S4 E3 Forever undocumented
What does it actually mean to be "documented" or "undocumented" as a migrant to the USA? What's the lived reality like of existing somewhere in between the two, including under the category of "temporary protected status", or TPS, created by Congress in 1990 for people from countries deemed too unsafe to return to?
UCLA sociologist and leading migration expert Cecilia Menjívar joins us to discuss her concept of "liminal legality". Elaborated in a 2006 paper following fieldwork through the 1990s with migrants from Central America, the term remains enduringly relevant in Trump's America - where the administration has moved to roll back TPS for people from countries such as Afghanistan, Venezuela and Syria. A conversation about precarity, lived experience, and policy - and a reminder that "creating a group of people whose rights are diminishing by the day" harms not only those individuals, but all of us.
**Recorded Sept 2025**
Suggested Reading
'Behind the headlines: Temporary Protected Status', a factsheet from the International Rescue Committee, with links to the latest developments on attempts to end protections for people from Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua and Syria
'1990: Temporary Protection Status (TPS)' - a research guide from the Library of Congress, A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States. **including a useful timeline**
'Liminal Legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan Immigrants' Lives in the United States' (January 2006) by Cecilia Menjívar in the American Journal of Sociology
'Effects of SB 1070 on Children', by Carlos Santos, Cecilia Menjívar, Erin Godfrey, Pp. 79-92 in Latino Politics and Arizona's Immigration Law SB 1070, edited by Lisa Magaña and Erik Lee. New York: Springer 2013
'Temporary Protected Status for Central American Immigrants: Advancing Immigrant Integration Despite Its Uncertainty' (2020) a policy report by Cecilia Menjívar
'The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure' (1969) by Victor Turner
Update, September 2025: "Judge rules ending protections for Venezuelan and Haitian migrants is unlawful" (BBC News)
The work of the National Temporary Protected Status Alliance
On the Reagan-backed wars in the 1980s: 'Central America, 1981–1993' from the US Office of the Historian
** An updated TPS factsheet on the status of various designations, from the National Immigration Forum. This includes updates re: Haiti, Venezuela and Syria **
Active listening questions
What did Cecilia mean by "liminal legality" when she coined the term in her 2006 paper? And how is it manifest today?
How might geopolitics play a role in whether an individual with a given nationality is labelled as a refugees or asylum seeker?
Why is it important to look beyond labour market experience when we consider the experience of people labelled as migrants? What and what stands to gain when minoritised or vulnerable people are rendered "impermanent" or "temporary"?
What does Cecilia's approach show about the value of using sociological research and analysis to complicate seemingly neat binaries?
Cecilia talks about how the precaritisation of some people's migration status "reverberates across US society", impacting us all. What does she mean by this and how does it connect with what Michaela speaks of as "de-migrantising" migration research?