For even those socially undocumented women who are economically middle class are “read” as potentially liable to become a public charge, compelling them to perform a middle-​class status in hopes of making it across the border. Finally, I have argued that this experience of “being seen” as doing something illegal at the border impacts the perceptual practices of many pregnant, socially undocumented women, as they develop an enhanced and embodied sense of their own social “illegalization” at the border. What can this tell us about the oppression of women/​pregnant people who are both socially and legally undocumented in the United States? I  clarified at the beginning of this chapter that such women certainly endure certain oppressive constraints with which their

126  Socially Undocumented counterparts who are not legally undocumented need not necessarily contend. Still, I hope that this account demonstrates problems in the ways in which pregnant, socially undocumented bodies are being “seen” regardless of the legal status attached to them. Surely, a widespread belief that a pregnant, socially undocumented person is “culpable,” “facile,” and “liable to become a public charge” can impact people’s perspectives on whether such a person should be allowed to get an abortion, or to remain with and parent their own children. This, of course, holds true even for those pregnant people who are both socially and legally undocumented. In exploring the nature of immigration injustice in the United States, we should certainly continue to be concerned about the implications of having or lacking legal status, but we must also consider how oppressive, immigration-​related constraints operate irrespective of one’s legal permission to reside in the United States. In conclusion, in this chapter and the one that precedes it I have explored aspects of socially undocumented embodiment as part of my argument that “being socially undocumented” constitutes having a real social identity. In the next chapter, I shall complete my descriptive account of socially undocumented identity by exploring possible elements of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. Then, I move on to address how this descriptive account of socially undocumented oppression should inform the pursuit of immigration justice.

5

Socially Undocumented Horizons I.  Introduction Allow me to review what has been argued this far. I began by exploring how “being socially undocumented” entails membership in an (unjustly) oppressed social group. I  also argued that socially undocumented oppression does not necessarily track legally undocumented status: one need not be legally undocumented to be socially undocumented, and, furthermore, one can have legal authorization to be in the United States without being socially undocumented. Then, engaging the respective works of Alcoff and Bourdieu on social identity, and exploring the history of socially undocumented identity development in the United States, I  argued that “being socially undocumented” involves a certain embodiment along racial and class lines (namely, being taken to “look like” a working-​class Mexican or Latina/​ o/​x). Thus, it meets one criterion of a real, visible social identity as established in Chapter  2. Expanding upon my phenomenological account of socially undocumented embodiment, I  then explored how visible pregnancy impacts socially undocumented experience, arguing that the pregnant, socially undocumented person is perhaps the most “illegalized” of all subjects in the United States. In this chapter I complete my argument that “being socially undocumented” entails having a real, visible social identity by exploring possible aspects of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. That is, I explore whether “being socially undocumented” meets the second and final criterion for real, visible social identities as articulated in Chapter 2. I will call upon these ideas in the final chapter of this book, in which I  shall explore possible obligations and opportunities that non-​state actors (including those who both are and are not socially undocumented) have to alleviate socially undocumented oppression, in accordance with the framework of social justice articulated in the Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

128  Socially Undocumented introduction to this book, which calls both for state-​centered and non-​ state-​centered solutions to pursuing relational egalitarian injustice. I aim to show that a “social identity focus” can be particularly helpful for the purpose of understanding how to combat socially undocumented oppression outside of, or perhaps beneath, the state apparatus. This is because it encourages attentiveness to, and engagement of, the work being done by socially undocumented people themselves to articulate and contest the demeaning, immigration-​related constraints imposed upon them. Recall from Chapter  2 that an interpretive horizon is defined by Alcoff, who follows Gadamer, as “a substantive perspectival location from which the interpreter looks out into the world, a perspective that is always present but that is also open and dynamic, with a temporal as well as a physical dimension, moving into the future and into new spaces as the subject moves.”1 I want to explore, in other words, “situated reason as an interpretive process involving the social location of the knower,” where the “social location” in question is that of being socially undocumented.2 Such explorations can help us to focus more directly on what Paul Taylor has described, with regard to racial identity in particular, as “an individual’s perspective and location on a field of racializing forces.”3 What is the “socially undocumented perspective,” “interpretive process,” and “social location” on a field of racializing and, as we have seen, class-​based forces that cause certain types of bodies to be presumed to be in the United States without legal authorization, and subjected to demeaning immigration-​related constraints on that basis? Furthermore, what can this tell us about ways to resist ongoing socially undocumented oppression? Note that certain aspects of what I’ll call the “socially undocumented interpretive horizon” have already been explored in previous chapters. We saw, for instance, that socially undocumented people with and without legal authorization often feel compelled to run and hide 1 Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 95. 2 Alcoff, Visible Identities, p. 95. 3 Paul Taylor, Race:  A Philosophical Introduction (Cambridge, UK:  Polity Press, 2013), p. 90.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  129 from immigration enforcement. They may fear walking about in public places. They may exhibit a visibly “humble demeanor” in the face of la migra (that is, immigration enforcement officials). Pregnant, socially undocumented people may take steps to hide their pregnancies and feel the need to justify crossing the U.S.-​Mexico border to seek pregnancy-​ related medical care even when they have legal permission to do so. We might say, then, that two features of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon include (1) heightened levels of rational and embodied fear of immigration enforcement; and (2) a perception of streets and other public places in the United States as perpetually insecure. These, are, of course, some of the negative, oppressive (though also sometimes prudential) aspects of socially undocumented experience. In this chapter, however, I want to explore possible positive, transformative aspects of this identity. Recall from Chapter 2 that interpretive horizons are “open and dynamic,” and that the social meaning of identities can and have been transformed by those who possess them. Here, I assess ways in which the open and dynamic socially undocumented interpretive horizon may enable some socially undocumented people to understand, respond to, resist, and perhaps even transform some of the negative, oppressive aspects of socially undocumented experience. This is certainly not to absolve the United States and other countries of their obligations to alleviate unjust socially undocumented oppression; I shall turn to such state obligations in the next chapters of this book. Rather, following Iris Marion Young, I aim to broaden the scope of our conversations about justice and political responsibility by focusing on contributions of non-​state actors to immigration justice. More specifically, I propose in this chapter that one possible aspect of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon can be characterized in terms of resistance to a “double bind” in which socially undocumented people often find themselves. In her famous theory of oppression, Marilyn Frye argues that “one of the most characteristic and ubiquitous features of the world as experienced by oppressed people is the double bind—​situations in which options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation.”4 While 4 Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality:  Essays in Feminist Theory (Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 1983), p. 2.

130  Socially Undocumented I have employed an alternative theory of oppression in earlier chapters, I shall use Frye’s theory of the “double bind” for the particular purpose of illuminating a potentially important aspect of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon. Socially undocumented people, I argue, frequently find themselves in a double bind. 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/​or being associated with such labor. They are, then, faced with two highly constraining options. I shall explore ways in which socially undocumented people take innovative action to respond to this double bind—​action that is, I believe, potentially indicative of a unique socially undocumented perceptual practice, interpretive process, and interpretive horizon. This chapter is organized as follows. In the next section, I explain in greater detail the double bind in which socially undocumented people often find themselves. Second, I  explore several examples of what I consider to be socially undocumented responses to this double bind. Third, I argue that this is potentially indicative of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. Fourth, I complete my descriptive account of socially undocumented experience as a social identity. Prior to beginning, an important clarificatory note is in order. One may notice that my language in this chapter has been rather tentative. That is, I claim only to be potentially articulating a unique socially undocumented interpretive horizon. This is because, as noted in the introduction to this book, my subject-​position is not that of a socially undocumented person in the United States. As someone who is not presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of her experience and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis, I want to take seriously the implications of this act of representing others who are not like me, and who are unjustly oppressed in ways that I am not. Articulating the “problem of representation” in question, Edward Said wrote that “to represent someone or even something has  .  .  . ­become an endeavor as complex as an asymptote, with consequences

Socially Undocumented Horizons  131 for certainty and decidability as fraught with difficulties as can be imagined.”5 Bearing Said’s words in mind, I believe that this chapter raises particularly difficult problems of representation. For it is one thing to make arguments about another social group’s oppression (which must be undertaken with extreme care), and quite another to claim to be able to construct another’s horizon and subject position. In other words, it is one (already complex) thing to make claims about how a social group is oppressed, and quite another to make claims about some of the profoundest aspects of who they are. For is there anything more intimate to one than the perspectival location from which she looks out into and interprets the world? How could someone who does not share that perspectival location ever access and accurately write about it? One possible response to this problem is simply to avoid attempting to understand and articulate socially undocumented interpretive horizons and, in so doing, to avoid getting things wrong. However, as Alcoff has argued, “errors are unavoidable in theoretical inquiry as well as political struggle and moreover they often make contributions.”6 She further explains that The desire to find an absolute means to avoid making errors comes perhaps not from a desire to advance collective goals but from a desire for personal mastery, to establish a privileged discursive position wherein one cannot be undermined or challenged and thus is the master of the situation.7

In other words, simply avoiding the experiences of oppressed others in one’s writing may be reducible to a mere act of self-​protection. Furthermore, there may sometimes be good reasons to risk getting things wrong. This does not mean, however, that one need not concern oneself with the ethical problem of representation just because one may have the good intention of advancing collective goals. 5 Edward W. Said, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 294. 6 Linda Martín Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” Cultural Critique vol. 20 (Winter 1991–​1992), p. 22. 7 Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” p. 22.

132  Socially Undocumented Alcoff ultimately endorses Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s solution to this problem of representation in her famous paper “Can the Subaltern Speak?”8 Spivak argues for a “ ‘speaking to,’ in which the intellectual neither abnegates his or her discursive role nor presumes an authenticity of the oppressed but still allows that the oppressed will produce a ‘countersentence’ that can then produce a new historical narrative.”9 I want to frame this chapter, then, as, in part, an attempt to speak to socially undocumented people, with the hope that they will produce a “countersentence” and “new historical narrative” about the nature of socially undocumented horizons and paths to resistance of socially undocumented oppression. I thus present the ensuing argument tentatively, and with the intention of advancing the collective goal of undermining unjust socially undocumented oppression in U.S. society (and, when relevant, on a global scale). My argument engages the work of Latina/​o/​x and Chicana/​o/​x scholars and activists who have, in my view, illustrated socially undocumented strategies of resistance to the double bind. With these words of caution in mind, I  shall now (tentatively) argue that an important aspect of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon is an intimate understanding of, and inclination to respond to and resist, a particular double bind in which socially undocumented people regularly find themselves in the United States.

II.  The Double Bind Recall that Marilyn Frye argues that oppressed people are caught in a “double bind” in which all alternatives available to them are constraining and demeaning. In her words: options are reduced to a very few and all of them expose one to penalty, censure or deprivation. One example of such a double bind she provides is that of “the discipline of

8 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1998). 9 Alcoff, “The Problem of Speaking for Others,” p. 23.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  133 women’s cramped physical postures and attenuated stride.”10 On Frye’s analysis, if women take up too much space when sitting or walking, they will likely be censured as unfeminine. However, when women do constrain their postures and strides in accordance with dominant norms governing female conduct, they are also subject to censure. Frye explains that “[men] mock us and parody our mincing steps. We look silly, incompetent, weak and generally contemptible. Our exercise of this discipline tends to low esteem and low self-​esteem.”11 Frye also explores the double bind on women’s sexual activity: a woman is either a “prude” who does not have sex and presumably does not like sex, or a “slut” who does have sex and presumably enjoys it too much. In sum, women and other oppressed peoples are caught in a double bind in which all options lead to penalty, censure, or deprivation. Frye further explains that The experience of oppressed people is that the living of one’s life is confined and shaped by forces and barriers which are not accidental or occasional and hence avoidable, but are systematically related to one another in such a way as to catch one between and among them and restrict or penalize motion in any direction. It is the experience of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped.12

Frye illustrates this experience of being blocked and booby trapped from all directions—​and thus experiencing one’s life in terms of confinement—​by means of a metaphor of a birdcage. She explains that if one merely focuses on a single bar of a birdcage, one will fail to understand why the encaged bird does not simply fly away. It is only when one takes a step back and perceives all of the bars operating together as a system that one can understand the bird’s entrapment. The barriers in question are not accidental or occasional; they are related and connected to one another to cause confinement and deprivation. So, in what sense are socially undocumented people caught in such a double bind? I  submit that socially undocumented people

10 Frye, The Politics of Reality, p. 15. 11 Frye, The Politics of Reality, p. 15. 12 Frye, The Politics of Reality, p. 4.

134  Socially Undocumented find themselves in a constraining double bind because they are frequently “illegalized”—​that is, they are presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis—​in contexts in which they are performing the very labor on which they depend for survival (and, I hasten to add, on which the U.S. society and economy also depends).13 In this sense, both alternatives—​i.e., that of engaging in the labor in question, and that of not engaging in the labor in question—​expose socially undocumented people to deprivation, penalty, and censure. In this sense, socially undocumented people are “caged in” in U.S. society. In previous chapters we explored how socially undocumented people tend to be relegated to the most exploitative and undervalued physical labor in U.S. society—​i.e., agricultural labor, domestic labor, work in meatpacking plants, etc. To perceive the double bind in question, note that for most socially undocumented people, opting out of such labor is not an option: they must do this work order to survive. As working-​class people, the socially undocumented often have nothing to sell but their own physical labor-​power. Recall the words of Marx and Engels: “by bourgeoisie is meant the class of capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”14 In sum, failure to do this labor—​and, in some cases, a failure to migrate to the United States to perform this labor—​will result in deprivation, starvation, and even death. In some cases, it could even lead to one being stereotyped as a so-​called lazy Mexican who is to blame for living in a “culture of poverty.”15 This, then, is one aspect of the particular double bind in which socially undocumented people find themselves. 13 See, for instance, Sean Severe, “Here’s What’ll Happen to the Economy if We Deport Undocumented Immigrants,” Fortune.com, September 8, 2017, accessible at http://​fortune.com/​2017/​09/​08/​trump-​undocumented-​immigrants-​daca/​. 14 Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, new ed. (New York: International, 1994), p. 5, footnote 1. 15 See, for instance, Oscar Lewis, “Culture of Poverty,” in Daniel P. Monyihan and Corine Saposs Schelling, eds., On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences (New York: Basic Books, 1968), pp. 187–​220.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  135 Unfortunately, “choosing” to perform the very labor that is expected of them also yields oppressive results—​resulting, I argue, in a double bind. If, as a means of survival, socially undocumented people engage in the sort of labor that is demanded of them under our current capitalist system, they are then scorned as “illegals” taking away jobs from hard-​working U.S. citizens. Illustrating precisely this point, in July 2015, Donald J.  Trump said about Mexicans that “They’re taking our jobs. They’re taking our manufacturing jobs. They’re taking our money. They’re killing us.”16 Unlike many white, working-​class people who are metaphorically applauded in society for being industrious and hardworking (which is not to say that they are not otherwise oppressed qua working class people), socially undocumented people with and without legal authorization are often condemned for their hard work. Faced with the options of economic deprivation or social “illegalization,” socially undocumented people are caught in a constraining double bind. Harkening back to Chapter 4, note, also, that many socially undocumented women are constrained by an additional double bind, this time on the basis of their reproductive labor. In terms of pregnancy and reproduction, socially undocumented women are also faced with two problematic options: (1) that of being socially condemned as women for failing to become pregnant or give birth, which is demanded of their bodies in a patriarchal system; or (2) being scorned and “illegalized” on the basis of getting pregnant and giving birth to so-​called anchor babies. This also distinguishes socially undocumented women from middle-​and upper-​class white women, who can, at least at times, opt into a socially celebrated and cherished maternal role (which is not to say that they will not be oppressed in other ways, such as facing workplace penalties for their pregnancies). In sum, socially undocumented women face an additional double bind on the basis of their actual or perceived reproductive capacities. To conclude this section, I have argued that socially undocumented people are caught in a double bind. On the one hand, their very 16 See Sally Kohn, “Nothing Donald Trump Says on Immigration Holds Up,” Time (online), June 26, 2016, accessible at http://​time.com/​4386240/​donald-​trump-​ immigration-​arguments/​.

136  Socially Undocumented survival often depends on engaging in certain types of labor that tends to be associated with “illegal immigrants”—​like agricultural labor, housecleaning, and work in meatpacking plants. However, they are also “illegalized” on that very basis. Socially undocumented women must contend with the additional double bind of being expected to become pregnant and give birth as women, and then getting “illegalized” on that very basis as socially undocumented women. All the while, the United States depends upon the various types of physical, menial, and reproductive labor in which socially undocumented people engage. I submit, therefore, that socially undocumented experience can accurately be described as that “of being caged in: all avenues, in every direction, are blocked or booby trapped.” Socially undocumented people are positioned in a constraining double bind. What can this tell us about socially undocumented interpretive horizons? In the next section, I propose that a core aspect of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon may take the form of an understanding and perception of, as well as an enacted opposition to, this very double bind.

