Slow legal violence and the undocumented 1.5 Generation

Based on ethnographic research with Mexican immigrants of the 1.5 Generation who lack legal status in the U.S., this study demonstrates that the appropriation of immigrants’ time through policy has distressing human consequences, and that time significantly shapes experiences of illegality. The 1.5 Generation encompasses people who were born in one country but raised in another. Drawing on theories from immigration and environmental studies, the author uses the analytic category “slow legal violence” to examine the prolonged harmful effects of the law on people’s lives that are dispersed across time. The findings reveal that time serves as a tool to deny citizenship rights and incorporation through things such as the indefinite periods immigrants who do not have a way to legalize are forced to remain in illegality or the wait times for processing documents for legal status, which often extend into decades. This article examines how slow legal violence is manifested for the 1.5 Generation, including those with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and how time shapes experiences of living outside of legality. DACA, an executive order for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children, provides a two-year renewable work permit but does not provide pathway to citizenship.