“They Think I'm a Lawyer”: Undocumented College Students as Legal Brokers for Their Undocumented Parents

• Author: Vanessa Delgado
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12152
• Date: 01 July 2020
• Published date: 01 July 2020

“They Think I’m a Lawyer”: Undocumented College

Students as Legal Brokers for Their Undocumented

Parents

VANESSA DELGADO

Past research demonstrates that children of immigrants serve as language and cultural brokers for

their parents. However, much of this work centers on immigrants with protected legal status. Draw-

ing on thirty in-depth interviews with undocumented college students, I conceptualize the phenome-

non of legal brokering to capture how undocumented students share legal resources with their

parents. In addition to this conceptualization, I find that four factors shaped how students served as

legal brokers: (1) online platforms; (2) institutional support; (3) networks of support; and (4)

involvement in immigrant rights organizations. These findings advance theoretical frameworks in

segmented assimilation theory, sociolegal studies, and immigrant illegality.

I. INTRODUCTION

For nearly a century, scholars of migration have widely explored the adaptation of immi-

grants to US society (e.g., Thomas and Znaniecki 1918; Warner and Srole 1945;

Gordon 1964; Portes and Zhou 1993; Massey 1995; Fix, Zimmermann, and Passel 2001;

Bean and Stevens 2003; Motomura 2006; Alba and Nee 2009; Chavez 2012, 2013; Portes

and Rumbaut 2014; Waters and Pineau 2015; Hing, Chacon, and Johnson 2017). In this

work, scholars note the important role that the children of immigrants play in their par-

ents’ integration toa new country as language and cultural brokers (Tse 1995, 1996; Buriel

et al. 1998; Weisskirch and Alva 2002; Orellana, Dorner, and Pulido 2003; Jones and Tri-

ckett 2005; Morales and Hanson 2005; Trickett and Jones 2007; Dorner, Orellana, and

Jime

´nez 2008; Estrada 2019). Youth help their immigrant parents in numerous ways,

including translating during parent–teacher conferences, assisting at clinic and hospital

I am indebted to the undocumented young adults who shared their stories with me—mil gracias. Without their

support, this research would not have been possible. I would like to thank Dr. Rube

´n G. Rumbaut,

Dr. Kristin Turney, Dr. Irene Vega, Dr. Stephen Lee, Steven Andrew Mejia, and the anonymous reviewers at

Law & Policy for their helpful and insightful comments on this manuscript. Funding was provided by a Ford

Foundation Fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the University of California Institute for Mexico

and the United States (UC MEXUS), the UC Consortium of Law and Social Science, and the Department of

Sociology at UC, Irvine.Vanessa Delgado *

Funding Information Department of Sociology, UC Irvine Ford Foundation Fellowship National Science

Foundation 1920942 UC Consortium on Social Science and Law University of California Institute for Mexico

and the United States

Address correspondence to: Vanessa Delgado, Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine,

Irvine, CA, USA 92167. Email: vdelgad1@uci.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 42, No. 3, July 2020

©2020 The Author

Law & Policy ©2020 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12152

ISSN 0265-8240

visits, and even securing housing (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 2001; Orellana 2009;

Katz 2014a, 2014b). As such, the children of immigrants help their parents navigate US

institutions and broader society.

While much of this brokering literature centers on the experiences of immigrantfamilies

with protected legal status, a growing body of scholarship sheds light on how an undocu-

mented status can create additional barriers for integration for immigrants and their

children (De Genova 2002; Menjı

´var and Kanstroom 2013; Abrego 2014; Dreby 2015;

Gonzales 2015). Undocumented immigrants are excluded from lawful employment, face

difficulties in accessing housing, cannotreceive federally funded social services, and experi-

ence threats of deportation and family separation (Cleaveland and Pierson 2009; Gonza-

les 2009; Hall and Greenman 2013; Golash-Boza 2015). However, despite these

restrictions, undocumented immigrants do have some protections, such as constitutional

rights, access to state-based driver’s licenses, access to primary and secondary education,

and the ability to attend college in some states In addition, qualified youth are able to

obtain work permits through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)

1

pro-

gram (National Conference of State Legislatures [NCSL] 2017). Living in this legal limbo

can lead undocumented parents to seek guidance and advice on how to manage the few

legal protectionsthey have available while avoiding the punishments associated with living

in the United States without authorization. Placing special attention on the role that

undocumented status plays in the brokering process can reveal how undocumented fami-

lies work together toaccess resources in the context of theirlegal and social exclusion.

The purpose of this article is to address how undocumented young adults with DACA

serve as legal brokers for their undocumented parents. Drawing on thirty in-depth inter-

views with undocumented college students in Southern California, I conceptualize the term

legal brokering, which I define as the process by which one party bridges legal resources

(e.g., information about laws and policies, legal rights, guidance on claims-making, etc.) to a

second party who may have restricted or limited access to such information. In this case

study, undocumented college students serve as legal brokers as they draw on resources read-

ily available to them to answer the legal inquiries of their undocumented parents. In addi-

tion to this conceptualization, I find that four factors shape how undocumented college

students serve as legal brokers for their undocumented parents: (1) online platforms; (2)

institutional support; (3) networks of support; and (4) involvement in immigrant rights

organizations. Because law plays a salient role in the lives of undocumented immigrants,

legal brokering is both an educational tool with respect to immigrant legislation and a risk-

management strategy aimed at avoiding the punishments associated with undocumented

status. The case of undocumented college students with DACA serving as legal brokers for

their families provides only one glimpse into how this process unfolds.

My conceptualization of legal brokering builds upon several literatures. First, I situate

the process of legal brokering within the context of segmented assimilation theory and the

concept of immigrant “illegality” to demonstrate how the societal reception of undocu-

mented immigrants produces this type of brokering (Portes and Zhou 1993; Menjı

´var and

Kanstroom 2013). The combination of draconian immigrant policies; political and social

conditions at the federal, state, and local level; and close social ties between parents and

children create the context for legal brokering to emerge among undocumented young

adults and their undocumented parents. Next, the concept of legal brokering contributes

to the growing trend within sociolegal literature of de-emphasizing “top-down” social and

political socialization models based on family units (Bloemraad and Trost 2008; Wong

and Tseng 2008; Foner and Dreby 2011). Much like Bloemraad and Trost (2008), Wong

and Tseng (2008), and Foner and Dreby (2011), I find that the socializationprocess can be

bidirectional, with immigrant youth serving as agents of socialization for their parents.

©2020 The Author

Law & Policy ©2020 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals LLC.

262 LAW & POLICY July 2020