PROJECT M USE 1

11

"What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?": Exploring

(il)Legibility within the Intersection of Gender, Sexuality,
and Immigration Status

Jesus Cisneros, Julia Gutierrez

QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring

2018, pp. 84-102 (Article)

Published by Michigan State University Press

For additional information about this article

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 (((
“What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?”
Exploring (il)Legibility within the
Intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and
Immigration Status
Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

abstract
The experiences and needs of undocuqueer immigrants are actively negotiated and
muted and have been little researched or addressed in relation to the broader immigrant
and LGBT rights discourses. This study explores the ways undocuqueer immi-
grants from Latin America experience the intersection of their gender, sexuality,
[199.91.183.21] Project MUSE (2024-08-19 00:59 GMT) Saint Olaf College

and immigration status and how these experiences shape their sociopolitical iden-
tities and status in the United States. Using intersectionality and queer of color
criticism as an analytic framework, this study demonstrates how queer and trans
undocumented immigrants experience structural (il)legibility, embodied (il)legi-
bility, and (il)legible survival as they resist the dominant paradigms of conventional
citizenship and cisgender heterosexual normativity.

Tired of being welcomed as undocumented in immigrant rights organiza-

tions and as queer in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights
organizations—­but never holistically in either—­queer and trans undocumented
immigrants coined the term “undocuqueer” as a form of resistance to dominant

Copyright © 2018 Michigan State University. Jesus Cisneros, “‘What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?
Exploring (il)Legibility within the Intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Immigration Status,” QED: A
Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking 5.1 (2018): 84–102. ISSN 2327-1574. All rights reserved.
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 85

ideologies that frame gender, sexuality, and immigration issues as singular and
unrelated. Undocuqueer, as a political identity, specifically addresses intersec-
tional oppression and serves as a mode through which to question the processes
that create and maintain exclusionary norms. “Undocu-­” references the nativist
policies that criminalize immigrants, whereas “-­queer” captures the heteroge-
neity and plurality of gender and sexuality.1 Together, undocuqueer acknowl-
edges the queer and trans identities of many undocumented immigrants who
have been previously marginalized within social movement organizing.2
Although undocuqueer immigrants comprise a significant proportion of
immigrant rights movement participants, immigrant rights discourses have not
broadly attended to the ways gender, sexuality, and other overlapping identities
shape immigrants’ experiences.3 Narrow constructions of “good” versus “bad”
immigrants criminalize individuals that fall outside of the DREAMer narrative
and “subtly consent to the production of legal violence against immigrants.”4
Built upon a discourse of exceptionalism and privatized notions of citizenship,
when immigrant rights discourses emphasize the respectability and worthiness of
some to remain within, they inadvertently define who can and should be right-
fully excluded.5 The permanence of these groups’ criminalization perpetuates
immigration enforcement actions that push individuals further into the shadows
and prioritize them for deportation. Likewise, within LGBT rights discourses,
the rhetoric of homonormativity privileges certain forms of same-­sex expression
and perpetuates the cultural unintelligibility of certain bodies, sexualities, and
expressions.6 Queer and trans individuals that are of color, undocumented, fluid
in their sexual expression or gender, or a combination of such, are often left out
of representation. The assertion of a collective identity marginalizes and excludes
those unable or unwilling to conform to it, and likewise negotiates and com-
modifies the experiences of queer and trans people of color to reinforce and
(re)produce a false homogeneity.7
Because the experiences and needs of undocuqueer immigrants are actively
negotiated and have been little researched or addressed in relation to the broader
immigrant and LGBT rights discourses, the purpose of this study is to explore
the ways undocuqueer immigrants experience the intersection of their gender,
sexuality, and immigration status. To speak and be heard in ways that will not
immediately invite the most serious of repercussions (e.g., rejection, discrim-
ination, detention, deportation) is a challenge that undocuqueer immigrants
face in ways that other immigrant demographics and populations with a direct
stake in U.S. legislative battles do not experience. We bring these conceptual
margins to the center of analysis to explore and understand the way that queer
politics and identity interact and relate with various axes of inequality. In this
study, we highlight undocuqueer immigrants from Latin America to theorize
86 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

how their experiences can be understood as part of a larger understanding of

gender, sexuality, and immigration status within the context of the United States.