III.  A (Tentatively Articulated) Socially Undocumented Horizon Socially undocumented people, I  propose, are often epistemically well equipped to both perceive this double bind and respond to it.17 Evidence of this can be found in countless community organizations, artistic activities, and collaborative practices in which many socially undocumented people regularly participate. These settings and practices constitute spaces in which socially undocumented people are often able to obtain respect for their labor and industriousness despite

17 For further analysis of the ways in which marginalized peoples are often epistemically equipped to understand the systems of oppression that constrain people, see, for instance, Charles Mills, “White Ignorance,” in Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, eds., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Albany:  State University of New  York Press, 2007), pp. 11–​38, and José Medina, “Hermeneutical Injustice and Polyphonic Contextualism:  Social Silences and Shared Interpretiveal Responsibilities,” Social Epistemology vol. 26 no. 2 (2012), pp. 201–​220.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  137 the constraining, demeaning forces that stigmatize them on this very basis in broader U.S. society. The socially undocumented interpretive horizon, I  argue, is one from which socially undocumented people both perceive and develop spaces and social situations in which their labor, personal projects, and very presence in the United States will be afforded a respect that is frequently denied to them in broader U.S. society. It is a horizon that often features an inclination to organize with others who are similarly situated as part of a collective effort to resist the double bind in question. Through the socially undocumented interpretive horizon, one can perceive and understand the double bind and generate creative solutions to confronting it. Socially undocumented people are skilled at creating “alternative spaces” in which they are (at least temporarily) free rather than constrained, legitimized rather than “illegalized,” and welcomed rather than scorned on the basis of being present and laborious in the United States. Allow me to explore what I consider to be a few examples of this. First, consider an artistic articulation of what I have been calling a socially undocumented double bind. Many ranchera songs performed in Mexico and the Mexico-​U.S. borderlands refer to the ways in which socially undocumented people are demeaned on the very basis of the labor they are compelled to perform (though the songs do not use the term “socially undocumented”). Take, for instance, the song “El Mojado Acaudalado” (“The Rich Wetback”) performed by the famous ranchera music group Los Tigres del Norte: You are waiting for me, beautiful Mexico That’s why I’m going I am the rich “wetback” But I want to die on my land Goodbye, goodbye California Texas, Chicago, Illinois I’ll carry with me your memory Because I’m going back to my land Even though I have money

138  Socially Undocumented I’m not happy where I am. Goodbye, goodbye Colorado Nevada and Oregon The “wetback” is saying goodbye to you The “wetback” who was covered in sweat In the fields of Arizona And the factories of New York.18

These lyrics tell the story of a person who has engaged in challenging physical labor in U.S. fields and factories while being denigrated on that very basis. The person was “covered in sweat” while working in the fields of Arizona and the factories of New York, and he refers to himself as a “wetback”: a slurring term used to describe Mexicans (particularly those who are working class). The narrator clearly knows that people in U.S. society think of him this way. This is why he so unabashedly calls himself the wetback when directly bidding farewell to U.S. society. In this song, the narrator clearly perceives the double bind in which he was positioned. U.S. society reaped the benefits of his labor (labor that he was presumably compelled to perform due to personal circumstances) while systematically denigrating him on the basis of performing it. Note, also, that Los Tigres del Norte sing a response the double bind in question. Now that the self-​described “rich wetback” has money, and he is choosing to return to Mexico, his native land. When the desperation of economic necessity is removed, why would the narrator choose to remain in a place where he is degraded on the basis of his hard work? Instead, he declares his intention to return to Mexico, where he expects to be respected by others for his industriousness in the United States. (Later in the song, the narrator also sings of the fact that he will spend all the money he earned in the United States in Mexico, thereby purposefully benefiting the Mexican rather than the U.S.  economy.) Here, we can see the act of returning to Mexico as, quite literally, an escape from the double bind in question. The popularity of this song 18 Los Tigres del Norte, “El Mojado Acaudalado,” from the album Jefe de Jefes (1997), my translation.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  139 among (generally working-​class) Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans seems to evince the widespread appeal behind the idea of a socially undocumented person who clearly understands and responds to this predicament. I propose that a second example of ways in which socially undocumented people respond to the double bind is that of the tanda, and the role it plays in many U.S. Latina/​o/​x communities. Tanda is term used in various parts of Latin America to refer to a Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA). In such organizations, members, who are usually friends, give money to the tanda. Once adequate funds have been accumulated, members can then take out interest-​free loans when they need them. Decisions about how to lend the money are usually made collectively, based on which of the friends/​tanda members need it most. Mary Romero’s book The Maid’s Daughter:  Living Inside and Outside the American Dream demonstrates how the tanda can be mobilized as a strategy to resist the socially undocumented double bind (though, again, Romero herself does not use the term “socially undocumented”). Romero tells the story of Olivia, a young Mexican-​ American woman who grew up as a “maid’s daughter” in Los Angeles. Her mother, a Mexican woman who obtained legal authorization to live and work in the United States when Olivia was very young, served as a live-​in domestic worker for a wealthy white/​Anglo family in L.A. Despite the fact that Olivia’s mother had legal permission to live and work in the United States, she was, as a visibly Mexican, working-​class domestic worker, regularly subjected to demeaning, immigration-​ related constraints. For instance, during her decades of service to a particular family in Los Angeles, Olivia’s mother was not given health insurance, social security benefits, or paid vacations. This is not an uncommon experience for Latina domestic workers, for it is assumed that they will not complain about this treatment for fear of deportation (we saw in Chapter 1 that such assumptions also transpire when the Latina domestics in question in fact have legal authorization to live and work in the United States). In a series of interviews with Romero, Olivia explores various forms of racial, gendered, and class-​based discrimination that her mother endured in that capacity. In addition, she explores how her mother

140  Socially Undocumented organized on behalf of Mexican domestic workers in her neighborhood. Sometimes, this would take the form of sharing information about which employers had behaved in particularly unjust ways. On other occasions, this would take the form of providing tips for negotiating better working conditions, particularly for women who had just moved to the neighborhood. Finally, Olivia’s mother also developed a tanda on behalf of the community. In Olivia’s words: There was also the financial system my mother created—​a pyramid thing. She got all of them to contribute money and help each other—​ everyone a hundred dollars. Every time you get paid, like every two weeks, you put in another hundred dollars. And that way somebody had a thousand dollars to take home all at once. They took turns. They actually bid for a place, not with money but by saying “I want to be in third place. I’ll do it if I can get the third place, because that’s when I  need the money.” Then my mom would ultimately decide whose clam was legitimate. If something came up, they would all switch turns.19

This tanda, explained here by Olivia, demonstrates a system in which Mexican domestic workers in a wealthy, white L.A. community were able to contribute to and receive aid from others on the basis of their hard work. As Olivia’s narration makes clear, in the particular context of the community tanda, the experience of being a Mexican domestic worker is not a source of denigration and shame. Rather, it earns one an important place in the respectable, mutually beneficial community of hard-​working tanda members. This, I argue, constitutes a significant response to the double bind in which they found themselves—​ in which they were denigrated on the basis of their labor through stereotypes, low wages, and the denial to them of benefits and workplace protections. This resistance to the double bind, I  propose, also occurred in the other forms of community organizing in which Olivia’s mother

19 Mary Romero, The Maid’s Daughter: Living Inside and Outside the American Dream (New York: New York University Press, 2011), pp. 94–​95.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  141 engaged, such as sharing stories and information about local employers and working conditions. Romero explains that The sharing of stories about . . . employers in a female-​, Mexican-, and worker-​dominated social setting provided Olivia with a clear image of the people she lived with as employers rather than as family members. Seeing the employers through the eyes of the employees forced Olivia to question the employers’ kindness and benevolence and to recognize the manipulation they used to obtain additional physical and emotional labor from their employees. She became aware of the workers’ struggles and the long list of grievances, including no annual raises, no vacations, no Social Security or health benefits, little if any privacy, and sexual harassment. In essence, she learned class consciousness.20

We see here that this group decision to share information about misbehaving employers demonstrates an understanding on the part of Olivia, her mother, and the other domestic workers with whom they collaborated of the double bind in which they were positioned. Clearly, the cultivated understanding among the group that Olivia’s mother helped to organize was that such treatment was wrong. Furthermore, choosing to share such information about wrongdoers generated tools for standing up to the denigrating treatment in question. This willingness to create an alternative community space of respect, mutual support, and empowerment—​particularly when such spaces are systematically denied to one in dominant U.S. society—​is, I propose, part of a socially undocumented interpretive horizon. It is, in other words, indicative of a perceptual practice associated with the social location of being socially undocumented. A third, and final, illustration of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon I shall explore is the employment of popular dichos, or sayings (sometimes translated as “proverbs”) that appear to transmit narratives that challenge the double bind in question. Perhaps that most well known of such dichos is Sí, Se Puede! (or “Yes, We Can!”),



20 Romero, The Maid’s Daughter, p. 94.

142  Socially Undocumented which was originally coined by renowned Chicana activist Dolores Huerta and is now the official slogan of the United Farmworkers Union. Dolores Huerta originally used this dicho during Cesar Chavez’s 25-​day water-​only fast in Phoenix, Arizona. Chavez engaged in this fast after the Arizona legislature passed legislation that made it illegal for farmworkers to strike during harvest seasons. As narrated by the United Farmworkers Union, when a number of Latino community leaders told Chavez and Huerta that Chavez’s strike would be fruitless (saying “No, no se puede”—​that there was no way to overturn the bill) Huerta famously responded with the dicho “Sí, Se Puede!” Since then, Sí, Se Puede! has served as a popular rallying cry for people (including, but not limited to, Chican/​a/​o/​x farmworkers and immigrant rights activists) in situations that seem impossibly difficult.21 I believe that Huerta’s dicho “Sí, Se Puede!” serves as a response to the double bind in question. While Latina/​o/​xs, Chicana/​o/​xs, and other racialized farmworkers must frequently choose between the options of (1) “choosing” not to do such labor, and thus risk starvation, deprivation, and even death; or (2) “choosing” to do such labor and being “illegalized” and otherwise denigrated on that basis, Huerta’s slogan expresses a bold optimism. It indicates that there is, indeed, a way out of the double bind—​one that comes in the form of spirited community organizing. While this optimism may sometimes lead to disappointment (Chavez’s hunger strike was, sadly, ultimately unsuccessful), the now-​widespread employment of this dicho and call to optimism demonstrates that many socially undocumented people understand deeply the double bind in which they are positioned. Furthermore, the development of such dichos often serves as a method of transmitting alternative political ideals that indicate that Latina/​o/​x, Chicana/​o/​x, and other immigrant farmworkers do not deserve to be mistreated on the basis of their labor. The dicho expresses that against all odds, one should stand up for their rights in the face of “illegalizing” forces. A helpful analysis of additional ways in which dichos are employed in empowering ways in many Mexican, Mexican-​ American, and Latina/​o/​x communities is provided by Mariella Espinoza-​Herald. 21 For further discussion, see United Farmworkers, “The History of Si, Se Puede,” accessible at http://​ufw.org/​research/​history/​history-​si-​se-​puede/​.

Socially Undocumented Horizons  143 Focusing in particular on mother-​daughter relationships, Espinoza-​ Herald has studied the ways in which Latina/​o/​x parents transmit “funds of knowledge” through dichos in order to promote educational attainment in adverse environments. Defining dichos as “short phrases of wisdom and philosophical thoughts,”22 Espinoza-​Herald argues that “the resilient and dynamic nature of some Latino family cultural practices, based in folklore and oral traditions, challenges a mainstream deficit view that Latinos do not care for their children’s future or do not value education.”23 Dichos, she argues, serve to guide both thought and action. Some of the dichos she analyzes include los dichos de los viejitos son evangelios chiquitos, or “the sayings of our elders are small gospels,” and no te preocupes . . . ocúpate, or “don’t fret . . . get busy.”24 Here, the dicho that defines dichos themselves as small gospels indicates that alternative sources of knowledge are available. Read against the backdrop of the double bind in question, this dicho would seem to communicate that one need not (merely or necessarily) look to the politics and institutions of the dominant culture to gain wisdom. In addition, the dicho that indicates that one should “get busy” rather than worry can serve as inspiration for someone who is facing adversity. Rather than simply dwell on one’s problems, one should take action with the goal of improving one’s situation, however challenging or impossible that may seem to be. Allow me to assess these dichos against the backdrop of the double bind in which socially undocumented people find themselves. Again, the idea that los dichos de los viejitos son evangelios chiquitos indicates that alternative funds of knowledge are available. Understanding the value of the dichos of one’s elders, then, can potentially provide one with intellectual tools for resisting one’s own “illegalization” as a socially undocumented person in the United States. Furthermore, the expression no te preocupes. . . . Ocúpate, perceived against the backdrop of the double bind, may celebrate industriousness 22 Mariella Espinoza-​Herald, “Stepping Beyond ‘Sí, Se Puede’ ”: Dichos as a Cultural Resource in Mother-​Daughter Interaction in a Latino Family, Anthropology & Education Quarterly vol. 38 no. 3 (September 2007), p. 273. 23 Espinoza-​Herald, “Stepping Beyond ‘Sí, Se Puede,’ ” p. 261. 24 Espinoza-​Herald, “Stepping Beyond ‘Sí, Se Puede,’ ” p. 270.

144  Socially Undocumented and accomplishment in a context in which such accomplishment is a source of demeaning treatment and constraint. Like the expression Sí, Se Puede!, this dicho encourages action and optimism in the face of obstacles that may appear insurmountable.

IV.  Socially Undocumented Identity Thus far in this chapter, I have explored what I consider possible perceptual and interpretive practices on the part of socially undocumented people, with the goal of contributing to an understanding of socially undocumented interpretive horizons. I have argued that socially undocumented people often find themselves in a double bind. As a racialized and working-​class group, they often have no choice but to engage in certain types of labor (i.e., agricultural work, domestic labor, work in meatpacking plants) in the United States. Upon performing such labor in the United States, however, they are stereotyped, denigrated, and “illegalized” on that very basis. This creates a double bind in which all available options expose socially undocumented people to penalty, restriction, censure, and disadvantage. I have further argued that we may be able to understand aspects of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon against the backdrop of this double bind. Socially undocumented people, I have proposed, are often epistemically well equipped to perceive, understand, and resist the double bind in which U.S. society has put them. In previous chapters, we saw that socially undocumented people often respond to immigration enforcement officials with trepidation, regardless of whether they have legal permission to be in the United States. Hence, they perceive their own “illegalization” in intimate, embodied ways that are not generally accessible to those who are not positioned as socially undocumented. In this chapter, I  have argued that socially undocumented people not only perceive the fact that they are being “illegalized”—​and often on the basis of the labor that they are compelled to perform—​but that they often actively seek and develop ways in which to challenge this double bind. We saw, for instance, that the narrator of “El Mojado Acaudalado,” performed by LosTigres del Norte, knows that he is viewed as a

Socially Undocumented Horizons  145 “wetback” by members of U.S. society as he sweats and labors in fields and factories across the country. He sings about of all this, and then declares his intention to return to Mexico and take his hard-​earned money with him. Leaving the United States is a clear path to escaping the double bind of being denigrated on the basis of the racialized, working-​class labor that one is compelled to perform. One might say of the narrator in question that “sí, se pudo”—​yes, he could—​in the face of what must have frequently seemed like a hopeless situation. Mary Romero’s work, meanwhile, explores the ways in which exploited Mexican domestic workers in a wealthy white Los Angeles community form tandas and supportive groups in which they are respected as workers even as broader U.S.  society oppresses and denigrates them qua Mexican maids. Finally, I have explored how dichos like Sí, Se Puede! and No te preocupes. . . . Ocúpate express bold optimism in contexts in which one is oppressed on the basis of the very labor that one is compelled to perform. On this basis of all these considerations, I submit that an important aspect of the socially undocumented interpretive horizon—​and, consequently, an important aspect of socially undocumented identity—​is a tendency to perceive and understand the double bind in question and generate creative solutions to confronting it. This includes locating and entering spaces and social situations in which one’s labor, projects, and very presence in the United States will be afforded a respect that is frequently denied to socially undocumented people in broader U.S. society. It also entails an inclination to organize with others who are similarly situated as part of collective efforts to resist the double bind. This, then, completes my descriptive account of socially undocumented identity, which I have aimed to develop over the course of several chapters. Employing Alcoff ’s account of “visible identities,” which I have supplemented with Bourdieu’s account of class identity or habitus, I have argued that “being socially undocumented” is a real, visible social identity that is both embodied and constitutive of an interpretive horizon. As an embodied identity, it is a “view from somewhere” which is the human body, affecting how one sees and is seen. As a “horizon,” “positionality,” and “perspectival location,” “being socially undocumented” affects how subjects see and understand the world and their place in it. As a visible identity, the embodied and perspectival

146  Socially Undocumented components of “being socially undocumented” exist in the context of a visibly fleshy, racialized, and frequently poor/​working-​class human body. It is a “real” identity—​it is “really embodied” and constructed through narratives and histories that really exist in our social world. These are narratives that have “illegalized” certain types of bodies over the course of U.S. history, regardless of whether those bodies possess legal permission to be in the United States. In offering this descriptive account, I  am not suggesting that all socially undocumented people do or ought to possess such perceptual capacities and corporeality. Recall from Chapter  2 that Alcoff maintains social identities are historically fluid and unstable, and that there are important differences within social identities. Rather, my account emphasizes aspects of socially undocumented experience that seem to be widely shared and that are potentially useful for combating socially undocumented oppression (as I  aim to show in the final chapters of this book). With this in mind, I now turn to the task of exploring how the oppression of people with socially undocumented identities ought to be undermined as a matter of relational egalitarian justice. To begin with, I focus on the question of whether state borders should be eliminated as part of such efforts.

6

Rethinking “Open Borders” I.  Introduction In his editorial “We Can’t Address the EU Refugee Crisis without Confronting Global Capitalism,” Slavoj Zizek argues that “open borders” arguments advanced in the public sphere in Europe, as well as the sorts of “closed borders” arguments put forth by anti-​immigrant populists, are “both worse.”1 Of open borders advocates, he claims that “secretly, they know that [open borders] will never happen, since it would trigger an instant populist revolt in Europe. They play the Beautiful Soul which feels superior to the corrupted world while secretly participating in it.”2 He also argues that “anti-​immigrant populists” are being disingenuous when they claim that “sending countries” of refugees who arrive at European borders should “work things out for themselves.” For they know, Zizek says, that these “sending countries” simply cannot work things out for themselves due to the economic imperialism waged over them by North American and Western European countries. Zizek’s claims do not appear to be directed at academic philosophers working on questions of immigration. In fact, some philosophers defending open borders have explicitly recognized that a universal right to migrate is merely an ideal—​one that should be supplemented, on the ground, with more “realistic” approaches to immigration ethics. Furthermore, most philosophers who defend some version of a “closed borders” paradigm cannot accurately be described as “anti-​immigrant 1 Slavoj Zizek, “We Can’t Address the EU Refugee Crisis without Confronting Global Capitalism,” In These Times, September 9, 2015. 2 Zizek, “We Can’t Address the EU Refugee Crisis without Confronting Global Capitalism.”

Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

148  Socially Undocumented populists.” Thus, inasmuch as we wish to read Zizek’s words as an academic critique, his categorization of the open borders position is uncharitable. Still, I believe that Zizek’s main point—​though provocatively and perhaps uncharitably stated—​is a potentially useful one for readers approaching the philosophical “open borders debate.” It urges us to ask: what if both open and closed borders theories are, at least in certain respects, problematic? What considerations are being left out? And, for our present purposes, might there be a plausible “third option” that is particularly suited to the task of combating socially undocumented oppression? In this chapter I seek to problematize the so-​called open borders option as a means for undermining the oppressive constraints associated with socially undocumented identity. While I do not take myself to be offering a fully developed argument against open borders—​a position to which I am in many respects sympathetic, at least as a matter of ideal theory—​I do wish to cast doubt on the idea that opening borders entirely and developing an international freedom of movement right is an effective policy means for combating such oppression. Let me note, once again, that some open borders theorists have maintained that we need to supplement “idealistic” open borders theory with “realistic” immigrant rights activism—​and that “realistic” approaches may need to presuppose a world with coercive borders. Recognizing this, there is a sense in which my problematization of the open borders option as a means to combat socially undocumented oppression is directed not at open borders theorists themselves, but rather, at the idea that a world without borders would immediately solve the sort of oppression with which this book is concerned. My 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. (In my next chapter, I will use this new conceptual space to argue that undermining socially undocumented oppression requires the demilitarization of borders like the Mexico-​U.S. border, which is a somewhat different proposal from those advocated by contemporary open borders theorists.) Prior to beginning, some terminological clarification is in order. Note that while the philosophical conversation in question is

Rethinking “Open Borders”  149 frequently referred to as “the open borders debate,”3 the philosophical arguments represented therein are not generally focused on the nature of borders themselves. As a result, the debate has not focused specifically on the locations, histories, structures, and politics of particular borders in particular places. Nor has it seriously questioned what borders actually are.4 To be fair, Joseph Carens famously wrote in “Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders” that “borders have guards and guards have guns.”5 In addition, in his own open borders defense, Phillip Cole paints a somewhat different picture of borders in pointing out that “the vast majority of political boundaries in the world do not entail a right of exclusion,” and that “we tend to think of boundaries around political communities in terms of national borders, but most political boundaries are not like that at all.”6 Still, such descriptive accounts of borders and boundaries in the open borders literature are both rare and somewhat vague. This is because so-​called open borders theorists are not actually concerned with literal open borders but, rather, with establishing a universal right to international movement and migration. Note that on such views, there is no reason, in principle, why a country could not maintain a system of coercive and intimidating border walls as long as a global right to international migration is somehow maintained. However, when I argue in the next chapter for the “opening” of the Mexico-​U.S. border as a means of combating the oppressive constraints associated with socially undocumented identity, I am arguing for the demilitarization of that border—​for making it literally a more “open border”—​but not necessarily for an international right to free movement. I believe that disentangling these two very different senses in which one might argue for “open borders” can be helpful in the social 3 See Shelley Wilcox, “The Open Borders Debate on Immigration,” Philosophy Compass vol. 4 no. 5 (2009), pp. 813–​821. 4 I  discuss this in more detail in “The New Open Borders Debate,” in Alex Sager, ed., The Ethics and Politics of Immigration:  Core Issues and Emerging Trends (London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). 5 Joseph H. Carens, “Aliens and Citizens:  The Case for Open Borders,” Review of Politics vol. 49 no. 2 (1987), p. 251. 6 Phillip Cole, “Toward a Right to Mobility,” in Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole, eds., Debating the Ethics of Immigration:  Is There A  Right to Exclude? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 302.

150  Socially Undocumented pursuit of immigration justice. For one might casually claim to favor “open borders” out of opposition to the militarization and visible “closure” of borders such as the Mexico-​U.S. border, and not necessarily because one is truly committed to a global freedom of movement right. On the other hand, one can support a freedom of movement right without having views on what particular state boundaries should look like, and how they should function. A final clarification:  I shall not delve into arguments for “closed borders,” or the “conventional view” that states have at least a prima facie right to make decisions about which (if any) prospective migrants shall be permitted to enter their territories. This is because I am not denying such a right to states. Instead, I shall spend time evaluating open borders arguments with a view to determining the extent to which such arguments can serve to undermine socially undocumented oppression. I shall, however, eventually argue that there are some serious restrictions on how states may exercise their presumptive right to control immigration. This renders my arguments out of line with a great deal of “closed borders” thinking.7 This chapter is organized as follows. I begin by exploring a range of reasons why one might argue that opening borders could reduce socially undocumented oppression. Second, I argue that despite this appeal of an open borders policy, such oppression could nevertheless continue to exist in an “open borders world.” Third, I argue positively that eliminating borders is not, at present, the most effective means for addressing socially undocumented oppression. Then, in the next chapter, I shall move on to argue for the demilitarization of the Mexico-​U.S. border as a relational egalitarian alternative to extant “open borders” and “closed borders” solutions.

7 See, for instance, the arguments of Michael Walzer in Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New  York:  Basic Books, 1983), particularly c­hapter  2; David Miller, “Immigration:  The Case for Limits,” in A. Cohen and C. Wellman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA:  John Wiley, 2014), pp. 365–​375; and Stephen Macedo, “The Moral Dilemma of U.S. Immigration Policy:  Open Borders versus Social Justice?,” in C. Swain, ed., Debating Immigration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 63–​81.

Rethinking “Open Borders”  151

II.  Borders and “Illegality” There are a number of compelling reasons why one might suspect that in an “open borders world,” socially undocumented identity and oppression would cease to exist. First, borders play an important role in the way in which many people come to be associated with legally unauthorized status in the United States. This is because most state borders simply cannot be crossed without legal authorization from the “receiving” state. Indeed, it is a crime (technically a misdemeanor) under U.S.  federal law for an “alien” to engage in “improper entry,” which occurs when an alien “enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than designated by immigration officers; eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers; or attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by willfully concealing, falsifying, or misrepresenting material facts.”8 Borders—​vast, “undesignated” stretches of which are often traversed by migrants—​ are literally spaces where entry by non-​citizens is “improper.” Consequently, they are widely understood to be sites of wrongdoing when non-​citizens transgress them. In fact, under U.S. law, unlawful entry into the United States across its borders is a crime, but unlawful presence in the United States is not. Engaging in the latter can lead to civil but not criminal penalties. Thus, even in the scope of immigration law itself, borders—​the points of entry to countries like the United States—​play a comparatively strong “illegality”-​producing role. Because of all this, one might argue that working toward an “open borders world” in which states lack a prima facie right to exclude non-​citizens could significantly reduce, if not altogether eliminate, socially undocumented oppression. After all, one might argue, if there were no legally undocumented people to speak of, it is unlikely that a subset of U.S. society would continue to be presumed to be undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance, and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related

8 See “Entry of Alien at Improper Time or Place; Misrepresentation and Concealment of Facts,” at the Official Website of the Department of Homeland Security, accessible at https://​www.uscis.gov/​ilink/​docView/​SLB/​HTML/​SLB/​0-​0-​0-​1/​0-​0-​0-​29/​0-​0-​0-​9025. html.

152  Socially Undocumented constraints on that basis. In other words, if there were no longer such a thing as legally unauthorized status, why would there be such a thing as “illegal” or socially undocumented identity? This is an obvious way in which a universal freedom of movement right could contribute to the undermining of socially undocumented oppression. Additional ways can be gleaned from the philosophical “open borders debate” itself. Political philosophers who have argued for open borders—​while not dealing with socially undocumented identity and oppression directly—​have advanced arguments that may indicate, upon examination, that socially undocumented oppression would indeed be undermined were an international freedom of movement right to be established. Joseph Carens, for instance, argues for such a freedom of movement right for several reasons. First, he argues that freedom of movement is, in and of itself, a very important freedom. He notes that “it is precisely this freedom, and all that this freedom makes possible, that is taken away by imprisonment.”9 Carens also argues that freedom of movement is connected to other values we hold dear, such as autonomy. Second, Carens argues that freedom of movement is a necessary component of any plausible effort to secure equality of opportunity on a global scale—​though he clarifies that in order to achieve this goal, such a freedom of movement right must be accompanied by a strong, global effort to redistribute resources and thus diminish global inequality. Third, Carens argues that a freedom of movement right would also enhance political and social equality on a global scale. Once again, Carens and other open borders theorists do not focus on socially undocumented identity and oppression in their respective arguments. However, inasmuch as Carens’s universal freedom of movement right would promote freedom and autonomy while diminishing global inequalities, it could feasibly help to undermine socially undocumented oppression. As explored in the previous chapters, the sorts of immigration-​ related constraints that are endured by socially undocumented people—​like that of feeling 9 Joseph Carens, The Ethics of Immigration (New  York:  Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 227.

Rethinking “Open Borders”  153 unsafe when walking around in public spaces, regardless of whether one has legal permission to be in the United States—​do undermine the freedom and autonomy of socially undocumented people. In addition, socially undocumented oppression in the workplace serves to exacerbate extant economic and social inequalities in which socially undocumented people are part of the disadvantaged group. One could argue that the removal of an immigration-​related constraint (namely, the inability to cross borders freely) and the promotion of equality in terms of economic opportunity would enhance the well-​ being of socially undocumented people, who regularly find these values threatened in their lives. While the details would need to be further fleshed out, it seems, then, that Carens’s freedom of movement right could, if implemented, undermine socially undocumented oppression. Let us now turn to additional open borders arguments—​and to possible reasons why one might argue that, were such proposals implemented, socially undocumented oppression would be undermined. Chandran Kukathas emphasizes that systems of “closed borders” deprive people of the ability to escape oppressive regimes, to associate freely, and to sell and buy human labor as they see fit. Invoking a “principle of humanity,” Kukathas also argues that it is“perverse” to deny marginalized people the opportunity to improve their lives.10 Once again, while Kukathas is not explicitly considering socially undocumented oppression in his arguments, it is somewhat difficult to see this particular defense of the opening of borders as anything but beneficial for socially undocumented people. One could argue that as marginalized people become empowered to cross borders for a wide variety of reasons, and as citizens of the “receiving country” become empowered to contract non-​citizen laborers relatively freely, the pattern according to which some people are perceived to be doing something “illegal” on the mere basis of their (typically Mexican and working-​class) appearance and labor would likely be undermined significantly. 10 Chandran Kukathas, “The Case for Open Immigration,” in Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman, eds., Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), p. 210.

154  Socially Undocumented Kieran Oberman, meanwhile, has argued that a global right to freedom of movement is needed to protect vital personal and political interests. Oberman stresses that we have “interests in conscience” in seeking out answers to life’s most important philosophical, political and spiritual questions, and that freedom of movement is required to support this right.11 Humans have a vital interest in seeking out a compelling conception of the good and coming to understand how our political systems interact with global economic and political structures. We can achieve these things, in part, through international travel and living abroad. While Oberman’s arguments seem directed at those who have the financial means to travel internationally to seek out answers to life’s most important questions (and not necessarily those who are socially undocumented), it seems that thus empowering people to move freely could undermine socially undocumented oppression. It could do so by further disentangling the act of border-​crossing from impressions of “illegality” and wrongdoing, and by associating border-​crossings with the noble pursuit of answers to life’s most important questions. Finally, Phillip Cole argues that we must view a freedom of movement right as connected to a web of other rights “around the development of human agency.”12 He argues that “being a human agent involves having a life story that is recognizably human, in that it includes the elements that we take to constitute human flourishing.” Furthermore, “being a human agent does not only consist of having such a life story, but also the power to be its author, to have a say over its content, and indeed the power to create it as it goes along.”13 According to Cole, this is precisely why all humans enjoy a prima facie human right to international movement and migration. It follows from the fact that we are agents, and that we are owed the minimal requirements

11 Kieran Oberman, “Immigration as a Human Right,” in Sarah Fine and Lea Ypi, eds., Migration and Political Theory: The Ethics of Movement and Membership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 43. 12 Phillip Cole, “Open Borders: An Ethical Defense,” in Christopher Heath Wellman and Phillip Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration:  Is There a Right to Exclude? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 296. 13 Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration, p. 296.

Rethinking “Open Borders”  155 for authoring and pursuing our own life stories as human agents, even if this requires us to transcend international borders. Once again, though Cole is not proposing open borders in response to socially undocumented oppression in particular, one can imagine how Cole’s depiction of a freedom of movement right could help us to undermine it. After all, if people came to see international migration rights as connected to respecting human agency, they may be at least somewhat disinclined to regard certain types of people as undocumented on the mere basis of their appearance. This is because every human agent would now enjoy a prima facie right to cross-​border movement. In sum, in this section I have explored a number of reasons why one might be inclined to point to “open borders” and a corresponding freedom of movement right as a (or even “the”) solution to socially undocumented oppression. First, unauthorized entry across state borders is a crime in the United States. Thus, borders themselves play a key role in the literal “illegalization” of certain migratory acts. Open borders and a universal right to migrate would certainly diminish, if not altogether eliminate, legally undocumented status in the United States and across the globe. If fewer people were “legally illegal,” would not fewer people be socially “illegal”? Second, open borders theorists have compellingly argued that a freedom of movement right would increase personal autonomy and freedom, curb global economic inequalities, accord with a principle of humanity, enable people to migrate and travel in the pursuit of meaningful lives, and promote and protect human agency. It seems that all of these values, if supported through a universal right to migrate, could diminish socially undocumented oppression by (1) eliminating certain immigration-​related constraints with which the socially undocumented must regularly contend (i.e., borders themselves); (2)  promoting socially undocumented people’s (in addition to other people’s) autonomy, freedom, and equality; and (3)  promoting the idea that border-​crossings are not criminal, but rather, a potentially fundamental aspect of human agency and the personal authorship of a meaningful life for oneself. Despite these benefits, I argue in the next section that socially undocumented oppression could continue to exist even in an “open borders” world. Once again, I do not offer this as an argument against

156  Socially Undocumented open borders theorists who, once again, generally take themselves to be working in an ideal theory in which socially undocumented oppression would not exist. Rather, I offer the ensuing observations to those who may support open borders somewhat more casually (that is, some of those to whom Zizek seems to be speaking in his editorial). My aim is to cast doubt on the idea that a universal freedom of movement right would easily “cure us” of socially undocumented oppression, with a view toward developing solutions that will, in fact, enable us to achieve this goal.

III.  Socially Undocumented Oppression without Borders While we have yet to experience a world without borders as advocated by the aforementioned theorists, it is reasonable to presume that socially undocumented oppression could continue to exist in such a world. To begin to see why, recall that unlike the particular open borders advocates to whom Zizek refers in his criticisms—​who appear, at least on Zizek’s representation, to advocate a world without borders without attending to what that would actually mean in practice—​ philosophers of open borders have, in fact, given thought to some of the pragmatics of implementing an open borders program. Indeed, while advocating a “utopian” proposal, many political philosophers have carefully considered possible challenges that would arise were we to make open borders a reality. Acknowledging such challenges, open borders theorists generally present the idea of a global right to freedom of movement as non-​absolute and subject to certain necessary restrictions. I argue that socially undocumented oppression could continue to exist under these restrictions posited by open borders theorists. This indicates that we cannot swiftly assume that a universal right to international movement and migration would alleviate the injustices of socially undocumented oppression. For instance, Joseph Carens has argued that a right to global freedom of movement and migration can plausibly be restricted in the following cases. First, it can be restricted to protect national security. That is, entry can be restricted in cases of “people (whether armed invaders

Rethinking “Open Borders”  157 or subversives) whose goal is the overthrow of just institutions.”14 He states that his “argument for open borders has been framed . . . as an argument about the moral claims of ordinary, peaceful people seeking to build decent, secure lives for themselves and their families. It is not an argument for the admission of terrorists or invading armies.”15 It is understandable that Carens includes this restriction. After all, he is arguing for open borders, not the erosion of the nation-​state and all its justice-​promoting institutions. Note that Carens also explicitly warns against the misuse of purported national security concerns for the purpose of limiting immigration. This restriction can only permissibly be applied when it is truly necessary to prevent very harmful consequences (including the overthrowing of just institutions).16 A second restriction on a freedom of movement right explored by Carens comes in the form of his response to the “social welfare argument” against the open borders position. According to this argument—​ which is typically offered by some liberal egalitarians as an objection to open borders—​a global freedom of movement right would lead to a massive influx of poor people from across the globe to wealthy social welfare states. This would undermine the ability of social welfare states to discharge their duties to their own citizens in the forms of education, health care, and other goods. In response to this objection, Carens first points out that the freedom of movement right he advocates should be implemented alongside a massive reduction in global inequality. Such a global redistribution of resources would surely diminish the need of the world’s poor to migrate to today’s wealthier countries, for all nations, on this view, would offer strong social welfare programs for their own citizens. However, Carens expects that migration to states with stronger social safety nets from those with weaker ones—​for example, migration from the United States to Sweden—​may continue to transpire even in such an increasingly egalitarian “open borders” world. In such cases, Carens advocates the sort of system currently operative in the European Union, through which many EU citizens who migrate to a

14

Carens, “Aliens and Citizens,” p. 260.

15 Carens, The Ethics of Immigration, p. 276. 16 Carens, The Ethics of Immigration, p. 270.

158  Socially Undocumented new EU country must undergo a waiting period prior to which they cannot access the full range of social services on offer in that country. A third restriction on freedom of movement that I  shall explore comes from Kieran Oberman. In his open borders defense, Oberman responds to the so-​called culture objection, which maintains that immigration can be limited in order to protect a state’s language and culture. Oberman rejects this argument, pointing to the numerous benefits associated with multiculturalism. He does, however, grant a restriction on how a global right to freedom of movement may be enjoyed. Oberman argues that states can “encourage immigrants to integrate into the host state’s culture.”17 Furthermore, he regards it as “acceptable for a state to expect resident foreigners to learn the local language and encourage them to do so by refusing to provide translation for non-​essential services, especially if at the same time it provides subsidized language classes.”18 Finally, Phillip Cole argues that “just as the right to emigrate is not absolute,” he is “not insisting that the right to immigrate be absolute.19 On Cole’s view, emigration, like immigration, can be curtailed in “times of public emergency that threaten the life of the nation.”20 A useful guide for determining when the right to immigrate can be denied is that of considering whether the right to emigrate could permissibly be denied under similar conditions. To summarize, I  have presented four possible restrictions on the global right to freedom of movement that have been developed by open borders theorists:  (1) the national security restriction; (2)  the social welfare restriction; (3) the culture restriction; and (4) the state-​ of-​emergency restriction. Once again, these are restrictions that open borders theorists have regarded as necessary in order to make open borders feasible on a practical level. I shall now argue that even in an “open borders world” in which the majority of people across the globe possess a right to migrate as they please, such restrictions could, in fact, sustain socially undocumented oppression.



17

Oberman, “Immigration as a Human Right,” p. 49. Oberman, “Immigration as a Human Right,” pp. 49–​50. 19 Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration, p. 305. 20 Cole, Debating the Ethics of Immigration, p. 304. 18

Rethinking “Open Borders”  159 Take, first, restrictions on freedom of movement in the name of protecting national security. While Carens has, once again, argued very explicitly against the abuse of this restriction, it is easy to perceive just how likely it could, in practice, foment socially undocumented oppression. Consider the ways in which Muslim immigration is presented as a national security threat in the United States and Europe. While I have focused primarily on the ways in which darker-​ skinned, working-​class Mexicans and Latina/​o/​xs represent the paradigmatic “illegal subjects” in the United States, Donald J.  Trump’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and subsequent presidency indicates that Muslims in the United States may currently be undergoing a simultaneous process of “illegal” identity formation. In 2017, Donald J. Trump signed an executive order that, if implemented, would temporarily ban immigration from a total of seven Muslim-​majority countries. He has also advocated the creation of a registry of all Muslims in the United States—​a national database that would track a particular group of people in the U.S on the basis of religion. And he has done this in the name of protecting national security. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier in this book, Mexicans and Central Americans are also rendered “dangerous” and “threatening” in a great deal of anti-​ immigrant discourse in the United States as part of what Leo Chavez has called the “Latino Threat Narrative.”21 The Latino Threat Narrative is also regularly employed to justify immigration restrictions. Of course, Trump’s proposed “Muslim ban” and such political uses of the Latino Threat Narrative clearly constitute flagrant abuses of Carens’s “national security restriction”; Carens would explicitly reject such attempts to close borders and curb immigration. The Muslims and Latina/​o/​xs targeted in such discourse are, on the whole, people whom Carens has described as “ordinary, peaceful people seeking to build decent, secure lives for themselves and their families.” And yet, it is clear that in the context of the non-​ideal world in which we live, the national security restriction on a global freedom of movement right could quite feasibly perpetuate socially undocumented oppression. In fact, a full-​fledged open borders program could serve to exacerbate 21 Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013).

