This project analyzes the navigation of social experiences of Undocumented and Queer individuals amidst broad anti-queer and anti-immigration sentiment prevalent throughout American society. To achieve this goal, this project seeks to resolve three questions. First, what are the social services that Undocuqueer and Undocumented adults need? Second, are their needs fundamentally distinct? Finally, to what extent have they been able to access those services? Crenshaw’s (1994) theory of intersectionality will serve as the overarching theoretical framework of this project, in order to better understand the multifaceted marginalization that Undocumented and Undocuqueer individuals face with everyday institutions. In this research, I utilized activist research methods. I obtained the full support of a undocumented student center at a university in Southern California and worked with the center to obtain participants for my research. In addition to its scholarly contribution to the fields of undocumented and Undocuqueer studies, the findings of this project will serve as a resource for the undocumented student center to improve its services for the student body. I interviewed a total of seventeen individuals drawn from both the Undocuqueer and undocumented populations. To facilitate my research, the center allowed me to place flyers in their center and the majority of my participants were frequent visitors to the center. Out of my 17 participants, one was the coordinator of the undocumented student center; 3 identified themselves as Undocuqueer; and, 13 identified themselves as undocumented students.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work / Spencer Wood / In this study, I investigate UndocuQueer activists and their use of social media as one type of subaltern counterpublic. Subaltern counterpublics are spaces marginalized communities forge to center their voices and experiences. These counterpublics represent aggregations of emancipatory agency and stand as responses to their exclusion or marginalization by the dominant public sphere. UndocuQueer activists strategically engage in the public sphere using social media because it grants them momentum and brings national attention to their agenda. In this research, I use an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to understand the UndocuQueer social movement. The guiding research questions were: 1) How do UndocuQueer activists create subaltern counterpublics? 2) How do UndocuQueer activists present their multiple and complex identities on Twitter? Using critical discourse analysis of Twitter, I coded and analyzed over 600 tweets. To further this analysis, I used critical Xicana feminist standpoint to gather three testimonios of UndocuQueer activists. The major findings are of this project are: 1) the UndocuQueer subaltern counterpublic formed through the state’s anti-immigrant policies and the public sphere’s marginalizations and misrepresentations. 2) the UndocuQueer community forged an intersectional subaltern counterpublic online through their lived experiences as undocumented and queer. 3) the undocu-movements: UndocuQueer, UndocuTrans, UndocuBlack, UndocuAPI, and UndocuSolidarity operate coalitionally; thus, I call this a coalitional intersectional subaltern counterpublic. 4) the UndocuQueer activists use social media for community, expression and support of art, and organizing. 5) Lastly, UndocuQueer activists engage in multiple forms of activism via social media, such as participating in marches and civil disobedience and sharing events, workshops, petitions, and donation pages. Overall, this study provides a rich description of how marginalized communities, especially those of the UndocuQueer community, have great agency despite their precarious situation: a counter narrative that is usually unexposed. This project finds how the UndocuQueer community face multiple marginalizations and exclusions from the state through its anti-immigrant policies, the public sphere through its misrepresentations in the media, from LGBTQ communities and organizations, and from Latinx and immigrant communities. I show how the UndocuQueer’s intersectional and coalitional subaltern counterpublic forged online as a safe haven for themselves and to engage with the public sphere. With this information, we have find better ways to be their allies, support them, and listen to their calls to action.

abstract: Employing Queer Intersectionality, this study explored how undocuqueer activists made sense of, interacted and worked within the intersection of their LGBTQ and undocumented experience. Participants ascribed three overarching self-meanings: Vulnerability, Complexity, and Resilience. These self-meanings describe the ways participants perceived the interplay of their gender, sexuality and immigration status within the current sociopolitical context of the U.S. Recognizing their vulnerability within a state of illegibility, participants described a sense of exclusion within spaces of belonging, and wariness managing relationships with others; opting for more complex self-definitions, they resisted simplistic conceptions of identity that rendered their social locations invisible (e.g., homonormativity, heteronormativity, DREAMer); and describing themselves as resilient, they described surviving societal as well as familial rejection even when surviving seemed impossible to do so. Interacting and working within the intersection of gender, sexuality and immigration status, participants described identity negotiation and coming out as a form of resistance to institutionalized oppression, and resilience amidst simultaneous anti-immigrant, xenophobic and heterosexist power structures. Participants learned to live in multiple worlds at the same time, and embrace the multiplicity of their undocuqueer identity while seeking to bridge their communities through stories, activism and peer education. This study has implications for further understanding the way that queer politics and identity interact/ relate with various axes of inequality. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2015