) ) ) Intersectionality and Queer of Color Criticism

The concept of intersectionality has a longer history than the term itself. Roder-
ick Ferguson describes how “as a theoretical practice, the category arises out of
women of color and queer of color formations.”8 Throughout history, women
of color have experienced exclusion and oppression based on both race and gen-
der. The experiences of African American women within the feminist and black
liberation movements, for example, serve to demonstrate the shortcomings of
conventional feminism and anti-­racist frameworks. Because gender oppression
is constructed as the oppression suffered by white women and race oppression is
constructed as the oppression suffered by black men, these discourses cannot con-
ceptualize the simultaneity of racialized, gendered oppression experienced by
black women.9 As Patricia Hill Collins describes, “Intersectionality refers to par-
ticular forms of intersecting oppressions, for example, intersections of race and
gender, or sexuality and nation. Intersectional paradigms remind us that oppres-
sion cannot be reduced to one fundamental type, and that oppressions work
together in producing injustice.”10 Hence, intersectionality, as an analytic frame,
disrupts the tendency of social-­justice movements and critical social theorizing
to treat oppression as mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis.11
Yet, the application of a queer of color analysis is likewise important for prob-
lematizing the notion of nation as a protective “home” to its citizens. Like black
feminism’s challenge to the black liberation and feminist movements, queer of
color critique demonstrates the insufficiency of political projects predicated on
a single-­issue analysis.12 A queer of color critique considers the ways that bodies
enact multiple identities simultaneously and negotiate various levels of power
in order to survive.13 Queer of color criticism interrogates how social formations
correspond with and diverge from nationalist ideals and practices to describe
what has been hidden, made invisible, forgotten, and rendered unknowable by
hegemonic power structures.14 Prior to 1990, for example, political projects pub-
licly linking struggles around homo/transphobia, racism, and anti-­immigrant
sentiment were practically impossible, because immigrants who identified as
queer and trans “risked exclusion by announcing their presence, publicizing
their struggles, or participating in organizing.”15 Immigrants who were found
to be homosexual or to engage in same-­sex behavior were almost always either
denied entry into the United States or deported. Because queer and trans undoc-
umented immigrants continue to be expelled or rejected from home and the
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 87

nation “for not conforming to the dictation and demand for uniform gendered
and sexual types,” the development and application of a queer of color analysis
remain as significant today as ever.16
Queer and trans undocumented immigrants from Latin America may
encounter legal consequences and further social marginalization in disclosing
their gender, sexuality, and immigration status due to the overlapping margins
of prejudice, stigma, and deportability. Given their undocumented status, for
example, many often rely on family and extended networks for economic sur-
vival and other resources.17 To minimize rejection and uphold familial ties, many
often report keeping their gender presentation and sexuality tacit (understood,
but not discussed).18 Others likewise describe avoiding or rejecting certain people
and not speaking up about immigrant rights within mainstream LGBT spaces,
or vice versa, in order to reconcile conflicting values and norms.19
The literature broadly describes how queer and trans immigrants strategically
disclose their social identities in some social contexts, but not others. How-
ever, less is known about the ways gender, sexuality, and immigration status are
experienced as an intersecting identity (e.g., undocuqueer). Using intersection-
ality and queer of color criticism as a theoretical framework, this study seeks to
address the conditions undocuqueer immigrants face and how these experiences
shape their sociopolitical identities and status in the United States. We focus
on longer standing immigrants from Latin America to highlight how undoc-
umented queer and trans bodies are frequently ignored and misrepresented by
policies, institutions, and epistemologies that push their identities to the mar-
gins of society and render them illegitimate.20 By highlighting the voices of
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undocuqueer immigrants via their personal narratives, this study privileges the
experiences of individuals simultaneously targeted and made invisible by pre-
sumptions of conventional citizenship and cisgender heteronormativity.

) ) ) Methodology
Because undocuqueer immigrants are part of two sensitive and relatively invisi-
ble demographics, we relied on help from the Queer Undocumented Immigrant
Project (QUIP) for identifying participants. QUIP is a program of United We
Dream, the largest multiethnic immigrant youth-­led organization in the United
States, and has been at the forefront of creating organizing strategies that center
the experiences of undocuqueer immigrants. Launched in 2011, QUIP seeks to
organize and empower LGBT undocumented immigrants to raise consciousness
about how criminalization and immigration enforcement have affected queer
and trans undocumented immigrants. Conducting double coming out forums
88 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