160  Socially Undocumented socially undocumented oppression by bolstering the significance of perceived threats to national security in the scope of U.S. immigration policy. Just as opening borders would likely trigger, in Zizek’s view, “an instant populist revolt in Europe,” anti-​immigrationists in an open borders world may have more impetus to target Muslims, Latina/​o/​xs, and other groups as “threats” who “do not belong” in the United States. Let us now turn to the social welfare restriction. Recall that Carens suggested, partly by way of reference to current European Union policy, that if open borders are established in conjunction with a dramatic reduction in global inequality, it would be permissible for states to impose a waiting period on newly arrived migrants prior to the completion of which such migrants cannot access the state’s full range of social services. Socially undocumented oppression could, I argue, transpire were such a restriction to be implemented. Imagine, for instance, that Mexico develops a significantly stronger social welfare state just as the coercive power of its border with the United States is eroded (in other words, imagine that Carens’s proposals were implemented in the United States and Mexico). Imagine also that there remain some discrepancies in terms of how much social welfare is provided to citizens of both countries: a difference that resembles that of the United States versus Sweden. Thus, citizens of Mexico would continue to immigrate to the United States to gain more social welfare provisions (just as many U.S. citizens would surely immigrate to Sweden for the same reasons, were doing so legal and feasible). Remember that all of this occurs in the context of our current, non-​ideal social world in which socially undocumented oppression exists. It is certainly reasonable to suspect that in such a context, the imposed waiting period for social services would generate a racialized and gendered hierarchy through which the social groups predominantly represented as “waiters” come to be ascribed an inferior status that would ultimately undermine democratic equality. We can see this in the context of the European Union, where citizens of Spain, Greece, and Italy are regularly deemed “drains on the system” by citizens of other EU states. Indeed, complaints about poorer EU citizens putting “unsustainable pressure” on “vital public services” like the National Health Service (NHS) played a prominent role in pro-​Brexit arguments prior

Rethinking “Open Borders”  161 to the 2016 referendum that resulted in the U.K. leaving the European Union.22 Furthermore, we saw in Chapter 4 that many Mexican citizens who give birth to babies in the United States are viewed in a similar light, even when they have legal permission to seek prenatal care and give birth in the United States and pay for their care out-​of-​pocket. In sum, socially undocumented oppression could feasibly continue to exist in the realms of health care and other social services even if the world becomes “borderless,” increasingly egalitarian, and perhaps especially if such a waiting period is imposed. I now turn to a third proposed restriction on freedom of movement:  that of “culture.” Recall that Kieran Oberman argued that freedom of movement may not, as a general (but non-​absolute) rule, be restricted in order to protect a state’s language or culture. He has, however, granted that states may demand that migrants learn their language and even deny translators to migrants demanding non-​essential services under certain conditions. I contend that these restrictions on how a global freedom of movement right may be enjoyed could perpetuate socially undocumented oppression. For instance, one can imagine that poor, Mexican agricultural workers who migrate to the United States could, as a result of their physically grueling and intensive workload, lack sufficient time and energy to study the language of their new state with the desired level of intensity. If states can require all migrants to learn their language, and if a particular group of migrants is perceived to be failing in this regard, this could perpetuate the perception that such migrants do not belong. Oberman does not explain what would happen to those migrants who ultimately fail to learn the local language. Would they be deported? Fined? Denied certain social services? All of these practices, too, could feasibly perpetuate forms socially undocumented oppression. Furthermore, I  am puzzled as to which “non-​essential services” Oberman is referring when he says that states can, in the cases of those services, deny translation services to immigrants. Is he referring to, say, an immigrant mother attempting to acquire a (non-​essential) library 22 See Tanya Kovacevic, “Reality Check: How Much Pressure Do EU Migrants Place on the NHS?” BBC News, June 17, 2016, accessible at http://​www.bbc.com/​news/​ uk-​politics-​eu-​referendum-​36058513.

162  Socially Undocumented card for her son? An immigrant family trying to ascertain the price of fruits and vegetables at the market? A young immigrant couple trying to sign the lease on an apartment? If people believe that one of their only mechanisms for preserving their language and culture is the denial of translation services to immigrants, one can imagine this policy being used (and abused) in ways that, once again, unjustly target the socially undocumented. Finally, let us consider Phillip Cole’s argument that immigration can be restricted in national emergencies, and for the same reasons that states may permissibly curb emigration. Of course, many states have unjustly forbidden their citizens to emigrate in the past, and Cole would certainly regard this as impermissible.23 What Cole does not consider, however, is whether states would be more inclined to declare “states of emergency” in order to curb immigration. Given the ways in which prospective migrants are regularly deemed “national security threats” in anti-​immigrant rhetoric, it seems reasonable to suspect that immigration may, in practice, be more frequently curtailed in the name of defending against “national emergencies.” Furthermore, it is reasonable to suspect that the repeated declaring of “national emergencies” to curb immigration would serve to single out and oppress the socially undocumented, the presence of whom in the United States is, indeed, often described in terms of a “national emergency.” Of course, Cole would surely vehemently object to such abuse of this restriction on freedom of movement. But it is likely to occur in the non-​ ideal world in which we live. In sum, I have argued that there are good reasons to suspect that a global freedom of movement right as advocated by aforementioned political philosophers could perpetuate, and could perhaps even exacerbate, the injustices of socially undocumented oppression. These open borders arguments, while philosophically important and compelling in many ways, were not developed with socially undocumented oppression in mind. I submit that those who are concerned about socially undocumented oppression should be wary of the (rather commonplace) assumption that “open borders” and a global freedom 23 On this point, see Gillian Brock and Michael Blake, Debating the Brain Drain: Is There a Right to Exclude? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Rethinking “Open Borders”  163 of movement right would cure all of our most serious immigration woes—​including and particularly those associated with the oppression of people with marginalized social identities. Once again, none of the theorists whose work I have explored here would accept socially undocumented oppression as just. Furthermore, as mentioned previously, such arguments tend to be developed in the realm of ideal theory, in which socially undocumented oppression is unlikely to exist. Thus, while I do not offer these arguments as a rejection of these open borders views in the realm of ideal theory, I propose that open borders theorists carefully consider the relationship between their practical proposals and the moral imperative of undermining socially undocumented oppression.

III. A “Realistic” Approach But even if open borders theorists could demonstrate that a global freedom of movement right would effectively undermine socially undocumented oppression, an open borders framework would still be unsuitable for attending to the injustice of socially undocumented oppression. This is because we need to assume a world of borders—​ borders that, in certain respects, resemble the problematic borders we have today—​in order to access for normative assessment a variety of philosophical challenges associated with immigration. Examples of such challenges include obligations to admit refugees, questions about whether and which undocumented migrants should be granted amnesty, and, of course, socially undocumented oppression. Some issues only become moral challenges in the context of a world with borders, in which citizens across the globe lack an unfettered right to free movement and migration. Thus, it is difficult, if not impossible, to access them for normative evaluation from within an open borders paradigm. Indeed, if we remove borders themselves from the scope of our philosophical analyses, the relationship between borders and socially undocumented oppression becomes invisible. We are left to imagine what socially undocumented identity might look like under a system of global freedom of movement. In the previous section, I tried to do this by considering how socially undocumented oppression might

164  Socially Undocumented occur under the restrictions on freedom of movement that certain open borders theorists advocate. While this may be a useful exercise in certain contexts, it does not provide us with clear answers to the moral challenges presented by socially undocumented oppression in the bordered world in which we live, just as positing a world without patriarchy is not the most useful way to theorize sexism in our society. Joseph Carens has argued for the importance of adopting what he calls both “realistic” and “idealistic” approaches to the ethics and political philosophy of immigration. While we have seen that Carens is, as a matter of ideal theory, an advocate of open borders, he has also simply assumed the legitimacy of borders in some of his more recent work on immigration ethics. We saw in Chapter 1, for instance, that he advocates that long-​term legally undocumented migrants—​that is, migrants who have spent at least six years living in their “new society” without legal authorization—​should be granted amnesty and a right to remain.24 In order to make this argument, however, Carens must assume a version of a closed borders framework. He explains that while idealistic approaches to contemporary moral problems enable us to challenge “fundamentally unjust institutions and policies,” realistic approaches are “especially attentive to the constraints which must be accepted if morality is to serve as an effective guide for action in the world in which we live.”25 Carens asserts that philosophers need to cultivate both approaches to considering contemporary moral problems. Another way of viewing the need to posit borders to access the realities of socially undocumented oppression is in light of prominent criticisms of the limitations of ideal theory. For instance, in “Ideal Theory as Ideology” Charles Mills objects to what he describes as ideal theory’s “reliance on idealization to the exclusion, or at least to the marginalization, of the actual.”26 Among his many criticisms of ideal theory he lists “silence on oppression,” explaining that “almost by definition, it follows from the focus of ideal theory that little or nothing 24 Joseph Carens, Immigrants and the Right to Stay (Cambridge, MA:  MIT Press, 2010). 25 Joseph Carens, “Realistic and Idealistic Approaches to the Ethics of Immigration,” International Migration Review vol. 30 no. 1 (1996), pp. 156–​170. 26 Charles Mills, “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” Hypatia vol. 20 no. 3 (2005), p. 168.

Rethinking “Open Borders”  165 will be said on actual historic oppression and its legacy in the present.”27 Nor does ideal theory tend to focus on “current ongoing oppression, though these may be gestured at in a vague or promissory way (as something to be dealt with later).”28 With Mills’s words in mind, I submit that if we choose only to work within an ideal theory framework of “open borders,” we will lose sight of current and historical socially undocumented oppression, which cannot conceivably be dissociated from our world of real borders. There are additional reasons to be wary of any tendency to propose “open borders” as a (or “the”) solution to all contemporary immigration woes. For instance, Shelley Wilcox has criticized open borders arguments in the realm of ideal theory on the grounds that such arguments “fail to provide normative guidance concerning immigration as it is in the world today” while ignoring “alternative moral grounds to claims of admission, grounds that may entail particularly strong moral claims.”29 Peter Higgins, meanwhile, argues that an open borders position, were it to be implemented in our actual, non-​ ideal world, could actually enhance global oppression, as a universal freedom of movement right may only be enjoyed by those with the financial means to migrate to a wealthier state in search of greater economic opportunities. The poorest citizens would stay behind, leading to a “brain drain” in “sending countries” that would effectively make the world’s poor worse-​off.30 In sum, even if one believes that it is possible to develop a feasible defense of open borders that attends to the injustice of socially undocumented oppression, there are additional reasons to work within a more conventional paradigm in some cases. First, in an open borders framework, the very problem with which we are grappling becomes invisible. Second, in an open borders framework it becomes nearly impossible to develop a theory that serves, in Carens’s, words “as an effective guide for action in the world in which we live.” And finally, 27 Mills, “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” p. 168. 28 Mills, “Ideal Theory as Ideology,” p. 168. 29 Shelley Wilcox, “Immigrant Admissions and Global Relations of Harm,” Journal of Social Philosophy vol. 38 no. 2 (2007), p. 274. 30 See Peter Higgins, Immigration Justice (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2013).

166  Socially Undocumented it is at least conceivable that a universal freedom of movement right would neglect or exacerbate existing forms of oppression (including those that are not connected to socially undocumented oppression) in a non-​ideal world. I have argued in this chapter that a universal freedom of movement right is not the appropriate mechanism for attending to socially undocumented oppression. First, such oppression could feasibly exist even in an “open borders world” as such a world has been described by open borders theorists concerned with understanding how an open borders program could actually function were it to be implemented globally. Second, we need “realistic,” and not merely “idealistic,” approaches to the ethics of immigration. If we simply posit “open borders” for the purpose of philosophical analysis of immigration ethics, socially undocumented oppression will be rendered invisible. Thus, we will not be able to articulate feasible policy solutions in response to it, and we may even exacerbate extant forms of oppression in our non-​ideal world. I have yet to propose an alternative solution to the open borders position, however. In my next chapter I argue that developing porous, demilitarized borders—​borders that are literally more “open”—​is superior to a universal freedom of movement right as a solution to ongoing socially undocumented oppression. In making this argument I  will focus on the nature and history of the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border itself, as well as its relationship to ongoing socially undocumented oppression in the context of our non-​ideal world. In the spirit of a bottom-​ up philosophical analysis that seeks both to emphasize and to engage philosophically the lived experiences of the subjects about whom I am writing, I shall initiate my argument by focusing on the ways in which the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border is experienced by many of those who are socially undocumented. In particular, I shall explore the unjust nature of the “migrant journey” toward and across the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border by socially undocumented Mexican and Central American migrants. This injustice, I argue, points to the need to demilitarize that border as a requirement of relational egalitarian justice.

Conclusion A New Approach to Immigration Justice

The socially undocumented are presumed to be undocumented or “illegal” on the mere basis of their appearance and subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on that basis. This group includes people who do and do not have legal authorization to be in the United States. Thus, in the United States, “being undocumented” or “being illegal” is not strictly, nor is it even necessarily, about legal status. Over time, this shared experience of being “read” as “illegal” in U.S. society on the basis of racialized, class-​based, and sometimes gendered features has made “illegality” a real, embodied social identity that affects how one sees and is seen. Furthermore, “being socially undocumented” frequently means being unjustly oppressed on the basis of having this very social identity. Such oppression is unjust, we have seen, even if one is both legally and socially undocumented, and even if we assume the political legitimacy of borders. In Chapter 2 of this book, I quoted Sally Haslanger, who has argued that when theorizing race and gender, we ought “to consider what work the concepts of race and gender might do for us in a critical—​ specifically feminist and anti-​racist—​social theory, and to suggest concepts that can accomplish at least important aspects of that work.”1 In this spirit, I stated that I would develop a theory of socially undocumented identity and oppression in hopes of providing tools and a useful framework for dismantling the sorts of institutions, thinking, and rhetoric that serve to brand and unjustly constrain a subset of the population as so-​called illegals in violation of immigration justice. While I have already explored a number of proposals for alleviating socially undocumented oppression throughout this book, in this final

1 Sally Haslanger, “Race and Gender: What Are They? What Do We Want Them to Be?,” Noûs vol. 34 no. 1 (2000), pp. 35–​36. Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

196 Conclusion chapter, I wish to outline briefly additional ways in which my theory can be employed for this purpose. Note, first, that once we realize that “being undocumented” is not necessarily a legal status, and that it is often, in fact, a social identity, we can better appreciate the alarming magnitude of immigration injustice in the United States. As we saw in Chapter 3, various elements of U.S. immigration history—​from the earliest white supremacist immigration laws to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to the early expansion of U.S. agribusiness to the Johnson-​Reed Act to the Bracero Program to the repatriation of over 1 million Mexicans and Mexican-​Americans, over 60% of whom were U.S.  citizens, to the Prevention through Deterrence strategy and militarization of the Mexico-​U.S.  border—​ have served to concoct and deposit a thoroughly inferiorized “illegal look” in the minds of the United States public. Furthermore, the person who is taken to “look illegal” is regarded as a morally inferior being—​one who is deemed rightfully subjectable to a wide range of demeaning, immigration-​related constraints. Moving forward in the pursuit of immigration justice, then, we need to be very clear on this fact:  our immigration laws and immigration history have served to create illegalized bodies and illegalized identities, and this represents a terribly unjust state of affairs. The political philosophy of immigration, meanwhile, must move beyond an overtly narrow focus on legal status and legalization and attend to the metaphysical and epistemological dimensions of social identity with which immigration injustice is deeply infused. So, philosophically speaking, how should we approach the dismantling of social undocumented oppression? Recall that according to the relational egalitarian conception of justice articulated at the beginning of this book, we need to seek policies that (1) recognize and uphold universal moral equality; and (2) dismantle oppressive social relations. I argued that we need to cultivate a relational approach to considering these matters, asking ourselves what distributions of rights and goods, and what reconfiguration of values, will promote the value of achieving relational equality between the socially undocumented and their allies. Furthermore, we need to combat “images of inequality” that promote socially undocumented identity and oppression. This will, of course, require great effort on the part of both

Conclusion  197 state and non-​state actors. And finally, we have seen that eliminating borders and granting a universal freedom of movement right—​though compelling as a matter of ideal theory—​is not the appropriate mechanism for reducing socially undocumented oppression in the context of our actual, non-​ideal social world. Still, we urgently need to question and undermine the status quo in immigration and border politics. To figure out a general policy for future undermining of socially undocumented oppression, let us also review briefly just what it means to be socially undocumented—​what it means, that is, to have a socially undocumented identity. Recall that socially undocumented people are often taken to “look like” working-​class Mexicans. Mexicans have become, to harken back to Mae Ngai’s analysis from Chapter 3, paradigmatic “illegal” subjects in the United States. Socially undocumented identity is thus intimately connected to Mexican and/​or Latina/​o/​x identity, though one can be Mexican and Latina/​o/​x without necessarily being “read” as undocumented in the United States. Socially undocumented identity, we have seen, is both racialized and class-​based. Furthermore, one need not be Mexican and/​or Latina/​o/​x to be socially undocumented; I have explored ways in which Native Americans of the Mexico-​U.S. borderlands are often treated like “illegals.” Note that it is also entirely possible that Asians and Asian-​Americans in the United States (like the Filipino-​American farmworkers who initiated the Delano Grape Strike and Boycott of 1965–​1975) are and/​or have been socially undocumented. In addition, it is likely that Muslims in the United States are currently undergoing a similar process of social “illegalization.” Using the respective theories of social identity of Linda Martín Alcoff and Pierre Bourdieu, as explored in Chapter 2, I have argued that socially undocumented identity is both embodied and the site of a unique interpretive horizon. The socially undocumented, we have seen, frequently exhibit high levels of embodied fear of immigration enforcement regardless of whether they have legal permission to be in the United States. They may present themselves with a “humble demeanor” when interacting with immigration enforcement officials (recall Alejandra’s words in the beginning of this book, and anthropologist Josiah Heyman’s interview with an INS agent who claimed to be able to “spot the illegal” in a group of Latina/​o/​xs). They may

