My thesis analyzes the role of narratives in the consolidation of a Dreamer identity and movement for undocumented youth. The Dream movement, which initially pushed for the DREAM Act, a bill that would grant undocumented youth a pathway to residency and citizenship, has evolved into a collective effort to protect and fight for rights-enabling legislation for the entire undocumented population. This investigation uses narratives to promote an understanding of the Dream movement, taking into account a long-standing strategy of Dreamers: Stories of self lead to a collective story of us that celebrates individual experiences of a common struggle to belong in spite of a lack of papers. This story of us, in turn, leads to a story of now, a narrative of mobilization and advocacy that speaks to Dreamers’ public quest for legal recognition. The articulation of narratives allows for a sense of belonging among Dreamers who, because they are not conferred citizenship, have struggled to find acceptance and recognition as members of the United States. In spite of not having citizenship, Dreamers have been conferred benefits, such as the right to a free K-12 public school education under the 1982 Supreme Court Plyler v. Doe decision and the right to work and remain in the country for a renewable two years under President Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) directive. These benefits, utilized by Dreamers to show that they are important members of the national polity, are important elements of their narrative. By adopting a Dreamer identity, undocumented youth have realized that lack of papers is not an impediment to civic and political engagement, even if they are not given the right to vote. Dreamers, in mobilizing and advocating, exercise rights such as the ability to testify and lobby that oftentimes the average citizen does not utilize. By becoming so engaged, undocumented youth have made an important claim to citizenship that has given them a newfound visibility and recognition as rights- bearing individuals. / text

abstract: In recent years the state of Arizona passed a series of laws affecting undocumented immigrants, including Proposition 300 in 2006 outlawing in-state tuition for undocumented youth. However, there has also been a reaction from these youth who refused to be relegated to the shadows and are demanding rights. Using mixed ethnographic methods, this dissertation research analyzes how undocumented Mexican youth in Arizona have experienced liminality after the passage of Proposition 300 as well as their ability to utilize their increased marginalization in order to build community amongst themselves and fight for basic rights--a process known as cultural citizenship. These immigrant youth are of the 1.5 generation, who are brought to the United States at a young age, grow up in the country and share characteristics with both first and second- generation immigrants. Even though undocumented 1.5 generation immigrants are raised and acculturated within this country and treated the same as other children while in the public school system, they have been denied basic rights upon approaching adulthood because of their illegality. This includes limiting access to affordable higher education as well as public services and legal work. Consequently, they are unable to fully incorporate into U.S. society and they end up transitioning into illegality after leaving school. This is especially true in Arizona, a state that has passed some of the strictest anti-immigrant laws in the country aiming to deter undocumented immigrants from staying in the state. However, I argue that this increased marginalization has had an unintended consequence of creating a space that allowed for these youth to come together and form a community. I further posit that this community provides valuable social capital and access to resources and information that mitigates the possibility of downward assimilation. Moreover, this community offers its members a safety net that allows them to publically claim their undocumented status in order to fight for their right to have a pathway towards citizenship. As a result, they have been able to gain some victories, but are still fighting for their ultimate goal to become citizens. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2014

This paper investigates the current situation of the youth that applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015 as Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC). Specifically the former UASC youth from the Hazara ethnic group who were denied asylum yet are still living as undocumented in the municipality of Malmö, Sweden in 2018, now aged between 18 to 21 years old. This case study employs a hermeneutic-constructivist approach utilising semi-structured interviews with 10 of these Hazara unaccompanied, undocumented asylum seeking (UUAS) youth to examine their experiences and perspectives in terms of political and emotional belonging to communities and places in which they experience some form of marginalisation. Theories surrounding the concepts of belonging which consists of both emotional and political elements will be used, along with ‘othering’, to frame the youth’s experiences. The results of this study demonstrate how political belonging affects emotional belonging in various ways depending on context. The study also highlights how the impact of elements within both forms of belonging are assessed by individuals, and how these considerations are instrumental to a migrants decision to remain in, or leave, a location. This study also calls for further research in this field on these concepts of belonging affect marginalised groups.

In Sweden, children residing in the country without a permit has had access to schooling since 2013. Yet, only a few people have taken the time to do research on the topic and evaluate the policy change that gave these children right to attend elementary and upper secondary school. This essay adopts an administrative politics-perspective to evaluate their schooling based on a goal-fulfilment criterion. The goals are then used as a reference with which to compare the real policy effects. To gather information about the policy effects, six interviews were performed with centrally given actors within Uppsala municipality, Sweden. The first goal of reference in this thesis is presented in Swedish school law and government bill; all children shall have access to basic schooling. The second goal of reference is that these children’s education should be equivalent to that of other children in the country. This means that they have should have access to the school resources necessary for them to fully participate in their education. Generally, one can see that the achievement of these goals is questionable in Uppsala municipality. This result can also be generalised to a nation-level, with the help of the Swedish School Inspectorate, and thus demonstrating that the issues with the goal fulfilment in Uppsala municipality is strongly dependent on the lack of effective nationally stipulated measures and strategies.