and challenging essentialized notions of identity, QUIP has provided the impe-
tus for undocuqueer youth to come out “undocumented and unafraid, queer and
unashamed.”21
As active participants in local QUIP initiatives, we started with a convenience
sample of Arizona QUIP affiliates and solicited their assistance in identifying
a total of 31 queer and trans undocumented immigrants who, like them, self-­
identified as undocuqueer. Upon receiving referrals, the lead researcher con-
tacted participants via phone or Facebook. Two individuals who had recently
resolved their immigration status were included in the total sample of 31 partic-
ipants. Participants resided in ten different U.S. states, plus Washington DC,
and represented six different Latin American countries of origin. The majority of
participants (29) were 30 years or younger and identified as cisgender men (17),
followed by genderqueer (6), cisgender women (4), and transgender women (4).
Twenty-­one participants were Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)22
recipients.
The data for this qualitative study was generated from in-­depth, conversa-
tional, semi-­structured interviews. All interviews were conducted in person, via
phone, or through Skype videoconference in October and November 2014. The
interviews were designed to generate narratives that served as the sole method of
inquiry. As Clandinin and Rosiek explain, “Beginning with a respect for ordi-
nary lived experience, the focus of narrative inquiry is not only a valorizing of
individual’s experience but also an exploration of social, cultural, and institu-
tional narratives within which individual’s experiences were constituted, shaped,
expressed and enacted.”23 Hence, interviews aimed to elicit descriptions of and
narratives about (1) their lives, (2) their experiences, (3) and the meaning they
ascribed to being undocuqueer. Though we relied on a uniform interview pro-
tocol, participants retained the discretion to lead the direction of the interview
and choose how to relay their narratives. Interviews ranged from 45 minutes to
three and a half hours.
To interpret the content constructed within the text of the narrative, we
used open coding techniques. We placed conceptual labels on responses that
described events, experiences, and feelings reported in the interviews. We identi-
fied meta-­themes by analyzing each individual interview question and examined
responses for common meta-­themes across all interviews. Because interpreta-
tions were guided by what our bodies know and what our communities have
taught us, it is important to understand the researchers’ sociopolitical location
as part of narrative interpretation. Jesus Cisneros identifies as a naturalized cit-
izen and queer cisgender Latino. He migrated to the United States from Mex-
ico at the age of six and has been involved in undocuqueer organizing efforts
since 2012. Julia Gutierrez identifies as a U.S. citizen and pansexual, cisgender
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 89

woman of color. She is the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents and has
been involved in undocuqueer organizing efforts since 2014. Despite our posi-
tionality as queer, first-­and second-­generation immigrants, we approached this
study with awareness that our privileges, in terms of (cis)gender and citizenship,
represent what may be significant blind spots in our ability to fully understand
participants’ experiences. For this reason, in addition to prolonged engagement
between the investigators and participants, the lead researcher employed peer-­
debriefing strategies and member checks to enhance the trustworthiness of
interpretations. Peer debriefers challenged the interpretations of data, identified
gaps in the analyses, and constructively responded to preliminary interpretations
of the deidentified data. Likewise, collaboration between the lead researcher and
participants via member checks ensured that interview transcripts and prelimi-
nary interpretations aligned with participants’ narratives and meanings.

) ) ) What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?

Although most participants arrived in the United States as children, not every-
one benefitted from DACA as a result of eligibility criteria that disqualified those
who did not meet the strict age restrictions, had not achieved the education
requirements, could not prove continuous presence in the United States, or had
been convicted of a felony or significant misdemeanor. Those that benefitted
from DACA recognized that their relative privilege was a matter of discretion,
not law, and could be revoked at any time. Hence, they often reflected on the
vulnerability of their status and the state of their undocuqueer community, most
of whom did not qualify for such temporary relief. The violent discourses that
defined citizenship and cisgender heterosexual normativity pushed participants
to the boundaries of (il)legibility, whereby their social identities were simul-
taneously targeted and marginalized. Pressured to cope with the amalgam of
being treated as “criminals” and being able to survive, their narratives highlight
three overarching themes: structural (il)legibility, embodied (il)legibility, and
(il)legible survival.

Structural (il)Legibility

For participants, the interplay of gender, sexuality, and immigration status

invoked a certain level of fear and uncertainty imposed by law, policy, and
dominant culture. This fear became existent due to the lack of state protections,
justified through the process of (il)legibility. To be “legitimated by the state is to
 90 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

enter into the terms of legitimation offered there, and to find that one’s public
and recognizable sense of personhood is fundamentally dependent on the lexi-
con of that legitimation.”24 Participants described how their recognizable sense
of personhood under the state has been diminished by anti-­immigrant and anti-­
LGBT sentiment that has pervaded through laws and policies. For example,
Julio, a 20-­year-­old DACA recipient from Arizona, described the following:
Prop 300, not being able to go to school. In-­state tuition, not qualifying for that.
Then SB 1062, like those type of things that, you know, different propositions that,
one that doesn’t allow me to go to state universities and the other one that I would
get discriminated if going into a business type of place. Those kind of things affect
me because of my two different identities, one being undocumented the second
one being queer.