198 Conclusion move about public spaces with apprehension, and even fear leaving their homes. Pregnant, socially undocumented women may take drastic steps to hide their pregnancies, particularly when crossing the Mexico-​U.S.  border to seek prenatal care and give birth in the United States. These are all elements of socially undocumented embodiment. In addition, I argued in Chapter 5 that the socially undocumented may demonstrate a unique interpretive horizon that enables them both to perceive and resist aspects of their own “illegalization” by creating spaces and narratives of support and respect in cooperation with other socially undocumented people—​spaces in which they are not subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints on the basis of performing the very labor that U.S. society compels them to perform. Finally, before identifying a general policy for undermining socially undocumented oppression, recall that I have already surveyed a number of ways in which socially undocumented oppression can be, and is being, contested by non-​state actors. For instance, socially undocumented people can (and will) continue to resist aspects of their own oppression by forming tandas, joining labor unions, developing informal networks of support, and creating and employing dichos, artwork, and music that convey a counter-​narrative to social “illegalization”. Those non-​state actors who are not socially undocumented should support these efforts by ceasing to call people “illegals,” “illegal immigrants,” and “illegal aliens.” We should support strikes and other political actions taken by socially undocumented laborers, treat socially undocumented domestic workers and jornaleros with dignity and respect, and allow those who are both legally and socially undocumented to join our labor unions. We must also constantly listen to socially undocumented people as we engage in these efforts of unity, bearing in mind Iris Marion Young’s warning that well-​meaning outsiders often get things wrong when they do not take their instructions from those they hope to help. In addition, as we saw in Chapter 4, medical professionals working with pregnant, socially undocumented women/​people should also take steps to support patients who may be contending with “anchor-​baby” stereotypes and other forms of harassment and constraint that are particularly harmful to socially undocumented women and girls. A  focus on socially

Conclusion  199 undocumented identity, in particular, gives credence to socially undocumented resistance to oppression, and it compels non-​socially undocumented allies to learn from socially undocumented perspectives and projects. I also argued in Chapters 6 and 7 that the United States, meanwhile, should demilitarize its southern border with Mexico, as this border serves as an “image of inequality” that perpetuates social undocumented oppression. As part of this, it should end Prevention through Deterrence (PTD), which, we have seen, promotes socially undocumented identity on the part of Latin Americans and Indigenous peoples who are most affected by the “migrant journey” that PTD has served to create. We have seen, then, that “being undocumented” should not be reduced to considerations of legal status. This is certainly not to say that concerns about legal status are not valid and important. As I explored in Chapter 1, Joseph Carens has provided a compelling argument for why long-​term legally undocumented migrants should be granted a right to remain in their new society. In fact, I have suggested that my account of socially undocumented oppression could support, rather than detract from, socially undocumented oppression. My point, rather, is that “illegalization” in the United States is much broader than legally undocumented status itself—​and that it requires that we attend to the embodied, racialized, class-​based, and gendered elements of being socially undocumented or socially “illegal” in today’s world. Philosophical work on immigration justice should go hand in hand with philosophical work on social identity, following the example of Latina/​o/​x philosophers whose work I  have engaged throughout this book. With all this in mind, and on a practical level, what sort of general policy should be employed to achieve justice with regard to socially undocumented identity and oppression? Stated broadly, immigration justice demands that we ask what changes can be made to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the widespread and unjust perception that certain people can simply be “read” as “illegals,” and subjected to demeaning immigration-​ related constraints on that basis. We need to alter perceptions on the part of those who are not socially undocumented, and who oppress socially undocumented people, while

200 Conclusion also empowering socially undocumented people themselves in their interactions with others in U.S. society. Recall that in Anderson’s discussion of ways to combat oppression and promote relational equality, she argues that we should focus on empowering citizens as workers, human beings, and political agents. Of course, some methods of empowering the legally and socially undocumented will be somewhat different from those that are used for empowering citizens. Citizens, in order that their moral equality be respected, are entitled to special rights such as the right to vote and to serve on a jury. However, we have seen that it does not necessarily undermine the moral equality of the legally undocumented to deny them the right to vote in elections of a state in which they are not a member (though it may become a denial of their moral equality over time, as Carens has shown they will eventually be owed a right to remain that puts them on a pathway to citizenship). Still, Anderson’s general framework is useful for conceiving of ways to combat socially undocumented oppression. First, let me explore a possible way that the socially undocumented can be empowered as political agents. Anderson has argued that empowering people as political agents demands far more than securing for them the right to vote. It also requires securing for people the conditions for engaging as an equal in civil society. This includes access to and the ability to interact as a moral equal with others in the context of restaurants, parks, libraries, schools, and other parts of the “sphere of social life that is open to society but is not part of the state bureaucracy.”2 How might we apply this to the issue of socially undocumented oppression? Though the socially undocumented who are also legally undocumented do not have a right to vote (at least not at first)—​as it does not automatically undermine their moral equality to deny them such a right—​we saw in Chapter  1 that it does, indeed, undermine their moral equality that they must move around with a sense of trepidation. I therefore propose that as a means to empower the socially undocumented as political agents, cities should adopt municipal ID cards. 2 Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics vol. 109 no. 2 (1999), p. 317.

Conclusion  201 Municipal ID cards are, in theory, available to all citizens and residents (legally documented and undocumented). However, Municipal ID programs are designed, in the main, to support the legally undocumented as well as homeless people, the elderly, and children. Municipal ID cards enable their bearers to open bank accounts, identify themselves when interacting with law enforcement without being “found out” as legally undocumented, go to public libraries, and open bank accounts. Thus, an expansion of Municipal ID programs would do much to get the socially undocumented “out of the shadows” and into civil society, where they could take part in political actions other than voting and serving on U.S. juries (i.e., participating in strikes, protests, community organizing, consciousness-​ raising activities). Indeed, Municipal ID cards would not only empower the socially undocumented as political agents but also as human beings, which Anderson argues demands “the social conditions of being accepted by others, such as the ability to appear in public without shame, and not being ascribed outcast status.”3 Another possible way in which the socially undocumented can be empowered as human beings is through ceasing the deportations of the socially undocumented. I have argued elsewhere that in our current society, deportations constitute “the theaters of inequality” that serve to associate Latina/​o/​xs with “illegal” status.4 Almost everyone who is deported from the United States is of Latin American descent; in 2013, ICE listed nine Latin American countries in its list of “Top Ten Countries for Removal,” which represented 357,422 out of a total of 368,644 deportations that year.5 We should, at the very least, question whether deportations—​which, I have argued, are public spectacles that continuously represent working-​class Latin Americans in the “role” of deportees—​are currently permissible given our requirement to alleviate unjust socially undocumented identity and oppression. If deportations can be shown to contribute to socially undocumented oppression (a task that will require more extensive analysis than I can 3 Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” p. 318. 4 See Amy Reed-​Sandoval, “Deportations as Theaters of Inequality,” Public Affairs Quarterly vol. 29 no. 2 (April 2015), pp. 201‒215.. 5 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “FY 2013 Immigration Removals,” accessible at https://​www.ice.gov/​removal-​statistics-​2013#wcm-​survey-​target-​id.

202 Conclusion provide here) then they should be halted until such oppression ceases to exist in U.S. society. This is a manner of arguing against deportations that does not hinge on the amount of time that migrants have spent in the “new society” in question, which is another advantage of understanding “illegality” in the broader sense I am advocating. While I have already explored several ways in which socially undocumented people should be empowered as workers, allow me to add that achieving this goal will also require us to make dramatic changes to our current immigrant admissions policies. It is true, we have seen, that many socially undocumented people may not have a legal right to work in the United States—​but it is also true that the United States is extremely reliant upon legally undocumented migrant labor. Indeed, we saw in Chapter 3 that the United States has, throughout its history, effectively encouraged “illegalized immigration” to serve its labor needs despite public claims to the contrary. Socially “illegalized” labor is cheap and exploitable, and our current, elitist system of immigrant admissions maintains that status quo. I submit that while it does necessarily undermine the moral equality of the socially undocumented to deny individual legally undocumented people a legal right to work (recall the case of Gary from Chapter 1—​Gary’s moral equality was not undermined when he was turned down for a lucrative music gig due to his legally undocumented status), it does thus undermine the socially undocumented to rely upon and solicit their labor while denying them legal avenues to U.S. residency in admissions programs. In relying upon working-​class Mexican and Central American labor in the United States without making this labor “legal,” the United States is perpetuating an impermissible system of second-​ class, exploited, and “illegalized” status for the socially undocumented—​ and also the double bind explored in Chapter 5. Thus, immigration justice demands that we bring United States admissions policies into line with the actual ways in which U.S. employers use and rely upon the labor of immigrants from Mexico and Central America.6 This would serve to empower the socially undocumented as workers, human beings, and political agents. 6 On this point, see Josiah McC. Heyman, Finding a Moral Heart for US Immigration Policy (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1998). This argument is developed in the final chapters of the book.

Conclusion  203 This exploration of socially undocumented oppression has focused primarily on socially undocumented identity in the United States. Indeed, the sort of social “illegality” of which I write is U.S.-​based, and it developed as a result of particularities of U.S. history. And yet, I believe there are ways in which the methods employed in this book can be developed and employed on a global scale. We saw in Chapter  7, for instance, that the migrant journey of Central Americans through Mexico has generated an unjust cachuco identity ascribed to Central Americans in Mexico. Achieving immigration justice in Mexico will therefore require, among other things, that Mexico take action to dismantle this unjust social identity that has developed in its territory. I also suggested that other countries should consider ways in which migrant journeys into their territory—​which developed over time, as a result of local immigration and border policies—​have likewise led to unjust social identity formation that will bear unique forms in different locations. Across the globe, then, states and non-​state actors that wish to be just in the realm of immigration need to consider the relationship between immigration justice and unjust social identity development. Each particular context will require its own “bottom up” philosophical analysis, but on a global scale, we ought to consider how our immigration policies and border politics are impacting certain groups’ embodiments, positionalities, interpretive horizons, and very moral status. Finally, let me end by reiterating that empowering the socially undocumented—​and other groups who may be experiencing unjust social identity formation as a result of immigration and border politics—​as human beings will require global citizens to constantly remind themselves that, in Elie Weisel’s words, no human being is illegal. To call a human being “illegal” is not merely to commit a grammatical error but also to deny the person’s very humanity. Relational equality in the realm of immigration will not be achieved until we recognize this and change our manner of speaking, thinking, crafting policy, and—​hard as it may be—​seeing.

7

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey to the United States I.  Introduction Across the globe many people undertake journeys of different kinds in hopes of migrating, with or without legal authorization, to a country that is different from the one in which they currently reside. Migrant journeys involve planes, trains, buses, taxis, boats, and physical movement that can be grueling. They feature a variety of places where migrants may sleep, duck, run, hide, and seek refuge. They involve borders, deserts, street corners, waterways, and highways. Migrant journeys are often undertaken in the context of a web of social relations in which people call upon friends and family who have previously undertaken the journey. Migrants may befriend fellow migrants along the way and quickly develop new networks of love and support. Sometimes, migrants undertaking the journey drown under capsized boats, become dehydrated, and starve to death. Migrants may be raped and assaulted by gangs, law enforcement officials, and even other migrants as part of their journey. Migrant journeys are also under-​theorized, and they confound traditional theories of global and immigration justice. Those who are undertaking them are in transit, continuously moving from one state to another in a journey that may span many different sovereign territories. Thus, the normative challenges they present are not clearly accessible via the theoretical frameworks offered in the context of the philosophical open borders debate. For even if we settle the question of whether states have the right to maintain and defend national borders and implement certain policies of immigrant exclusion—​settling in favor of either an “open borders” or a “closed borders” world—​the “non-​ideal

Socially Undocumented. Amy Reed-​Sandoval, Oxford University Press 2020. © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190619800.001.0001

168  Socially Undocumented theory questions” of what is owed to migrants who are currently undertaking, are intending to undertake, and/​or have undertaken a dangerous migrant journey still need to be answered. In addition, the political philosophy of undocumented migration in particular—​which has focused, to date, on important issues like whether, and under what conditions, undocumented migrants should be granted a right to remain, the nature of immigrant exploitation, and the injustice of certain immigrant enforcement and expulsion strategies—​has yet to contend with the question of what is owed to people who are actively moving and migrating but who have yet to actually cross the borders of the state in which they are hoping to live. In sum, our best theories of borders and undocumented migration leave us with urgent, unanswered questions about the relationship between immigration justice and the perilous migrant journeys that are being undertaken on a global scale. I have two main goals in this chapter. First, I aim 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. I shall argue that this journey is a violation of justice in the scope of U.S. immigration policy. In so doing, I hope to provide the beginnings of a theoretical framework for assessing from a moral point of view a variety of “migrant journeys” on a global scale. Of course, each particular migrant journey will require its own “bottom up” empirical and theoretical analysis, as all such journeys feature unique geographies, histories, weather patterns, dangers, and more. Nevertheless, I believe that the particular migrant journey that I am focusing on for the purpose of “bottom up” theoretical analysis has features that can be found in other morally troubling migrant journeys, and I shall expand on this point at the end of this chapter. More specifically, I shall argue that the aforementioned migrant journey of many “unauthorized” (or, better yet, “soon-​to-​be unauthorized” or “intending-​to-​be-​unauthorized”; we have yet to fashion an appropriate term for this status) Mexicans and Central Americans toward and sometimes into the United States via the Sonoran Desert

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  169 and across the militarized Mexico-​U.S.  border is unjust because it plays a key role in the perpetuation of socially undocumented oppression within the United States, in violation of relational egalitarian justice. Second, building upon the previous chapter’s discussion, I  argue, 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. I present this as a “third option” for pursuing an ethics of borders: one that does not fall neatly into either an “open borders” or a “closed borders” paradigm. I shall also argue that demilitarizing the border is a superior alternative to a full-​fledged freedom of movement right or “open borders” program for the purpose of undermining the oppressive effects of the migrant journey on socially undocumented people. Prior to beginning, allow me to clarify that I am concerned with rendering the migrant journey a matter of immigration justice in particular. This does not mean that the migrant journey in question is not also, say, a matter of economic injustice, human rights violations, and the result of problematic U.S. military interventions in Latin America. I am claiming, however, that justice demands that the migrant journey be addressed not only through, say, global economic reform, but also through immigration policy. This chapter is organized as follows. I begin by offering an overview of the nature of the particular “migrant journey” that is under exploration, borrowing from inter-​disciplinary scholarship on Mexican and Central American migration toward and into the United States. Second, I argue that the migrant journey contributes to socially undocumented oppression in the United States. Third, using relational egalitarian theory, I  argue that the migrant journey in question is therefore unjust in the scope of immigration policy. Fourth, I argue for the demilitarization of the Mexico-​U.S.  border as a response to this injustice. As part of this process, I discuss why this is a superior option to a full-​fledged “open borders” program. Fifth, I discuss how this discussion may connect to urgently needed theoretical analysis of other migrant journeys across the globe. Last, I consider two possible objections to my view.

170  Socially Undocumented

II.  Defining the Migrant Journey Prior to arguing that the migrant journey of Central Americans and Mexicans toward and sometimes into the United States, which will be referred to hereafter simply as the “migrant journey,” reinforces and perpetuates socially undocumented oppression, allow me to provide further details about the nature of this migrant journey. Though under-​theorized in political philosophy, this journey has received considerable attention in the mass media and multi-​disciplinary migration studies. For instance, in 2002 the LA Times ran a six-​part series titled “Enrique’s Journey,” which “chronicles the story of Enrique, who traveled alone from Honduras in search of his mother in the United States.”1 It begins with narration of the desperate circumstances that compel Enrique to attempt to journey to the United States. He hopes to escape the violence, poverty, and terror that encompassed him at home in Honduras. Enrique makes seven attempts to enter and traverse Mexico. Each time he is repeatedly robbed and beaten nearly to death by police, gang members, and even other migrants attempting to survive the journey. Barely surviving, Enrique makes an eighth attempt to traverse Mexico to the Mexico-​U.S. border. He boards The Beast—​La Bestia—​in Chiapas, Mexico. La Bestia, as many are aware, is a notoriously dangerous mode of transport for migrants seeking to enter the United States; many migrants are crushed beneath the train in an effort to jump on or off, and a great deal of violence occurs aboard it. Nevertheless, migrants like Enrique opt to use it because those riding La Bestia, unlike those crossing Mexico by bus, can jump off and hide from la migra when the train arrives at regular immigration check-​points.2 Each time the train slows Enrique is terrified that Mexican immigration officers will apprehend him. He finally makes it to the Mexican border town of Nuevo Laredo, where he nearly starves to death while 1 Sonia Nazario, “Enrique’s Journey:  A Six-​Part Times Series,” Los Angeles Times, September through October, 2002, accessible at http://​www.latimes.com/​nation/​immigration/​la-​fg-​enriques-​journey-​sgstorygallery.html. 2 Nazario, “Enrique’s Journey.” See also, Sonia Nazaro, Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother (New York: Random House, 2014).

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  171 trying to save up money to call his mother in the United States. He attempts to earn change washing cars until his bucket is stolen. He is now shoeless, barely clothed, and has taken to sniffing glue to mask his hunger pains. He hopes that upon calling his mother, she will wire to him the $1,200 he needs in order to hire a smuggler to take him to the United States by floating across the Rio Bravo on an inner tube. Sadly, Enrique’s story is not unique. Countless Mexicans and Central Americans seeking to enter the United States without legal authorization are routinely subjected to similar abuses and indignities over the course of their attempted journeys to the United States. Some of these migrants are rendered additionally vulnerable due to their gender and sexual identities. For instance, it was reported following a Fusion investigation that approximately 80% of Central American women and girls who attempt to enter the United States via Mexico are raped over the course of their journey.3 According to a 2013 study conducted by the Mexican National Institute of Public Health, approximately 36% of gay, lesbian, and transgender migrants who seek refuge in migrant shelters, as well as 57% of those who choose not to stay in shelters, are violently and often sexually assaulted.4 As previously stated, I  am particularly interested, in this chapter, in the migrant journey that Mexicans, Central Americans and other Latin Americans make into the United States viaMexico through the Sonoran Desert. Of course, for many unauthorized Central American and South American migrants to the United States, the perils of the migrant journey begin long before Mexico is reached. Migration is necessarily transnational, and migration systems connect states. I will focus on this issue toward the end of this chapter, where I outline possible applications of my analysis on a global scale. To begin with, however, concerned as I am with possible obligations that the United States may have with regard to the perils of the migrant journey in the scope

3 Eleanor Goldberg, “80% of Central American Women, Girls Are Raped Crossing into the US,” Huffington Post, September 12, 2014. Accessible at http://​www. huffingtonpost.com/​2014/​09/​12/​central-​america-​migrantsrape_​n_​5806972.html. 4 Amy Lieberman, “Gay and Transgender Migrants Facing Staggering Violence in Mexico,” Atlantic, July 18, 2013, accessible at http://​www.theatlantic.com/​international/​ archive/​2013/​07/​-​gay-​and-​transgender-​migrantsface-​staggering-​violence-​in-​mexico/​ 277915/​.

