Rafael Martinez on Undocumented Immigrant Youth

 In Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, Rafael Martinez— undocumented himself as a youth and now a DACA recipient in limbo alongside 500,000 others—illuminates how undocumented youth began a new phase of the broader immigrant rights movement back at the turn of the millenium, and how the different organizing strategies they have used since changed the way we talk about immigrant rights in the US today.

 As the Dream Act played out and ultimately failed over the first decade of this century, many undocumented youth tired of performing the “model citizen,” and instead began actively challenging the immigration system. From lives lived in the shadows, they turned to direct activism—including civil disobedience—using their bodies to disrupt the way immigrant rights are seen, and challenge the family separations, detention, and deportations that had come to define US policy. In the process, undocumented youth revealed the ways in which the state criminalizes or illegalizes undocumented populations through differing forms of repression.