For Julio, restrictive laws and policies targeted his queer and undocumented
identities simultaneously via exclusions and exemptions. Arizona Proposition
300 made him ineligible for in-­state tuition status and state-­funded financial
aid within public institutions of higher education, whereas Arizona Senate Bill
1062 used religious exemptions to enable discrimination based on sexuality and
gender identity. Such policies prevented participants from being recognized
and integrated. Experiencing social rejection as inscribed by the threat of these
policies, Julio described feeling simultaneously targeted and invisible.
Being undocumented, different things are important to me than other people who
live here . . . when it comes to me, it’s like receiving medical care or information
about health-­related issues or getting those type of services, those are things that
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I can’t because sometimes they ask for Social Security or they ask for residency or
citizenship, things that I don’t have. Or an ID, they ask for these things that I don’t
have. So you know, these resources that are out there for LGBT people, sometimes
I can’t get a hold of them because I am who I am. I am undocumented.

The state usually serves as a protector or safety net by providing public services
like medical care, food assistance, and price reduction of utilities to low-­income
families in need. Due to their immigration status, however, social support ser-
vices for undocumented immigrants become minimum or nonexistent. Experi-
encing rejection and invisibility due to their gender, sexuality, and immigration
status, undocumented immigrants are placed in double jeopardy when even
resources allocated for the LGBT community become inaccessible.
Franco, a 24-year-old DACA recipient from Arizona, described the challenge
of obtaining access to social services specifically for queer and trans people.
Being undocumented among the LGBT community, I feel like I am just this little
magnet walking around just waiting for anything to fall on me, like any sickness or
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 91

anything. And that’s scary. Being undocumented and not easily being able to turn
out to a program, it is hard. And aside from the health care system, housing, and
shelters. There is none. There is none here within our state. There is no flexibility,
there is no programs that really cater to the undocumented queer community. I
think it’s because of propositions in place, like legislation placed in the state of
Arizona, which is Proposition 200. It really limits the reach for the undocumented
community.

Arizona Proposition 200 requires state and local agencies to verify the identity
and eligibility, based on immigration status, of applicants for nonfederally man-
dated state public benefits. Such policies across states construct the (il)legibility
of undocuqueer immigrants and preclude them from having access to specific
resources, including homeless shelters, identification cards, and health care. As
Mario, a 28-­year-­old DACA recipient from Florida, described:
I felt so ashamed that I would disappoint my mom that I ran away from home. I
stopped going to school. I was homeless for about three months going from friend’s
place to friend’s place. Many times just sleeping outdoors. It was a rough period
of time for me. I didn’t have any help. When I talk about homeless youth, par-
ticularly homeless LGBT youth, the struggle for individuals who are both LGBT
and undocumented is so severe because you can’t even go to a shelter. You will be
turned away from a shelter if you don’t have pieces of information that you cannot
give them. So that is what was going on with me.

Mario described the importance of material manifestations associated with

being recognized under the state. In his narrative, he highlights the prevalence
of issues of family acceptance for queer and trans youth, yet the inaccessibility of
homeless shelters for undocuqueer immigrants. Shelters typically require IDs for
background checks, and individuals typically must prove that they are citizens
or legal permanent residents to obtain services. Due to their undocumented sta-
tus, and because they do not qualify for government issued IDs in most states,
including Florida, undocuqueer immigrants are often unable to turn to home-
less shelters, leaving them feeling rejected from both the literal home and the
nation-­state.
The lack of protection for undocuqueer immigrants demonstrates the inter-
twined oppression through the social formations of gender, sexuality, and
immigration status. The literal home often replicates what the nation-­state has
normalized as unworthy of protection. Undocuqueer immigrants do not fit
legally and socially under the normative perception of what it means to be a
U.S. citizen. Identifying as undocumented challenges the notions of citizen-
ship produced as an effect of law materially inscribed on papers. Identifying
as queer and trans disrupts the normative social construction of cisgender and
92 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

heterosexual normativity in the private and public spheres. Hence, being both
queer and trans and undocumented leaves individuals stranded in the streets
and outside the margins of what the nation comes to accept as legitimate and
acceptable citizens.

