Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants

This article examines the legal consciousness and incorporation experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Although this population may be disaggregated along several axes, one central distinction among them is their age at migration. Those who migrated as adults live out their daily lives in different social contexts than those who migrated as children. Therefore, although all undocumented immigrants are legally banned, their identities, sense of belonging, and interpretation of their status vary. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of Latino undocumented immigrants from 2001 to 2010, I examine how illegality is experienced differently by social position. The findings…