Doctoral Dissertation Research: Legal and Oppositional Consciousness Among Actors in the Central American Refugee Movement

自2014年以来，数千名中美洲人逃离祖国，穿越墨西哥来到美国边境寻求庇护。为了应对中美洲移民的增加，美国政府实施了一系列旨在阻止移民的政策。这些政策非但不能劝阻中美洲寻求庇护者，反而可能在一些寻求庇护者及其美国法律盟友（包括律师和法律倡导者）中激起抵制。与美国的无证青年相比，寻求庇护者，特别是那些尚未进入民族国家物理边界的人，缺乏文化公民身份的要求，更不用说正式公民身份了。然而，许多人对美国政府提出了索赔。与此同时，广泛的律师和法律倡导者正在与寻求庇护者接触，在寻求庇护者跨国过境之前和之后共同提供短期无偿法律服务。与影响诉讼不同，直接提供法律服务传统上并不被认为会导致社会变革，但它可能是一种新的社会运动参与形式。这些不同的演员是如何看待他们的行为的？这些人认为自己是社会运动的一部分吗？如果是这样，法律和身份在他们如何将自己视为积极分子的过程中扮演了什么角色，如果有的话，这种情况是如何在美国境内外发生变化的？了解这些因素在煽动抵抗中所起的作用，将对我们对社会运动和美国移民政策的理解产生重要影响。通过对中美洲寻求庇护者、美国律师和法律倡导者的访谈，结合多地点民族志实地研究，本研究将提供第一个系统的实证检验，即这些不同的参与者是否以及如何将自己视为更广泛运动的一部分，这被称为对立意识的发展。该项目对社会运动、法律专业和移民方面的文献做出了贡献，描绘了中美洲难民运动社会领域行动者的意识，并生成了一个理论模型，用于分析寻求庇护者、律师和法律倡导者开始将自己视为社会运动的一部分的过程。该研究着眼于寻求庇护者跨国越境之前、期间和之后意识的发展，特别研究了法律和执行法律的惩罚性政策如何塑造行为者的意识；行为人的身份，包括寻求庇护身份和职业身份，如何影响意识的发展；以及空间如何调节意识。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Since 2014, thousands of Central Americans have fled their home countries and traveled across Mexico to the U.S. border to seek asylum. In response to increased migration from Central America, the U.S. government has implemented a number of policies meant to deter migration. Rather than dissuading Central American asylum seekers, these policies may foster resistance among some asylum seekers and their U.S. legal allies, including attorneys and legal advocates. In contrast to undocumented youth in the United States, asylum seekers, particularly those that have not yet entered the physical boundaries of the nation state, lack claims to cultural citizenship, let alone formal citizenship. Yet many make claims against the U.S. state. At the same time, a broad base of attorneys and legal advocates are engaging with asylum seekers, working en mass to provide short-term pro bono legal services both before and after asylum seekers' transnational border crossings. Unlike impact litigation, direct legal services provision is not traditionally thought to lead to social change, yet it may be a new form of social movement engagement. How do these diverse actors think about their actions? Do these individuals consider themselves part of a social movement? If so, what roles do law and identity play in how they come to see themselves as activists and how, if at all, does this shift across spaces inside and outside of the United States? Understanding the role these factors play in fomenting resistance will have critical implications for both our understanding of social movements and for U.S. immigration policy. Combining a multi-sited ethnographic field study with interviews with Central American asylum seekers and U.S.-based attorneys and legal advocates, this study will provide the first systematic empirical examination of whether and how these various actors come to view themselves as part of a broader movement, what has been called the development of oppositional consciousness. Contributing to the literature on social movements, the legal profession, and migration, this project maps consciousness among actors in the social field of the Central American refugee movement and generates a theoretical model for analyzing the processes through which asylum seekers, attorneys, and legal advocates begin to view themselves as part of a social movement. Focusing on the development of consciousness before, during, and after asylum seekers' transnational border crossing, the study particularly examines how law, and the punitive policies enforcing law, shapes actors' consciousness; how actors' identities, including the asylum seeking identity and professional identity, influence the development of consciousness; and how space mediates consciousness.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.