Political Effects of Having Undocumented Parents

• Date: 01 December 2017
• Published date: 01 December 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912917717351
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917717351

Political Research Quarterly

2017, Vol. 70(4) 818 –832

© 2017 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912917717351

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Article

The United States is home to around eleven million

undocumented immigrants. Even though they are legal

outsiders, most have close ties to the country. Many have

US-citizen relatives, including partners and children. A

great deal of research has addressed the causes and con-

sequences of anti-immigrant attitudes in this era of large-

scale “illegal” migration (e.g., Hainmueller and Hopkins

2014; Wright, Levy, and Citrin 2016). And yet, we still

know very little about the politics of undocumented

immigrants themselves, or the political implications of

this regime of mass illegality for the millions of American

citizens with undocumented family members (McCann

and Jones-Correa 2016).

Until scholars address these topics, we will not under-

stand the contemporary immigrant experience. While most

of the country’s immigrants are set on a path to permanent

residence and citizenship, about one in four are marked as

“illegals.” Because so many undocumented migrants are

Latinos, without research on the politics of mass illegality,

we will struggle to understand Latino politics, or indeed

the factors that—under some circumstances—make

“Latino” a salient political identity (Lee 2008).

Research in this area also promises to provide new

ways to test and build upon theories of political learning

and activism. How do young US citizens whose parents

have few (political) rights think about and engage with

the state? In this paper, we provide some of the first evi-

dence on the political effects of having undocumented

parents. As undocumented migrants are wary of attention,

and they and their children only make up a small share of

all US residents, it is hard to gather representative data on

this population. We use an original survey of young

US-born Latinos, some of whose parents are undocu-

mented, to start to fill the gap in our knowledge of these

issues.

To frame the political effects of mass undocumented

migration on the US-born second generation, we draw

together theories and findings from several literatures.

One prediction, following from research on parental

political socialization and on immigrant incorporation, is

that having undocumented parents has chilling effects on

civic and political engagement. However, other research

on social movements and on how people respond to polit-

ical threats implies that those with undocumented parents

might be pushed toward activism on immigration issues.

In fact, our data provide scant evidence of chilling effects,

but more support for the idea that family exposure to the

risk of deportation serves to mobilize the US-born

717351PRQXXX10.1177/1065912917717351Political Research QuarterlyStreet et al.

research-article2017

1Carroll College, Helena, MT, USA

2University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

3University of California, Berkeley, USA

Corresponding Author:

Alex Street, Department of Political Science and International

Relations, Carroll College, 1601 N. Benton, Helena, MT 59625, USA.

Email: astreet@carroll.edu

Political Effects of Having

Undocumented Parents

Alex Street1, Michael Jones-Correa2, and Chris Zepeda-Millán3

Abstract

The current US undocumented population is large and settled. As a result, millions of US-born citizens are growing

up with undocumented parents or siblings. In this paper, we use original survey data to study the politics of the

US-citizen offspring of undocumented migrants. We test theories of parental political socialization, which imply

that having undocumented parents may have chilling effects on political engagement. We also test theories of social

activism, which predict that the offspring of the undocumented may be motivated to make use of their rights as US

citizens by protesting on behalf of their parents. We find no evidence of lower political engagement among those

with undocumented parents. Instead, we find that the offspring of the undocumented are more likely to protest on

immigration issues, and more optimistic that popular protest can induce political change. We use an instrumental

variables design to test whether these differences warrant a causal interpretation, and find tentative evidence that

having undocumented parents does indeed have mobilizing political effects.

Keywords

undocumented immigration, citizenship, political participation, activism