Dying a "Social" Death: Children and Youth Living Clandestinely

Youth who successfully cross into the US border as economic refugees or as children fleeing violence are frequently shunned by US institutions when seeking assistance. If they are not apprehended by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents during their border crossing, they confront border patrol agents, immigration, customs, enforcement (ICE) agents, or local county sheriffs that often work in tangent with DHS agents within their border communities.

Immigrants have become a prime scapegoat for xenophobes and politicians. Consequently, undocumented immigrants living on the US border have a paradox­ical consciousness of what constitutional and human rights are because their inalienable rights are typically challenged within this 100 mile-wide border region termed a “constitution-free zone” by the American Civil Liberties Union (2008). Border violence and the fear of US inspection become part of their lived experi­ences as they move through life being paid “under the table” at jobs that many US citizens would not do or seeking refuge in schools, community centers, or churches.

For these undocumented youth, violence and vulnerability can ultimately lead to a kind of “societal death” since they do not have the proper documentation needed to reside in the USA. Some youth live in mixed-status families that may be comprised of legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and naturalized citi­zens, whose status can change when undocumented family members legalize their status and legal immigrants are naturalized as permanent residents or citizens (Fix and Zimmermann 1999). As Lauren Martin has argued, “how immigration policy and enforcement practices have sutured racialized, sexualized, and gendered iden­tities and normalized certain forms of belonging and citizenship over others...

For youth in mixed-status families living in the country without documentation, they potentially risk jeopardizing the entire family's legal status, which can lead to deportation hearings or government claims that permanent resident or US citizen family members harbored “illegal aliens.” Consequently, these youth can even be isolated from family members living in the same country. Nufiez and Heyman (2007) describe a “process of entrapment” where “people who live inside the border zone never leave the area of crossing... they experience a near-permanent sense of liminality, involving nearly constant presence of fear, anxiety, and stress” (Nufiez and Heyman 2007, p.357). Some undocumented youth succumb to the stresses of these geographic spaces and their limited legal employment opportunities and work as drug mules or traffickers. The vast majority “fly below the radar” working in the service industry, agriculture, construction, or any other work making wages that will just cover remittances to the homeland and possibly be enough to “just get by.”

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