The Uprooted Political Socialization of DACA Recipients

<title>Abstract</title> <p> In 2012, President Barack Obama introduced the landmark immigration policy Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), protecting undocumented youth from deportation and creating the conditions for an expansion of who counts as an American. This paper assesses that goal, asking whether DACA has fostered a new class of Americans. Drawing upon 13 original in-depth interviews with Latino DACA recipients, I construct a theory of uprooted political socialization—a process by which inclusion into American institutions cultivates identity attachment that the policy’s own limitations then systematically erode. I then test my theory using the adult and youth samples of the 2020 and 2024 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Surveys (CMPS), comparing how Latino DACA recipients value their American identities in relation to their citizen peers across age cohorts. I show that unlike Latino citizens, who follow a traditional linear pathway toward a greater valuation of their American identities across age cohorts, DACA recipients experience a decline in American identity valuation in early adulthood that is never recovered. Instead, DACA recipients place higher value on identities which are more difficult for the state to revoke, such as gender and racial identity. This distinct relationship with the American identity reveals that DACA’s failure to provide more politically secure protections or a pathway to citizenship has limited its aspirations for inclusion—leading recipients to abandon the American identity the policy sought to secure. ( <bold>WC:</bold> 227) </p>