172  Socially Undocumented of immigration justice, I am choosing to focus on a part of the migrant journey that is a direct consequence of U.S. immigration policy. Many hardships that Mexican and Central American migrants experience in the Sonoran Desert en route to the United States are indeed unjust consequences of U.S. immigration policy, particularly in light of the “Prevention through Deterrence” (or PTD) strategy that was adopted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the 1990s. Prior to the adoption of PTD, it was customary for unauthorized migrants entering the United States via Mexico to enter through urban ports of entry such as Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana. U.S. Border Patrol agents would wait until these migrants had crossed the border at these points and then chase them into Latina/​o/​x-​majority urban areas where they would often be confused with the “legal” resident Latina/​o/​x population. In those days, the migrant journey was vastly shorter, less violent, and less deadly. However, such unauthorized migrant crossings through densely populated urban areas brought about rampant law enforcement targeting of Latina/​o/​x citizens and legal U.S. residents in these areas. This practice was therefore responded to with complaints from the local Latina/​o/​x population who were being harassed while going about their day-​to-​day activities. Following such complaints of racial profiling, in 1993, 400 U.S. Border Patrol agents were stationed between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez through Operation Blockade. The goal of Operation Blockade was to deter unauthorized migrants from crossing in this particular urban area.5 This served to “push” the migrant stream out of the area. Due to the local success of this initiative, the U.S. government adopted “Prevention through Deterrence,” a program that effectively militarized the Mexico-​U.S. border along urban migration routes. This served (and continues to serve) to “push” unauthorized migrants into the Sonoran Desert. As Jason De León explains, “rather than shooting people as they jumped the fence, Prevention Through Deterrence set the stage for the desert to become the new ‘victimizer’ of border transgressors.”6 Now, 5 Jason De León, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), p. 30. 6 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 35.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  173 many migrants wishing to enter the United States via Mexico must attempt to survive all of the potential dangers of the desert. In addition, they often need to hire coyotes to find the safest route, and they are at high risk of being violently attacked or kidnapped by smugglers in unpopulated regions of the desert. According to a conservative estimate provided by De Leon, “5,596 people died while attempting to migrate between 1998 and 2012, and between 2000 and September 2014, the bodies of 2,771 people were found in southern Arizona, enough corpses to fill the seats on fifty-​four greyhound buses.”7 And yet, most experts on the matter agree that PTD and related policies have not successfully lowered rates of unauthorized migration from Latin America. It is also important to note that Prevention through Deterrence, in “funneling” migrants through the potentially dangerous and deadly Sonoran Desert, is consequently “funneling” unauthorized migrants through Indigenous land—​particularly that of the Tohono O’odham.8 According to some estimates by O’odham officials, approximately 1,500 unauthorized migrants attempt to gain entry to the U.S.  interior via the approximately 70 miles of border that traverses the Tohono O’odham land between the Baboquivari and Tumacácori mountain ranges. While this land plays a fundamental role in Tohono O’odham life, philosophy, and spirituality, it constitutes extremely rough terrain for migrants who are unfamiliar with it. As De León puts it, “what’s agonizing for the Tohono O’odham is that the American federal government has turned their sacred landscape into a killing field, a massive open grave.”9 Not only are the Tohono O’odham burdened with the economic, health, and environmental costs of so much migration through their territory, they must also contend with the nearly 1,770 U.S. Border Patrol agents on their land, many of whom frequently treat the Tohono O’odham and other Indigenous groups as“illegals” on or nearby their own territory. This, then, is the particular migrant journey on which I  am focusing in this chapter: the journey that many Mexicans and Central 7 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 36. 8 For further discussion, see José Antonio Lucero, “Friction, Conversion, and Contention: Prophetic Politics in the Tohono O’odham Borderlands,” Latin American Research Review vol. 49 (2014). 9 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 8.

174  Socially Undocumented Americans make on foot toward the United States, traversing Mexico, the Sonoran Desert, and Tohono O’odham land in hopes of successfully crossing the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border to live and work in the United States. Having established the nature of the migrant journey in question, I now turn to the task of showing why it constitutes injustice in the scope of immigration policy.

III.  The Migrant Journey and Socially Undocumented Oppression The migrant journey reinforces in three ways the belief that on the mere basis of their appearance, some people—​that is, those with socially undocumented identity—​do not belong in the United States and can therefore be subjected to demeaning, immigration-​related constraints. That is, there are three ways in which migrant journey reinforces unjust social “illegality.” First, it is frequently used in anti-​immigrant rhetoric that indicates that the journey is so immoral and/​or horrid that those who undertake it are consequently rendered unfit to be in the United States. In so doing, it presents those who undertake the journey in terms of degrading, immigration-​related constraints. Second, it is used in rhetoric that reduces the socially undocumented to the physical migration process itself. If the socially undocumented can be reduced to the movement aspect of the migration process, it is easy to present them as permanently unsettled and thus undeserving of membership in the United States. And third, much the geographical terrain of the migrant journey is depicted as an anti-​immigration weapon and not as the Indigenous sovereign land that it is. This helps sustain the conditions through which Native Americans in the territorial United States are rendered “illegals”—​that is, rendered socially undocumented—​on and nearby their own lands. In preparation for these arguments, let us begin by noting that there appears to be at least some connection between how individuals arrived at the place they currently are, and their social standing in that place. One is granted more prestige if one arrives at a party in a sports car than if one hitchhikes to said party (unless the party is thrown by

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  175 friends who defy certain social conventions). This connection can be noted on this admittedly less serious level, but it can also be noted in relation to the way that different immigrant groups are viewed. For instance, in the United States it is a source of prestige to have an ancestor who arrived on the Mayflower, even though riding the Mayflower was not necessarily a luxurious experience. Along similar lines, in Australia it is a source of prestige to, as David Miller puts it, have had “an ancestor who was carried over in chains on the First Fleet.”10 In sum, it is clear that the “mode of arrival” of an immigrant group can play, and indeed has played, a significant role in the social standing of that immigrant group and its descendants. Let us now explore how the “mode of arrival” that is the migrant journey plays a role in the way that the socially undocumented are viewed in the United States. First, it is frequently used in anti-​immigrant rhetoric that indicates that the journey is itself so immoral and/​or horrid that those who undertake it are consequently unfit to be in the United States—​thereby presenting those who undertake the journey in terms of degrading, immigration-​related constraints. To begin to see why, let us note a fact about some Latin American migrant journeys to the United States that does not get mentioned in anti-​immigrant rhetoric. In fact, many unauthorized migrants in the United States did not, and do not, undertake the migrant journey. Rather, they simply overstayed their visas. Approximately 28% of undocumented migrants in the United States fall into this category.11 Many such migrants drove across the border at urban ports of entry in cars (their own, or those of relatives) or in buses. Some take an airplane to the United States. And yet, one never hears undocumented migrants referred to in anti-​immigrant rhetoric as “visa over-​stayers” or “drivers-​across-​the-​border” or “airport people.” Instead, the only time migrant journeys are discussed in anti-​immigrant rhetoric is when they can be depicted as so horrendous, undignified, and inhumane that they can be used as part of an effort to express that the people that undertake them do not belong in 10 David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 26. 11 David Seminara, “New Pew Report Confirms Visa Overstays Are Driving Increased Illegal Immigration,” Center for Immigration Studies, September 24, 2013, accessed on July 29, 2016, at http://​cis.org/​seminara/​new-​pew-​reportconfirms-​visa​overstays-​are-​driving-​increased-​illegal-​immigration.

176  Socially Undocumented the United States. Common slogans used by those who oppose Latin American immigration to the US include:  “Once You Jumped the Fence You Broke the Law,” and “Stop the Invasion.” In different ways, both of these slogans refer to the migrant journey. “Jumping the fence” is an obvious reference to how many undocumented migrants enter the United States, while the term “invasion” refers to what is considered to be the aggressive crossing of a territory. Another example of how the migrant journey gets used in anti-​ immigrant rhetoric is that of the “immigrant crossing sign” that was commissioned by the California Department of Transportation in 1990, after over 100 undocumented migrants were killed by cars while darting across the border crossing of San Ysidro. The well-​known sign features a man, a woman, and a little girl with pig-​tails holding hands and running. Many are aware that this image has, in fact, become iconic for many immigrant rights activists. It is somewhat less known, however, that the image has also been adopted by many anti-​immigrant groups. Sometimes, the image is presented by these groups in its original form, and sometimes the running family is depicted being chased by a man with a gun.12 As we can see, the image of migrants desperately running—​such a prominent and often desperate feature of the migrant journey—​plays a significant role in anti-​immigrant rhetoric and thinking. It is clear, then, that the Latin American migrant journey to the United States is being called upon by anti-​immigrationists, and only being called upon in this context, when it can play a role in establishing anti-​immigrant sentiment.13 It is clearly powerful, from an “anti-​Latino-​immigration-​perspective,” to suggest that Latina/​o/​x immigrants should run away, get back behind the fence, be forced to run away from immigration enforcement officials, and be compelled to stop “invading” the United States. In other words, it is clearly powerful to represent such migrants in terms of degrading, immigration-​related 12 See, for instance, “Children and Youth in History.” 13 Leo Chavez has further argued that fears on the part of Anglo-​America that Latin Americans will “reconquer” the US Southwest fuel anti-​Latina/​o racism. This is one possible explanation for why the migrant journey plays a role in anti-​immigrant activism. See Leo Chavez, The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). For further discussion, see Otto Santa Ana, Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002).

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  177 constraints. The migrant journey is depicted as immoral, dangerous, and horrible to suggest that those who undertake it ought not to be in the United States. A second way in which the migrant journey is employed to reinforce socially undocumented oppression in the United States is through reducing the socially undocumented to the migration process itself—​particularly in terms of the movement aspect of migration. If the socially undocumented are constantly viewed as unsettled and “in movement,” the idea that they do not belong is reinforced. One important example of this can be found in the employment of the term “anchor babies.” The babies of Latina immigrants, along with other immigrant women of color who give birth in the United States, are sometimes referred to as “anchor babies” in sexist anti-​immigrant rhetoric.14 The usage of this term presents us with a long list of moral problems, but it is particularly telling that the metaphor of an anchor of a ship is employed in describing Latina mothers and their children, as though these humans beings can be reduced to the movement of a ship into the United States, and its eventual, problematic “anchoring” there. A second example of the socially undocumented being reduced to the physical movement aspects of their migration processes, and thus rendered intrinsically unsettled, is so-​called Operation Wetback. Implemented in 1954, Operation Wetback was an initiative on the part of the Immigration and Naturalization Service designed to apprehend and deport Mexican workers in the United States. The fact that an INS initiative officially contained the term “wetback” in its title is particularly illustrative of the connection between the migrant journey and anti-​immigrationism. As discussed previously in this book, the term “wetback,” or mojado in Spanish, is a pejorative term that refers to the fact that many unauthorized Mexican migrants swim across the Rio Grande/​Rio Bravo en route to the United States. In referring to unauthorized migrants as “wetbacks,” human beings are being reduced to a difficult, constraining aspect of their migration process itself. The mojados referred to in “Operation Wetback” are not even depicted as migrants seeking amnesty—​they are reduced to their experience 14 See also Leo Chavez, Anchor Babies and the Challenge of Birthright Citizenship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017).

178  Socially Undocumented swimming across the Rio Grande. The implication, of course, is that someone who is unsettled and in transit is not fit to reside permanently in the United States. Third, much of the geographical terrain of the migrant journey is depicted as an anti-​immigration weapon and not as the Indigenous sovereign land that it is. This helps sustain the conditions through which Native Americans in the Mexico-​ U.S.  borderlands are rendered“illegals” on and near their own land. As discussed previously, Prevention through Deterrence policies served to “funnel” unauthorized migrants entering the United States via Mexico through the Sonoran Desert, and frequently through Tohono O’odham land. Now, the desert itself is frequently being used in propaganda distributed by the U.S. government in Mexican border towns aiming to discourage people from migrating. In this propaganda, the desert terrain is presented as dangerous and deadly. A harsh, blazing sun is often depicted, shining upon “frightening” desert animals and individual migrants suffering from dehydration. However, no mention is made in this anti-​immigration propaganda of the fact that it is Tohono O’odham land being depicted here, with all the philosophical significance this entails for the Tohono O’odham people.15 It goes almost without saying the Tohono O’odham were never consulted by the U.S. federal government when Prevention through Deterrence was adopted despite the fact that it served to funnel migrants through Tohono O’odham land. Furthermore, the connections between immigration policy and the undermining of Indigenous sovereignty are rarely made in discussions about U.S. immigration policy.16 We can see, however, that the immigration policy that brought about the migrant journey in question is a strategy of erasure used against the Tohono O’odham people and other Indigenous peoples who live 15 For further discussion, see De León, The Land of Open Graves. 16 Will Kymlicka, for instance, sharply distinguishes the “polyethnic rights” and “special representation rights” owed to migrants and other minority groups from the “national minority rights” owed to Indigenous groups in Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For a critique of this line of thinking, see Amy Reed-​Sandoval, “Oaxacan Transborder Communities and the Political Philosophy of Immigration,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy vol. 30 no. 1 (2016), pp. 91–​104.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  179 in the Sonoran Desert.17 This is because they are being burdened by the migrant journey in many ways that do not get recognized in public debates about immigration. In addition, as long as the desert is employed and depicted as an anti-​immigration weapon, and not in terms of Indigenous land, Indigenous peoples of the borderlands who are taken to “look illegal” will continue to be rendered “illegals” on and by their very own land in the United States. Finally, note that the desert that migrants cross also gets employed in anti-​Mexican rhetoric. For instance, Jason De León has studied the ways in which migrant belongings that get left behind in the desert have “become the physical evidence used by anti-​ immigration activists to demonstrate that Latino border crossers are destroying America.”18 He cites one online commentator on an article about border-​crossings who wrote that “Mexico is a DUMP and they [Mexicans] can turn anything into a dump, starting in our deserts, and then the communities they settle.”19 As De León points out, while some belongings that migrants leave behind in the desert can, perhaps, be categorized as “refuse,” “many of the things border crossers leave behind in the desert are valued objects not meant to be left behind, such as pocket Bibles, family photos, and love letters.”20 As we can see, even the objects that get left behind in the desert are used to assert that working-​class Mexicans do not belong in the United States. To summarize, I  submit that the migrant journey reinforces socially undocumented oppression in the United States in many ways. It is conveyed by anti-​immigrationists as being so horrific and immoral that those who undertake it are not fit to be in the United States. Furthermore, anti-​immigrationists employ imagery of the migrant journey to reduce the socially undocumented to the movement 17 For an interesting overview of strategies of erasure employed by colonial settler states against Indigenous peoples—​with particular focus on how these erasures impact Indigenous women, girls, and two-​spirit people, see Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner and Kyle Powys Whyte, “Theorizing Indigeneity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism,” in Paul C. Taylor and Linda Martín Alcoff, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 152–​167. 18 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 170. 19 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 170. 20 De León, The Land of Open Graves, p. 170.

180  Socially Undocumented component of the migration process, rendering them perpetually and almost intrinsically “unsettled.” In addition, the Sonoran Desert itself gets described by immigration law enforcement and U.S. citizens as a “trash heap” and a dangerous and deadly anti-​immigration weapon, rather than as sovereign Indigenous land. The migrant journey thus reinforces the belief that the socially undocumented do not belong in the United States and can therefore be subjected to demeaning immigration-​ related constraints. The socially undocumented are continuously rendered in migrant journey discourse as unsettled and perpetually moving about in untoward ways. They are depicted as immoral as a result of making the journey. It is suggested that they are invading, rightful victims of the desert sun, desert animals, and desert dehydration. They are depicted as rightfully being chased by people with weapons in the midst of state-​sponsored violence. And perhaps most important, the migrant journey effectively reduces the socially undocumented to demeaning, immigration-​related constraint in the mainstream U.S.  imaginary—​ thus perpetuating a core aspect of socially undocumented oppression as identified in Chapter 1.

IV.  The Migrant Journey and Relational Egalitarian Justice With the previous considerations in mind, I  shall now argue that the migrant journey violates relational egalitarian justice for several reasons. First, it clearly constitutes what Debra Satz has called a “theater” or “image of inequality.”21 That is, it perpetuates the widespread idea that the socially undocumented are inferior in status to those who are not socially undocumented. As we have seen, the migrant journey serves to associate the socially undocumented with demeaning immigration-​related constraint, as those who undertake it are represented as so-​called wetbacks being victimized by the desert sun and the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border, running and hiding and 21 Debra Satz, “Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor,” Ethics vol. 106 no. 1 (1995), pp.  63–​85.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  181 leaving their “refuse” behind along the journey. In fact, once again, the migrant journey seems to naturalize these stereotypes; note that the term “wetback” refers to the migrants themselves and not the border politics that compel many migrants to swim across the Rio Bravo. Indeed, the migrant journey seems to reinforce the inferior status of the socially undocumented in some of the same ways that the institution of prostitution reinforces women’s inferior status to men. Debra Satz has argued that the institution of prostitution in our society problematically represents “the idea that women must service men’s sexual needs.”22 In a somewhat similar fashion, the migrant journey represents the socially undocumented as rightful or even “natural” victims of various forms of demeaning, immigration-​related constraint. Second, the migrant journey violates relational egalitarian justice by constituting a form of cultural imperialism. Recall from the introduction to this book Iris Marion Young’s arguments that cultural imperialism “involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm,” and that under cultural imperialism, oppressed groups “find themselves defined from the outside, positioned, played, by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere.”23 We have seen that the migrant journey impacts how the socially undocumented are viewed and defined. When people become labeled “wetbacks” and “anchor babies,” and when they are themselves reduced to difficult aspects of the journey itself, they are clearly being “defined from the outside” and “positioned . . . by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere.” This has an oppressive, dehumanizing effect on socially undocumented people in the United States, and it is often perpetuated by many members of dominant (i.e., Anglo-​American) U.S. culture who use U.S. border politics to “define” socially undocumented people from the outside. Third, the migrant journey reinforces, in Elizabeth Anderson’s words, a form of impermissible “social relationship by which some people dominate, exploit, marginalize, demean, and inflict violence 22 Satz, “Markets in Women’s Sexual Labor,” p. 78. 23 Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 61.

182  Socially Undocumented upon others.”24 We have seen that the migrant journey is often used by anti-​immigrationists who are not themselves socially undocumented to marginalize and demean those who are. This contributes to an inegalitarian society in which socially undocumented people (including those who both do and do not have legal permission to reside in the United States) are deprived of equal respect and the social conditions of their freedom. For all these reasons, the migrant journey serves to violate the moral equality of the socially undocumented. It is therefore inconsistent with what we have seen to be the basic requirements of relational egalitarian justice.

V.  Demilitarizing the Mexico-​U.S. Border as a Requirement of Immigration Justice So how and why should the migrant journey be addressed through U.S. immigration policy and as a matter of immigration justice? Let us begin by laying some groundwork. It is widely acknowledged that the United States and other countries, in order to be just, cannot adopt racist criteria in immigration policy.25 No egalitarian will dispute, for instance, that the Naturalization Act of 1790, which asserted that only “white persons” were eligible for citizenship, was an unjust immigration policy. Similarly, it is widely acknowledged that the notorious Chinese Exclusion Acts—​which barred Chinese people from entering the United States on the grounds of nothing other than then-​ rampant anti-​Chinese racism—​was also an unjust immigration policy. Injustice in immigration policy can occur outside of the realm of immigrant admissions policies that make explicit reference to race and ethnicity. As José Jorge Mendoza has argued, “immigration controls are not simply discriminatory because they are based on racist or ethnocentric attitudes and beliefs but can themselves also be the source of social and civic ostracism.”26 For example, Arizona SB1070 allowed 24 Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics vol. 109 no. 2 (1999), p. 313. 25 For further discussion, see Michael Blake, “Immigration, Association, and Anti-​ Discrimination,” Ethics vol. 122 no. 4 (2012). 26 José Jorge Mendoza, “Discrimination and the Presumptive Rights of Migrants,” Critical Philosophy of Race vol. 2 no. 1 (2014), p. 68, my emphasis.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  183 law enforcement officers to stop and detain people about whom they have a “reasonable suspicion” of being undocumented. Unlike the Chinese Exclusion Acts, SB1070 makes no explicit reference to race or ethnicity, and it is not an immigrant admissions policy. However, it is nevertheless widely regarded as being a justification for racial profiling against Latina/​o/​xs. On these grounds, it is widely considered unjust by anti-​racists and egalitarians in the realm of immigration policy. Having established that immigration controls can be the source of civic and social ostracism—​even if they make no explicit reference to race and ethnicity—​let us return to the question of the migrant journey. One might argue that unlike, say, the Chinese Exclusion Acts and Arizona SB1070, the migrant journey is not an immigration policy in and of itself. I have already outlined reasons to reject such an argument. We have seen that the migrant journey as we know it today is not only a direct consequence of Prevention through Deterrence, but it is also a fundamental part of that immigration policy. The PTD was designed, in part, to funnel migrants through the potentially dangerous and deadly Sonoran Desert irrespective of the wishes of the Tohono O’odham people who are sovereign over part of this land. When we come to understand that the migrant journey is part of an established federal immigration policy, it becomes clear that it is, in fact, both “a source of civic and social ostracism” and a core aspect of U.S. immigration policy. This brings us to the question of what ought to be done to correct the injustice of the migrant journey. Using a relational egalitarian framework of justice, it seems that we should promote those immigration policies that (1) diminish the aforementioned oppressive effects of the migrant journey on the social standing of socially undocumented people; and (2) promote respect for and the democratic equality of the socially undocumented. As Elizabeth Anderson notes, “democratic equality conceives of equality as a relationship among people,” and under a framework of democratic equality, “egalitarians can take other features of society besides the distribution of goods, such as social norms, as subject to critical scrutiny.”27 In the next chapter, I explore



27

Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” p. 336.

184  Socially Undocumented various ways in which a relational egalitarian conception of justice can be employed to diminish socially undocumented oppression. For now, though, let us focus on the ethics of borders in particular—​and the ways in which the Mexico-​U.S. border may uphold social norms that unjustly denigrate the socially undocumented. One might argue that a universal freedom of movement right would serve to generate the sorts of social relationships called for under a relational egalitarian framework, thereby diminishing the oppressive effects of the migrant journey on the socially undocumented. However, for reasons explored in the preceding chapter, it is not at all clear that granting a universal freedom of movement right (or implementing a full-​fledged “open borders” program) will achieve this goal. First, I argued that a global freedom of movement right could, if implemented, feasibly promote or even exacerbate socially undocumented oppression. This would hold true even if an open borders program eliminated some of the dangerous aspects of the migrant journey. Second, I argued that the open borders programs argued for by many political philosophers could, at least in theory, entail heavily militarized borders (like the current Mexico-​U.S. border) even if a universal freedom of movement right is granted. Indeed, a militarized border wall could, on these views, feasibly be employed to keep out those who are deemed ineligible for freedom of movement under the restrictions on free movement allowed for by open borders theorists. I argued that these restrictions could effectively perpetuate socially undocumented oppression. Thus, even under an open borders system, the migrant journey could continue to oppress the socially undocumented in the same ways I have explored in this chapter. And third, I argued that an “open borders” paradigm, though compelling and important as a matter of ideal theory, makes it difficult to theorize and address actual migrant journeys as a matter of social justice. On these grounds, I submit that a universal freedom of movement right is not an adequate response to the injustice of the migrant journey. On the other hand, one might argue that the Mexico-​U.S. border, as it currently stands, is simply too porous. One might insist that the problem is not that it is overtly militarized but, rather, that it does an insufficient job of keeping unauthorized migrants out. Instead, we should increase military spending at the Mexico-​U.S. border and build

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  185 bigger, stronger border walls. The United States should take greater steps to deter migrants from trying to enter in the first place. A further “closing” of borders is, on this view, an adequate solution to the injustice of the migrant journey. This view is problematic for at least two reasons. First, as explored in this chapter, increased militarization of the Mexico-​U.S. border has not, in the past, successfully deterred unauthorized migration from Mexico and Central America. And even if it could conceivably deter unauthorized migration, at least some migrants will surely find ways to cross (or will at least try to cross) if their sense of need is great enough. In such cases, increased militarization will simply bolster the ways in which the Mexico-​U.S. border functions as an “image of inequality” for those migrants who are still compelled to enter the United States. Second, even if an increasingly militarized border could conceivably “keep out” all future unauthorized migrants, it would continue to stigmatize those socially undocumented people who are already in the United States (including people with and without legal authorization to reside in the United States). Thus, any further “closing” of the border through increased militarization seems impermissible at the bar of relational egalitarian justice. There is a “third option,” however:  the demilitarization of the Mexico-​U.S.  border. While a policy of demilitarization alone will ­certainly not eliminate all the perils of the migrant journey—​perils that, once again, often begin long before the Mexico-​U.S. borderlands region is reached—​it will diminish a great deal of the violence, suffering, and death that is currently characteristic of the migrant journey. Furthermore, in disassociating socially undocumented bodies from popular ideas about death in the desert, swimming across the Rio Bravo, running and hiding from immigration enforcement when undertaking one’s border-​crossing (which are all forms of demeaning immigration-​related constraint), an important source of socially undocumented oppression will be eliminated. Indeed, demilitarizing the Mexico-​U.S. border will diminish the ways in which the current border serves as an “image of inequality” that constitutes cultural imperialism and reinforces disrespectful, inegalitarian social relations between those who are and are not socially undocumented. As Grant Silva has explained, “the militarization of the border blurs the line between

186  Socially Undocumented ‘enemy,’ those whom militarized borders are meant to keep out, and ‘stranger,’ those residents of a polity who resemble outsiders, a kind of guild via racial, ethnic, religious, or even linguistic association.”28 Demilitarizing the Mexico-​U.S. border, on the other hand, will help to restore rightful relations between those who are and are not socially undocumented in the United States by ceasing to associate the socially undocumented with a number of immigration-​related constraints. What would such a process entail? Demilitarization, in this case, means that federal troops should not be stationed at the Mexico-​ U.S. border. Federal military weaponry, including weaponized aircraft and armored vehicles, should also be removed from these spaces. The U.S. military and National Guard should not be present at the border for the purpose of immigration enforcement. The United States should also eliminate the immigration policies of which the migrant journey is a part, including Prevention through Deterrence. This requires the United States to pay particular attention to the demilitarization of its southern border, particularly around urban ports of entry like San Diego and El Paso, so that unauthorized migrants entering the United States via Mexico are no longer effectively funneled into the desert. In addition, the United States must bring the number of immigration enforcement officials stationed at the border to pre-​1990s levels. To put into perspective what I am calling for, note that in 2001 the United States employed 9,100 Border Patrol personnel, but by 2013, 21,400 agents were employed by the U.S.  government (85% of which are stationed at the Mexico-​U.S. border).29 In addition, Customs and Border Protection agents stationed at fixed checkpoints on the border should treat border-​crossers with respect, and all border-​crossers should endure the same, minimal level of interrogation unless there is clear evidence that they pose a legitimate security threat. Borders should also be relatively easy to cross even at non-​designated checkpoints; in other words, they should be porous.

28 Grant J. Silva, “On the Militarization of Borders and the Judicial Right to Exclude,” Public Affairs Quarterly vol. 29 no. 2 (2015), p. 223. 29 See Marc Rosenblum, “Border Security: Immigration Enforcement through Ports of Entry,” Congressional Research Service Report R42138, last accessed July 29, 2016, at http://​fpc.state.gov/​documents/​organization/​180681.pdf.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  187 Furthermore, the United States should take steps to publicize this demilitarization throughout Latin America, so that people who are considering migrating to the United States know that they no longer need to cross the Sonoran Desert. This will have numerous positive consequences apart from the undermining of socially undocumented oppression. Unauthorized migrants will choose safer routes into the United States which will lower rates of sickness, dehydration, and death. In addition, migrants will no longer be dependent (or, at least, they will not be as dependent) on coyotes, while the risk of being kidnapped, smuggled, and sexually assaulted will be drastically reduced. With the time and cost of the journey being reduced significantly, migrants will be less dependent on migrant shelters in the north of Mexico, which will decrease the vulnerability of female, transgender, and gay and lesbian migrants who are particularly at risk in these shelters. And, once again, on a representational level, this policy will send a clear message that the migrant journey, as we know it today, is simply unacceptable. We can then reasonably expect to undermine the employment of the migrant journey in racist, anti-​immigrationist rhetoric. Finally, the United States should recognize Indigenous sovereignty in the Mexico-​U.S. Borderlands as part of its immigration policies pertaining to the Mexico-​U.S. border. As we have seen, immigration legislation such as Prevention through Deterrence has had the effect of reinforcing socially undocumented identity and oppression among Native peoples of the borderlands on and nearby their own land. Moving forward, any policies pertaining to immigration enforcement of the Mexico-​U.S. border must be developed in cooperation with the Indigenous nations and communities they will affect. In addition, Indigenous nations and communities who have seen their traditional land bisected by the Mexico-​U.S.  border should be granted unrestricted crossing rights across the border and throughout their land.30 This new strategy should also be well publicized, such that members of 30 This policy has long been advocated by the Tohono O’odham and other Indigenous nations whose territory is bisected by settler state borders. For further discussion, see also the American Friends Service Committee, A New Path:  Toward a Human Immigration Policy, accessible at http://​www.afsc.org/​sites/​afsc.civicactions.net/​files/​ documents/​%20New%20Path%20full%20version%20.pdf.

188  Socially Undocumented the public cease to view the borderlands desert landscape as an anti-​ immigration weapon. They should come to understand it as, among other things, sovereign Indigenous space. As Indigenous groups like the Tohono O’odham have long objected to increased militarization of the border that bisects their lands, such cooperative efforts will also promote demilitarization.

VI. Global Applicability I now to return to the question of how this analysis connects to other migrant journeys across the globe. As I noted at the outset, each migrant journey will require its own “bottom up” analysis, given the unique geographies, histories, dangers, weather patterns, and more that each one possesses. However, I  believe that there are ways in which this normative analysis of the migrant journey that many Mexicans and Central Americans make on foot through Mexico, the Sonoran Desert, through Tohono O’odham land, and across the militarized Mexico-​U.S. border may connect helpfully to moral challenges presented by other migrant journeys that are constantly occurring on a global scale. First, this analysis is relevant to cases in which the migrant journey in question is being used rhetorically to perpetuate discrimination against certain social groups. I  argued earlier that there appears to be a connection to the manner in which an immigrant group physically arrived at a new country, and the manner in which that group is perceived in that country. This issue should be explored in connection to migrant journeys across the globe in order to understand the ways that global migration and movement are being employed to undermine the social standing of particular racial, ethnic, and national groups in traditional “receiving” countries. Second, this analysis shows that we ought to be attentive to ways in which the actual territory that migrants are moving across is being depicted in racist and anti-​immigrant rhetoric—​whether that territory consist of desert, water, mountainous regions, etc.—​particularly when the territory in question is sovereign Indigenous land. This means that we should cease to view justice in immigration as neatly distinguishable

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  189 from questions of justice for Indigenous/​Native/​Aboriginal peoples. Third, this analysis calls for global and bottom-​up theorization of migrant journeys. Migrant journeys take their shape as a result of immigration policies, military activities, economic policies, and more, and they may span more than one nation. The migrant journey is clearly a broad, sweeping problem that demands hemispheric and global solutions and philosophizing. It will never be adequate to focus strictly on what one particular nation-​state owes to people undertaking a migrant journey. Take, for instance, the migrant journey through Mexico by people who are generally en route to the United States. Enrique’s journey, discussed previously, shows that the migrant journey to the United States begins long before the United States is ever reached. While I have focused on the ways in which the migrant journey toward and into the United States—​in this case, the “receiving country”—​enforces socially undocumented oppression within the United States, it is important to note that the socially undocumented identity formation described in this book often has its origins in Mexico, as migrants ride La Bestia, risk sexual assault in migrant shelters, grow fearful when approaching Mexican immigration checkpoints, and traverse the desert. The Mexican government should certainly be concerned about the ways in which the migrant journey through its territory is affecting both Mexican and non-​Mexican citizens. Importantly, people who are murdered on the migrant trail, crushed beneath the wheels of La Bestia, and sexually assaulted suffer abuses and indignities that surpass, in many respects, the problem of social identity formation. Fortunately, the Mexican government is already required as a matter of justice to prosecute violent crimes against migrants (both Mexican and non-​Mexican) that are committed in Mexican territory. But even if such violent crimes are prosecuted, and even if the dangers of La Bestia are diminished (say, through enforcement of safety regulations and vigilance against gang members and others who assault migrants on the train), we are still left with the question of how to address the migrant journey as a systemic immigration issue. That is, apart from the host of ways in which migrant journeys entail human rights abuses and violent crimes against people on the journey, how is the migrant journey through Mexico an immigration injustice?

190  Socially Undocumented I propose that the migrant journey through Mexico is an immigration injustice—​in addition to being a state of affairs that renders individuals vulnerable to violence and human rights abuses that the state of Mexico is already duty-​bound to address—​because it contributes to socially undocumented identity formation not only in the United States but also in Mexico itself. While further “bottom up” analysis of socially undocumented identity formation through the migrant journey is called for in the Mexico context (an analysis that I cannot provide here), note that Central Americans traveling through Mexico en route to the United States, many of whom are Indigenous, come to be stereotyped as “illegals” in transit while in Mexico. In “Crossing Mexico: Structural Violence and the Commodification of Undocumented Central American Migrants,” Wendy Vogt discusses how the violent and clandestine nature of the Central American migrant journey has generated what gets called a cachuco industry, where cachuco roughly translates as “dirty pig,” a term for Central American migrants. The combined effects of Mexican immigration enforcement and anti-​crime efforts in southern Mexico lead to a state of affairs in which “migrants are equated with drugs, weapons, terrorists, and gangs, thus becoming targets of state violence.”31 Vogt argues that “while in transit [Central American] migrants may be valued in various combinations of cargo to smuggle, gendered bodies to sell, labor to exploit, organs to traffic, and lives to exchange for cash.”32 She further explains that “the social construction of [Central American] migrants [in Mexico] contributes to both their exclusion and their desirability within the cachuco industry.”33 On Vogt’s analysis, the migrant journey has become a violent enterprise in which Central Americans are dehumanized—​rendered “dirty pigs” and commodities that can be bought, sold, and managed. These linkages between Central American migrant identity so-​called cachuco may indicate a particular type of socially undocumented identity formation in Mexico that constitutes a specific form of 31 Wendy A. Vogt, “Crossing Mexico: Structural Violence and the Commodification of Central American Migrants,” American Ethnologist:  Journal of the American Ethnological Society vol. 40 no. 4 (2013), p. 771. 32 Vogt, “Crossing Mexico,” p. 765. 33 Vogt, “Crossing Mexico,” pp. 778–​789.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  191 immigration-​related injustice. In other words, as a result of the particular migrant journey through Mexico, a demeaning social identity may be taking shape in a way that renders Central Americans in Mexico, poor Mexicans aboard La Bestia, and Mexican Indigenous citizens who are often racially “read” as Central American vulnerable to particular types of unjust immigration-​related constraint. Thus, the arguments made in this essay may provide a framework for articulating a specific immigration injustice of the migrant journey in the context of Mexico. Meanwhile, other migrant journeys across the globe may also give way to unjust social identity formation. The ways in which the migrant journey through Mexico to the United States generates socially undocumented oppression in the United States and so-​called cachuco identity in Mexico indicates a call for an explanation of the impact of migrant journeys on those who tend to be associated with those journeys in a range of migrant-​receiving countries. I propose, for instance, that we should explore how boats containing of hundreds of smuggled African migrants (frequently from sub-​Saharan Africa) that regularly capsize in the Mediterranean—​an occurrence once described by Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi as “systemic slaughter in the Mediterranean”—​may impact the social standing and very social identities of migrant and non-​migrant Blacks in places like Italy and Spain.34 Immigration justice requires that we also explore the ways in the dangerous voyage to Australia by boat, frequently undertaken by asylum seekers from places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Sri Lanka—​a voyage that leaves migrants vulnerable to monsoons and detention with inadequate medical care (due to geographical distance from adequate medical infrastructure) in places like Christmas Island, Nauru, and Papua New Guinea—​is generating social relations of vulnerability and domination that dehumanize those who come to be associated with this journey.35 34 See Jim Yardley, “Hundreds of Migrants Are Feared Dead as Boat Capsizes off Libyan Coast,” New York Times, April 19, 2015, accessible at https://​www.nytimes.com/​ 2015/​04/​20/​world/​europe/​italy-​migrants-​capsizedboat-​off-​libya.html. See also BBC News, “The Mediterranean’s Deadly Migrant Routes,” April 22, 2015, accessible at http://​ www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​europe-​32387224. 35 See Tara Brian and Frank Laczo, eds., International Organization for Migration Report Fatal Journeys:  Tracking Lives Lost during Migration (Geneva:  International Association for Migration, 2014), pp. 181–​182, accessible at http://​publications.iom.int/​ system/​files/​pdf/​fataljourneys_​countingtheuncounted.pdf.

192  Socially Undocumented

VII.  Possible Objections and Conclusion One might object that my focus on the ways in which migrant journeys create and perpetuate oppressive and unjust social identities is misplaced. That is, even if my analysis is correct, it fails to address the most troubling aspects of the migrant journey, including death and abuse along the migrant trail. I certainly acknowledge the force of this objection; one wants an account of the injustice of the migrant journey to respond to the most egregious of its features. However, I believe that my account does, indeed, provide a framework for understanding these wrongs at the bar of immigration justice. I submit that my account provides resources for demonstrating what we all know to be true: that the violence and death in question is not the idiosyncratic result of individual people attempting to cross coercive borders. We already have conceptual resources for understanding that such violence is unjust (we know, for instance, that murder is wrong), just as we do for understanding that the poverty that compels migrants to board La Bestia is wrong. But migrant journeys are not only wrong because they often involve terrible, immoral acts of violence against migrants and because they are the result of morally impermissible poverty. They are also wrong—​and they are wrong at the bar of immigration justice—​because they serve to create and reinforce an identity-​based oppression that is generated by these very journeys. My account is focused on this fact, but it is not intended to eclipse other deeply problematic aspects of migrant journeys. Second, one might object that the requirements my proposal places upon states is too demanding—​so much so that my views are inconsistent with the conventional view that states have any prima facie right to control immigration into their territories. I am not denying this right to states, however. Rather, I  am simply arguing that the United States should revert to the sort of demilitarized border it has featured for most of its history, and that it should start by returning to pre-​1990s levels of demilitarization. On my view, the United States still maintains the right to make (egalitarian) decisions about whom to admit, though I  shall discuss a restriction on this right in the next chapter.

The Injustice of the Migrant Journey  193 One way to visualize what I am arguing for is to compare the state of and discourse around the Mexico-​U.S. border to that of the Canada-​ U.S.  border. Though military presence has steadily been increasing along the Canada-​U.S.  border, it has long been called the “world’s longest undefended border,” and it is considerably less militarized than its Mexico-​U.S. counterpart. Furthermore, the border itself seems to play no established role in denigrating Canadian citizens in the United States as a social group. However, one could not plausibly claim that the United States shares an open borders program with Canada, or that Canadians enjoy a universal right immigrate to the United States. Immigration policy should be crafted to bring the Mexico-​U.S. border more in line with the Canada-​U.S. border in terms of militarization and its effects on the social standing of those who cross it. To summarize, in this chapter I have argued that the migrant journey serves to perpetuate unjust socially undocumented oppression in the United States. This is partly because the migrant journey has become, as a result of Prevention through Deterrence and other U.S. immigration policies that militarized the Mexico-​U.S. border, egregiously dangerous, inhumane, and horrid. As a result, it is being used in various forms of anti-​immigrant rhetoric to present Mexicans and Central Americans as people who do not belong in the United States, and as “natural” or rightful victims of demeaning, immigration-​related constraint in an inegalitarian “theater of inequality.” I have argued that as a result of this connection between the migrant journey and the perpetuation of United States socially undocumented oppression, the United States is required, as a matter of immigration justice, to take steps to end the migrant journey as we know it today by demilitarizing its border with Mexico. As Eduardo Mendieta has argued, “our task and challenge is to awaken from our colonial and racial nightmare and imagine a future without our Wall.”36 I have also explored ways in which this particular “bottom up” analysis may be connected to normative challenges presented by migrant journeys on a global scale. For instance, we have seen that the 36 Eduardo Mendieta, “The U.S. Border and the Political Ontology of ‘Assassination Nation’:  Thanatological Dispositifs,” Journal of Speculative Philosophy vol. 31 no. 1 (2017), p. 98.

194  Socially Undocumented injustices of the migrant journey in the United States are connected to the injustices of the migrant journey of Central Americans through Mexico. While I have focused in this chapter on the ways in which the United States is required to address aspects of the injustice of the migrant journey for which it is glaringly accountable, Mexico and Central American countries are also required to do the same. We urgently need more moral analysis of the nature of migrant journeys on a global scale, as well as our obligations to address the wrongs of these journeys.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. agribusiness, 31, 88–​89, 95, 121, 196 Alcoff, Linda Martín, 9–​10, 9–​10n.9, 30–​31, 62, 63, 64–​65, 66, 67, 70, 74, 75, 77, 79–​80, 104–​6, 120–​21, 124, 127, 128, 131, 132, 145–​46, 197–​98 American Civil Liberties Union, 107–​8 amnesty, 10–​11, 59, 60–​61, 163, 164,  177–​78 Anderson, Elizabeth, 13–​15, 16, 22, 25–​26, 34, 44–​45, 181–​82, 183–​84,  200–​1 Anderson, Luvell, 28 anti-​Latino/​a/​x racism, 8, 35–​36,  64–​65 anti-​racism, 20, 21, 22, 28, 64–​65, 73 Relational egalitarianism and, 20–​22 Anzaldúa, Gloria, 8–​9, 51–​52, 81–​82, 96–​97,  101 Arizona SB1070–​, 183 Asiatic Barred Zone, 87 autonomy, 18, 65, 71, 152–​53, 155   Beauvoir, Simone de, 69 Beltrán, Cristina, 10 birthright citizenship, 110 black radicalism. See liberalism Blake, Michael, 11, 12–​13, 46, 59n.38 Border Patrol. See Customs and Border Patrol borders class-​based discrimination and, 91, 106–​7,  125 closed borders, 147–​48, 150, 153, 164, 167–​68, 169,  184–​85 coercive borders, 5, 14, 32–​33, 91, 148–​49, 160, 192

hospitals and, 113–​15 improper entry and, 151 Mexico-​U.S. border, 1–​4, 31, 74, 88, 92, 97–​98, 99–​101, 103, 119, 124–​25, 148–​49, 150, 166, 168–​69, 170–​71, 172, 173–​74, 178, 180–​81, 183–​88, 193, 196, 197–​98, 199 open borders ( see open borders) political legitimacy and, 3–​4, 5, 12, 26, 38, 46–​47, 148, 195 porous borders, 165, 166, 184–​85, 186 pregnancy and, 31, 74, 81, 97–​98, 99–​101, 102–​84, 106–​7, 109, 111–​12, 114–​15,  197–​98 U.S.-​Canada border, 193 Bourdieu, Pierre, 30–​31, 62, 75, 76, 96–​97, 104, 106–​7, 123–​24, 127, 145–​46,  197–​98 Bracero Program, the, 31, 94–​96, 97–​98, 121, 196 Brubaker, Rogers, 76   Carens, Joseph, 11, 12–​13, 26, 38–​39, 59–​61, 148–​49, 152–​53, 156–​57, 159–​60, 164, 199, 200 Chavez, Leo, 82–​83, 102–​3, 159 Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, 87, 88–​89, 116,  182–​83 Cisneros, Natalie, 102–​3 Ciudad Juárez-​El Paso, 31, 51, 82, 91, 99–​101, 103, 110–​11, 112–​14, 119–​20, 125, 172, 186 class formation, 86, 95, 96–​97 class identity. See embodiment Cole, Phillip, 148–​49, 154–​55, 158, 162

216 Index Contract Labor Law of 1885, 116 Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams, 101–​2 Cudd, Ann, 41–​42, 43–​45, 63 cultural imperialism, 14–​16, 181, 185–​86 Customs and Border Patrol, 2–​4, 81–​82, 91, 95, 96–​97, 100–​1, 111, 115, 124–​25, 172, 173, 186   De León, Jason, 172–​73, 179 decolonization,  23–​24 Defense of Marriage Act, 119–​20 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,  59–​61 Delano Grape Strike and Boycott of 1965–​1975,  197 demilitarization. See militarization deportability,  50–​52 Deportation and immigration enforcement, 91 Dewalt, Billie, 102 Dewalt, Kathleen, 102 Diario de Juárez, El, 119–​20 dichos, 141–​43,  198–​99 double bind, 32, 129–​30, 132, 136–​37, 141–​42, 143–​44,  145 labor and, 134–​36, 137, 202 pregnancy and, 135–​36 dreamers. See Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Dworkin, Ronald, 17   El Paso. See Ciudad Juárez-​El Paso Ellis Island, 91 embodiment, 7, 62–​63, 64, 65–​66, 67 class and, 62, 70, 74–​75, 76, 81, 106–​7, 109, 121–​24, 125, 127 fear and, 97–​98, 197–​98 gender/​sex and, 69, 70, 72, 74–​75, 80, 81,  104–​5 illegalization and, 125 postural body, 68–​70, 74, 85–​86, 96–​97 pregnancy and, 31, 101–​2, 104, 106–​7, 109, 120 race and, 63–​64, 69–​70, 72–​73, 74–​75, 80, 81, 92, 127 sisibility of identity, 30–​31, 62, 64–​65, 66, 67, 70, 104–​5, 120–​21, 127–​28,  145–​46

socially undocumented status and, 88,  94–​97 Emergency Medical Care and Active Care Act of 1986, 110 emigration, 158, 162 Engels, Frederich, 134 Espinoza-​Herald, Mariella,  142–​43 European Union, 157–​58, 160–​61 Brexit and, 160–​61   family reunification, 107–​8, 115–​17,  119–​20 Fanon, Franz, 69–​70 freedom of movement, 148–​50, 152–​63, 165–​66, 169, 184, 193, 196–​97. See also borders; open borders Frye, Marilyn, 32, 129–​30, 132–​33   Gadamer, Hans-​George, 66 Gadsden Purchase of 1854, 88 global inequality, 152–​53, 155, 157–​58,  160 Gracia, Jorge J. E., 54–​55 Great Depression, the, 92–​93, 95   habitus, 30–​31, 62, 75, 76, 80, 96–​97, 122, 123, 145–​46. See also class identity Haslanger, Sally, 64–​65, 195–​96 Head, Sir Henry, 68–​69 Heyman, Josiah, 50–​51, 52, 55, 82,  197–​98 Higgins, Peter, 43, 165 Holmes, Seth, 54 Hosein, Adam Omar, 11 Huerta, Dolores, 141–​43   illegalization, 4–​5, 24, 31, 32, 33, 34, 63–​64, 82–​86, 87–​88, 89, 90–​91, 92, 96, 130, 133–​34, 145–​46, 153, 174, 195, 196, 197, 199, 201–​2 paradigmatic illegal subject, the, 90–​91, 121, 159, 197 seeing the self as illegal, 96–​97, 124–​25,  144 visibly pregnant body, the, 97–​98, 106–​7, 108–​9, 111, 112–​16, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 135 Illegalized labor. See racialized labor

Index  217 Immigration Act of 1882, 115 Immigration Act of 1891, 118, 119 Immigration Act of 1903, 119 Immigration Act of 1917, 87 Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 51,  201–​2 Immigration and Nationality Act, 87 Immigration and Naturalization Service, 55, 82, 92–​93, 96, 177–​78, 197–​98 immigration law, 31, 86–​89, 95. See also Arizona SB107; Asiatic Barred Zone; Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; Contract Labor Law of 1885; deportation and immigration enforcement; family reunification; Immigration Act of 1882; Immigration Act of 1891; Immigration Act of 1903; Immigration Act of 1917; Immigration and Nationality Act; Immigration quotas; Johnson-​Reed Act; Liable to Become a Public Charge; literacy tests; Naturalization Act of 1790; Page Law immigration quotas, 90–​91 indigenous sovereignty, 5, 24–​25, 33, 173, 174, 178–​79, 183, 187–​89 relational egalitarianism and, 23–​25 internal immigration enforcement, 35, 36 international freedom of movement. See freedom of movement interpretive horizon, 31–​32, 62–​63, 67–​68, 70, 72, 74, 75, 77, 80, 81, 105, 128,  197–​99 perspectival location and, 65–​66, 72, 75, 128, 130–​31 of socially undocumented people, 127–​30,  136   Jaggar, Alison, 18 Johnson-​Reed Act, 31, 90–​92, 95, 121, 196 jornaleros, 83–​84, 96, 198–​99 jus solis. See birthright citizenship   Klu Klux Klan, 91 knowledge. See also interpretive horizon

social location of knowledge, 66–​67, 68–​69, 72, 73, 74, 96–​97, 104–​5, 124–​25, 128, 130, 137, 141, 144, 145–​46,  197–​98 Kukathas, Chandran, 153   LA Times, The, 170 Lapore, Ernie, 28 Latino threat narrative, 159–​60 legal status, 10, 36–​41, 49–​54, 81–​83, 93, 94, 103, 107–​9, 111, 114, 124–​26, 127, 195, 196, 199 Lewis, Oscar, 134 Liable to Become a Public Charge, 116–​18, 122–​23, 124,  125–​26 liberalism Black radical liberalism, 21–​22 Liberal egalitarianism, 16–​17, 157 Neoliberalism, 16–​17, 22 literacy tests, 87 Luibhéid, Eithne, 115–​20   Marx, Karl, 20, 21–​22, 134 Marxism, 76 alienated labor, 20, 22 Medina, José, 136–​37n.17 Mendieta, Edwardo, 9–​10, 193 Mendoza, José Jorge, 8–​9, 35–​36, 54,  182–​83 Merleau-​Ponty, Maurice, 67–​68, 70 Mexican Farm Labor Agreement of 1942, 94 Mexican-​American War. See Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo migrant journey, The injustice, 169, 172, 173–​74, 180,  189–​90 migrant rights, 167–​68 mode of arrival and prestige, 174–​76,  188–​89 relational egalitarianism and, 168–​69,  180 though Indigenous land, 173–​74, 178–​79, 183,  188–​89 through Mexico, 189–​91, 193–​94,  203 through the Rio Grande, 170–​71, 177–​78,  185–​86

218 Index migrant journey, The (cont.) through the Sonoran Desert, 33, 168–​69, 171–​74, 178, 183, 185–​86, 187, 188 in anti-​immigrant rhetoric, 175–​80, 181, 185–​86, 187, 188, 193 Migrant Labor Agreement of 1951, 94 militarization of U.S.-​Mexico border, 33, 92, 148–​49, 150, 166, 168–​69, 172, 173–​74, 180–​81, 183–​88, 192–​93, 196, 199 Miller, David, 174–​75 Mills, Charles W., 20–​22–​, 136–​37n.17, 164–​65. See also liberalism: black radical liberalism racial contract, 86–​88 municipal IDs, 200–​1   National Guard, 186 Naturalization Act of 1790, 87, 182–​83 Nedelsky, Jennifer, 19–​20 Ngai, Mae, 88, 90–​91, 92, 94–​95, 97–​98,  197 non-​state  actors immigration justice and, 129–​30, 136, 144–​45,  196–​99 Núñez-​Mchiri, Guillermina, 50–​51, 52, 82   Oberman, Kieran, 154, 158, 161–​62 open borders, 12–​13, 25–​26n.54, 25–​26, 32–​33, 38, 146, 147–​48, 167–​68, 169, 184, 193. See also borders; freedom of movement ability to address illegality, 151 continued oppression, 150, 156, 166, 178–​63,  184 proposed restrictions, 156, 184 theorizing in the non-​ideal world, 163, 184,  196–​97 Operation Blockade, 172 Operation Wetback, 177–​78 oppression, 37, 38, 41–​42, 43–​45 addressing socially undocumented oppression, 97–​98, 127–​28, 146, 155–​56, 163–​64, 166, 169, 182, 195–​96, 199–​203 as immigration-​related constraints, 5–​6, 26, 31, 36–​37, 47–​49, 52, 54, 56, 61, 62, 88, 92, 95, 109, 114–​15,

120, 121, 122–​23, 125–​26, 127–​28, 130, 133–​34, 139, 152–​53, 174, 180–​81,  185–​86 Ordónez, Juan Thomas, 83–​84 Ortega, Mariana, 101   Page Law, 116 porous borders. See borders Prevention Through Deterrence, 172–​73, 178–​79, 183, 186, 187–​88, 193, 196, 199   racial formation, 86, 95, 96–​97 racial identity. See embodiment racialization of illegal immigration,  92–​93 racialized labor, 32, 48, 49, 53–​54, 56, 82–​85, 88–​89, 94–​96, 123–​24, 130, 134–​36, 138, 139, 140–​42, 144, 153, 196, 202 relational egalitarianism, 13, 97–​98, 146, 150, 166, 168–​69, 196–​97, 203 democratic equality, 14–​15, 21, 25, 160–​61,  183–​84 individual and state obligation, 22–​23, 32–​33,  34 undermining universal moral equality, 57–​58,  196–​97 universal moral equality, 14–​15, 17, 21, 38, 44–​45, 46–​47, 56, 58 Renzi, Matteo, 191 repatriation, 31, 92–​94, 95, 97–​98, 196 during the Mexican-​American War,  89–​90 Romero, Mary, 53–​54, 139–​41, 144–​45   Said, Edward, 130–​31 Sánchez, Carlos Alberto, 8–​9 Santa Cecilia, La, 84–​85, 96 Satz, Debra, 15, 180–​81 self-​description,  63–​64 self-​other relation, 70–​71. See also embodiment; knowledge settler-​state regime, 23–​25. See also decolonization Shelby, Tommie, 16–​17, 21–​22, 28–​29 Shining Soul, 85 Silva, Grant, 185–​86

Index  219 slurs, 27–​28, 138, 177–​78, 180–​81, 190, 198–​99,  203 social groups economic class and, 55, 61 formation of, 42–​45, 63–​64 social identity. See embodiment Southard, Theresa Martinez, 93–​94 Spickard, Paul, 94 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 132 State Department, 119–​20 structural injustice, 17, 21, 22–​23, 25–​26, 38. See also non-​state actors; relational egalitarianism subjectivity,  67–​69   Talavera, Victor, 50–​51, 52, 82 Tallbear, Kim, 24–​25 Tanda, 139–​40, 144–​45,  198–​99 Taylor, Paul, 63–​64, 128 Temkin, Larry, 17 Tigres del Norte, Los, 137–​38, 144–​45 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 31, 88, 89, 95, 121, 196 Trump, Donald, 119–​20, 135, 159 Turner, Dale, 23–​24

Universal right to international and movement and migration. See also borders; freedom of movement; open borders U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 119–​20,  172   Vargas, Manuel, 8–​9 Vasconcelos, José, 89 Vogt, Wendy, 190–​91   Walzer, Michael, 6 Weisel, Elie, 203 Wellman, Christopher Heath, 25–​26n.54 white supremacy, 21–​22, 31, 86–​87, 95–​97, 121, 196 Wilcox, Shelley, 25–​26n.54, 165   Young, Iris Marion, 13–​15, 16, 17–​18, 22–​23, 25–​26, 41, 69, 129, 181,  198–​99   Zizek, Slavoj, 147–​48, 155–​56, 159–​60