Embodied (il)Legibility

Recognizing their (il)legibility as inscribed by law and policy, participants also

described the ways their bodies became like a canvas where (il)legibility was
inscribed. Their experiences demonstrated the importance of centering the
body and recognizing the body as text, whereby individuals are translated as
“pathological others” and marked with signs of discipline and punishment.25
Translation hailed from the dominant discursive meanings of cisgender heter-
onormativity and citizenship. As Josh, a 25-­year-­old DACA recipient from Cal-
ifornia, described:
I really have a hard time with associating my body, my physical being, to being
undocumented. I can’t place it in my body. I can place my queerness, you know,
because you can tell I’m queer by the way that I speak. My queerness is in every-
thing that I do: my mannerisms, my vocal cords, how I dance, how I talk, how I
interact, my lingo. Like, you can notice it, right? It is something that is intuitive
with who I am. So, my undocumentedness is not. You can only tell if I tell you or
if I show you a piece of paper, or the lack of papers, but other than that, it is not a
physical trait that I carry.

Josh described the entanglement of embodied and structural scales of (il)legibil-

ity. He highlighted the unintelligibility and incorrigibility (within the current
sociopolitical context) of his queer and undocumented status and the way each
became translated in embodied contexts.26 “Undocumentedness” was imposed
by a long history of legal, social, and political factors that justified and fueled the
dominant discourses of citizenship that construct brown bodies as potentially
“illegal.” Queerness, on the other hand, was constructed by the breaching of
heterosexual boundaries and normalized gender binary constructions. These sys-
tems served as the context by which participants’ undocuqueer identities became
translated as undesirable, subjected to violence, and suspect to deportation. As
Felix, a 28-­year-­old DACA recipient from Florida, described:
Like, you know, I always felt like I had to work ten times harder for anything that I
wanted just because I didn’t have papers. And then, the fact that I had to constantly
be afraid of being rejected by my family when I was younger, it just made every-
thing much worse. Not only because, I mean, there are tangible things like, “oh you
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 93

can’t get a driver’s license.” That is very tangible, right? And then, there are all the
intangible things like you can’t date if you are in the closet. You can’t have a normal
teenage experience when you are constantly afraid of your family and then you’re
constantly afraid of the state. Like there is no safe haven for you. And then, there
are other things, right? Like I felt like for a long time that I was constantly afraid
of people just beating me up. Because, I don’t know, like I was constantly trying to
look more “straight,” and I felt like I wasn’t. Or that I wasn’t straight-­acting, I guess.

Felix described compensating for his undocumented status by working “ten-­

times harder” to achieve his goals. Likewise, he described managing the parts
of his queer identity marked on his body in order to avoid harassment. In these
ways, the dominant discursive meanings of citizenship and cisgender heteronor-
mativity required that only those texts that were intelligible to the existing order
be publicly practiced and read.27
Elias, a 23-­year-­old genderqueer undocumented immigrant from Washing-
ton, likewise described the ways social and legal enforcement punished trans-
gressors and conditioned participants to not disrupt or antagonize the dominant
constructions of normative gender, sexuality, and citizenship.
In many ways, I would say there are times where like getting a job is kind of hard.
And there was a time when I was like without a job for five months because I
couldn’t find anything. And, you know me, I wear makeup, I don’t care. Like, I get
however I want and stuff. I was depressed for a minute because I was like, “oh I’m
undocumented, I don’t have papers, I can’t work here, I don’t have a job.” And then
I thought it was an issue that I was gay too. I was like, “I’m gay. Like, I don’t think
people want to hire me.” I didn’t feel wanted. I didn’t feel like I fit in.
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For Elias, papers were not the only texts that worked against him. Textual sig-
nifiers of the body associated with Elias’s queerness also marked him (il)legible,
thereby making his labor undesirable within the dominant systems of cisgender
heteronormativity. Juxtaposed with the discursive meaning of citizenship, the
unintelligibility marked by the transgression of gender norms and not having
papers further rendered him undesirable.
For participants, the racialization of their identities was an embodied experi-
ence, not just structural, that resulted from the aggressive local enforcement of
federal immigration law. Profiling practices amplified the suspicion that brown
bodies could be “illegal,” and therefore, attributed potential criminality to look-
ing “illegal.” As Jesse, a 23-­year-­old DACA recipient from Arizona, described:
So even waking up every single day and walking out, it is scary to be either iden-
tity. Like if I walk too late, am I going to get killed because I am gay? Or is the
police going to stop me because I am Mexican and question something? And if
they take me in, what is that going to mean because I am queer? It’s a lot of these
94 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

things that people don’t have to think about, but everything that we do . . . like the
fact that you were holding your boyfriend’s hand or that I was like grabbing your
arm. In spaces like that, what does that mean like for us to have a hate crime, and if
it wasn’t a hate crime when it comes down to like, “oh you are undocumented,” “you
have DACA,” it’s going to affect your everything. So I think every day it’s like, it’s
a higher stress level of everything that we do that we have to double think. Instead
of just doing it, like you have to think about it even more to really explore the
idea of “what does this mean?”

When participants engaged with institutions or inhabited public spaces, their

identities became visible and required identification to affirm their desirability.
The state institutionally established norms via anti-­immigrant and anti-­LGBT
laws and policies that had been associated with queer and trans and immigrant
bodies, particularly brown skin, Spanish accents, and the area of town one is
in. As a result, participants described an increased risk of being targeted due to
their embodied undocumented queerness. This body-­based experience created
a heightened sense of vulnerability among participants, where targeted polic-
ing produced a deep distrust for law enforcement officials. As Jesse highlighted,
undocuqueer immigrants do not always have the ability to maneuver or hide
their identities, given unquestioned racial and class profiling that translates their
bodies as “criminals.”

(il)Legible Survival

The mere existence of undocuqueer immigrants resembled a form of resistance,

because it challenged the value systems embedded and normalized within the
dominant paradigms of citizenship and cisgender heterosexual normativity.
The need to survive in a space where citizenship was denied to undocuqueer
immigrants set the context for participants to identify and recognize their own
capabilities, resources, and possibilities. Through their narratives, participants
described the severe restrictions that put them face to face with the limits of the
law and restructured their opportunities and life chances. Prior to the passage of
DACA, for example, there were absolutely no opportunities for undocumented
immigrants to gain lawful employment. Given the compounded difficulties in
finding work, participants were often pushed to the streets and forced to create
their own opportunities for survival. Participants shared how the implications
of their undocumented status often forced them to consider alternative out-
lets for employment that capitalized on their gender and sexual identities. As
Alex, a 20-­year-­old DACA recipient from Connecticut, described: “I was a sex
worker for a while when I was like in high school. So yeah definitely being
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 95

undocumented and not being able to work, and being queer opened up this idea
in my head at a young age that I cannot work and I’m queer so like, what else do
I have?” Being confronted with exclusion and marginalization, participants were
forced to engage the boundaries of deprivation and citizenship to survive. Sex
work, as a form of survival, represented one mechanism by which participants
could sustain themselves economically.
Sex work was particularly prevalent amongst undocumented transgender par-
ticipants, who described surveillance as a significant issue affecting their oppor-
tunities to survive. Although DACA certainly provided initial efforts for the
social incorporation of some undocumented immigrants, it also created a new
set of priorities for immigration enforcement that have resulted in thousands of
people being profiled, detained, and deported. As Josefina, a 41-­year-­old trans-
gender immigrant from New York, described:

Por no tener papeles, tenemos la necesidad de hacer el trabajo sexual. Y del trabajo
sexual, la policía nos arresta. Pero yo creo que nosotras no hacemos mal porque si no
tenemos trabajo, nosotros tenemos que pagar renta, nosotros tenemos que pagar biles.
A lo mejor tenemos papas, tíos que tenemos que mandarles dinero a nuestros países.
Pero de donde les vamos a mandar si no tenemos ningún trabajo? No tenemos ninguna
entrada de economía. Entonces qué es lo que tenemos que hacer? Buscar el medio de
cómo solventar nuestros gastos.
[For not having papers, we have the necessity to do sex work. And from doing sex
work, the police arrest us. But I don’t think we are doing something bad because if
we don’t have work, we need to pay rent, we need to pay bills, and maybe we have
parents or uncles whom we need to send money to in our home countries. But how
are we going to send them money if we don’t have any work? We have no income
coming in. So what do we have to do? We find a way to earn a living.]

Josefina highlighted the ways gender and sexuality intersect with labor and
migration. In her narrative, she described how depending on sex work as a
reliable mechanism for survival made her increasingly susceptible to detention
and deportation, given the history of profiling and policing practices that mark
queer and trans bodies as the subject of police attention. Across states, programs
like Secure Communities and the Priority Enforcement Program have deputized
local police to act as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and
expanded the definition of “criminal” to include anyone arrested by the police.28
This prioritization for deportation has a disproportionate effect for individuals
who participate in underground economies (e.g., sex work), as they are less likely
to be eligible and apply for deportation reprieve programs such as DACA. These
conditions, hence, forced several participants to cope with the amalgam of being
treated as “criminals” and being able to survive. As Jesse explained:
 96 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

Like our trans sisters who do sex work, people see that as bad, but they do not
understand. And for me that is why I keep in mind, like even beyond our trans
sisters, me as a gay boy, if I did not have the family that I have, and I would have
been kicked out at the age of 19 in Arizona, like I don’t know where I would
have been now because I feel like at that moment I did not have friends to call and
say, “I am undocumented and I am gay and I just got kicked out of my house, I
can’t work.” Or that I knew somebody. I think my destiny would have been either
sex work or death, like if my parents would not have accepted me or if they would
have kicked me out.

Jesse recognized the interrelation of issues of family acceptance, homelessness,

and poverty, as these issues pushed participants to the margins of the informal
and underground economy and contributed to their criminalization. He iden-
tified sex work and death as two of the only viable options for queer and trans
undocumented bodies, given the implications of stigma and prejudice in every-
day life that have manifested in violence toward queer and trans individuals.
Recognizing that the state had not provided the necessary structures to address
the social issues most relevant to their experiences, participants described the
ways even their survival became (il)legible by surveillance and disciplinary prac-
tices that sought to deport those perceived to be inherently disruptive and threaten-
ing to normative privatized notions of cisgender heterosexuality and citizenship.
Thus, participants’ mere existence represented the kind of subjectivity devel-
oped under conditions of multiple oppressions that was actively persecuted and
punished.
[199.91.183.21] Project MUSE (2024-08-19 00:59 GMT) Saint Olaf College

) ) ) Undocuqueer Meaning Making

The self-­meanings participants ascribed to living within the overlapping margins
of gender, sexuality, and immigration status were shaped by the structural lim-
itations they faced, the (in)visibility they embodied, and the criminalization of
their survival across these conditions. Participants described undocuqueer as an
experience actively silenced and negotiated within presumptions of cisgender,
heterosexual citizenship as the telos of belonging. (il)Legibility was imposed by
the ways that they were simultaneously targeted and made invisible by restric-
tive anti-­LGBT and anti-­immigrant laws and policies, as well as disciplinary
and exclusionary discourses. Participants often described themselves as direct
targets of discrimination and law enforcement actions that viewed them as phys-
ically present, but socially and legally unrecognized. Hence, the lack of a legally
recognized relationship with the state left individuals in an abject condition
and open to violence.29 The material consequences of being denied access to
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 97

rights, resources, and protections had an impact on their navigation of everyday

social interactions, and the state practices targeting LGBT and undocumented
immigrants forced participants to acknowledge the limitations of their undocu-
mented status as it intersected with their gender and sexuality.
Participants described (il)legibility as a mode of being. They expressed how
their bodies were the landscapes for their identities, but because their bodies
were read as incoherent, the inability to emulate the characteristics of legitimate
and acceptable citizenship forced some to negotiate the daily threats of violence,
mass incarceration, and anti-­immigrant legislation, alongside blatant attacks on
their sexualities and gender identities. Their identities disrupted the normative
social construction of citizenship and cisgender heterosexual normativity in the
private and public spheres. Socially constructed as the “other,” participants felt
their bodies being disciplined, surveilled, and policed whenever engaging with
public institutions. Their desire for state recognition was in constant flux, as
state recognition provided for access to material resources (e.g., DACA, ID,
driver’s license, financial aid, housing, and health care), yet it also exposed them
to government practices of control, vigilance, and punishment. Symbolic and
actual violence most profoundly affected those rendered vulnerable by the very
distance of their lived realities from these regulatory norms.
Nevertheless, participants reclaimed power that had not been granted to them
by creating their own opportunities for existence and survival. Despite the crim-
inalization of their undocumented status and the policing of their sexuality and
gender expression, they worked hard to make the best out of their conditions,
often utilizing their gender and sexuality as opportunities for survival. The per-
formance of their gender and sexuality provided a sense of agency that enabled
them to sidestep the limitations of their immigration status, as imposed by the
state. Though earning a living through sex work entailed the additional risks
of being policed, profiled, arrested, and deported, surviving meant learning to
cope with these risks and resisting. Their existence challenged the power of the
state to control its population through fear and the threat of criminalization and
deportability.
As suggested by previous scholars, the rites of institution are central to the
power of nation-­states to construct identities and reproduce a sense of belong-
ing.30 Recognition, hence, entails having “a social security number, authoriza-
tion to work legally, and rights codified in the Constitution. . . .”31 However,
we argue that state recognition also occurs through a heteronormative gender
binary framework that has erased or not acknowledged queer and trans indi-
viduals in the creation of laws and policies. Thus, state recognition is based
on citizenship and cisgender heterosexual normativity, and assimilating to the
98 ( Jesus Cisneros and and Jesus Cisneros and Julia Gutierrez

idealized national identity is what makes an immigrant deserve the right to have
rights recognized by the nation-­state.
For participants in this study, systematic violence took form not only through
a lack of state recognition but also through the condition of “abjectivity” result-
ing from the intersection of gender, sexuality, and immigration status. Partici-
pants’ experiences with profiling and surveillance, for example, highlight how
queer and trans undocumented bodies are targets of criminalization and incar-
ceration due to their distance from cisgender heteronormativity and citizenship
orthodoxies. Dragnet policing and immigration enforcement policies perpetu-
ate undocuqueer immigrants’ withdrawal of rights across different states and
contribute to the deprivation of safety and security participants often described
feeling devoid of. These conditions entail racializing schemes that work not
only to exclude undocuqueer immigrants from labor market participation, but
also to create a prolonged (il)legibility enforced by criminalization.
Uncertainty regarding the prioritization of “criminals” for immigration
enforcement actions currently places many undocuqueer immigrants in an
unpredictable political battle, as mundane activities (e.g., driving, working,
walking while trans) can result in a criminal record. In addition, as marginalized
members of society often pushed into survival work, many undocuqueer immi-
grants would not qualify for temporary protection such as DACA, given inter-
actions with the police resultant from the criminalization of their immigration
status and discrimination based on gender and sexuality. Because DACA is not
responsive to issues of poverty, sex work, homelessness, and “illegality” expe-
rienced by undocuqueer immigrants, those who are criminalized are thereby
denied even the hope of eventual recognition from the state.32 Yet, as Jesse’s nar-
rative reminds us, not even the lawful presence conferred by DACA can exempt
individuals from the dominant discourses of belonging. Temporary relief does
not translate to citizenship. Hence, the state’s withholding of the possibility to
end undocuqueer immigrants’ abjectivity via DACA serves only to socially iso-
late individuals further and subject them to laws and other techniques of control
and regulation.
As suggested by Ernesto Javier Martinez, when society works against queer
communities of color, it does so not only by ascribing incoherence to their
desire, gender expression, and social existence (and delegitimizing their expe-
rience of it), “but also by making it difficult and painful to find community
backup and solidarity.”33 Living within the amalgam of these conditions,
undocuqueer immigrants have tapped into the common thread of confronting
fear through organizing and formed supports to cope with the daily challenges
of being undocumented, queer and trans, and ethnic minorities. For a long time,
the face of the immigrant rights movement has been DREAMers—­immigrants
 “What Does It Mean to Be Undocuqueer?” ) 99

who went to college, served with distinction in the military, or whose parents
brought them as children. Today, undocuqueer immigrants are changing the
narrative to bring attention to the criminalization of queer and trans bodies
who do not necessarily fit the “good” immigrant narrative of the DREAMer
movement. Though the undocuqueer movement is still nascent, the emergence
of organizations like QUIP and Familia: Trans/Queer Liberation Movement
demonstrates how queer and trans undocumented immigrants persevere even
within a culture that “continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects
who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship.”34

) ) ) Conclusion
The absence of an intersectional approach to the study of queer and trans undoc-
umented immigrants perpetuates epistemic violence, erases histories and experi-
ences, and disregards the actual material manifestations that perpetuate inequality
for individuals in everyday life. Because identity is discursive, changing political
contexts require researchers to continuously examine the shifting sociopolitical
climate and its impact on the experiences of individuals at the overlapping margins
of identity. Scholars need to remain attentive to the ways that power—­through
representation, authorizing agents, and discourse—­legitimizes certain ways of
being while invalidating and consequently marginalizing those that do not con-
form to prevailing cultural, political, or social norms. The space within the over-
lapping margins of gender, sexuality, and immigration status where queer and
[199.91.183.21] Project MUSE (2024-08-19 00:59 GMT) Saint Olaf College

trans undocumented immigrants have learned to negotiate, agitate, and resist,

for example, has produced the subjectivities and possibilities for undocuqueer
immigrants to exist. Their experiences highlight the boundaries of (il)legibility
and provide a nuanced understanding of the dominant discursive meanings of
cisgender heteronormativity and citizenship. Given the aggressive enforcement
of immigration law under the current administration, highlighting the experi-
ences of queer and trans undocumented immigrants at the intersection of crim-
inality and immigration (i.e., “crimigration”) is more important today than ever.

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)))
Jesus Cisneros is an assistant professor of Educational Leadersip and Founda-
tions at the University of Texas at El Paso. His research moves gender, sexuality,
and immigration status, and their conceptual margins, to the center of analysis
in an effort to explore and understand the way politics and identity interact with
various axes of inequality.

Julia Gutierrez is a doctoral candidate in Gender Studies at Arizona State Uni-

versity. Her research focuses on migration, perceptions of poverty, and trans-
national feminist theory in relation to economic inequality among Mexican
immigrant women.