| Summary: | This dissertation focuses on the ways in which undocumented immigrant youth in Tennessee contest their marginalization and challenge various forms of social injustice arising from their immigration status and other facets of their social identities. Specifically, this study examines how youth challenge their marginalization through everyday acts of resistance and collective action, a process I refer to here as boundary politics. This study reflects participatory action research (PAR) and participant observation with undocumented youth affiliated with a youth-led organization, Jóvenes Unidos por un Mejor Presente (JUMP), which is located in Nashville, