Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States

作者：Cecilia Menjívar · 发表于：American Journal of Sociology · 年份：2006 · DOI：10.1086/499509 · 被引用次数：1374 · 研究领域：Migration, Refugees, and Integration、Migration and Labor Dynamics、Diaspora, migration, transnational identity

This article examines the effects of an uncertain legal status on the lives of immigrants, situating their experiences within frameworks of citizenship/belonging and segmented assimilation, and using Victor Turner's concept of liminality and Susan Coutin's Љlegal nonexistence.Љ It questions blackϪandϪwhite conceptualizations of documented and undocumented immigration by exposing the gray area of Љliminal legalityЉ and examines how this inϪbetween status affects the individual's social networks and family, the place of the church in immigrants' lives, and the broader domain of artistic expression.Empirically, it draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Phoenix from 1989 to 2001.The article lends support to arguments about the continued centrality of the nationϪstate in the lives of immigrants.