Temporal Liminality: How Temporal Parameters in Immigration Policy Adversely Affect the Lives and Futures of Precariously Documented Immigrant Young Adults

Alessandra Bazo Vienrich ()
Additional contact information
Alessandra Bazo Vienrich: Department of Sociology, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI 02908, USA

Social Sciences, 2025, vol. 14, issue 11, 1-14

Abstract: In this article, I build on liminal legality to highlight how 1.5-generation Latinx immigrant young adults who benefited from Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) confronted an additional dimension of uncertainty, which I describe as temporal liminality. Temporal liminality captures the way time itself––through bureaucratic cycles, political threats, and temporary protections––was moralized and weaponized, producing waiting, deferral, and arrested development. Drawing on interviews with DACA recipients in North Carolina and Massachusetts, I show how temporal liminality shaped three central domains: work and career, family and intimate relationships, and travel and mobility. These findings reveal how the state’s regulation of time foreclosed opportunities, reordered life trajectories, and deepened the strains of precarious legality. By centering temporality, this article advances scholarship on immigrant incorporation by demonstrating how moralized timelines, stolen opportunities, and bureaucratic timelines structured the everyday lives and futures of immigrants with uncertain legal status.

Keywords: DACA; liminal legality; temporal liminality; immigrants; legal status; undocumented (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/11/624/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/14/11/624/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:14:y:2025:i:11:p:624-:d:1776853

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvaine Sun

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().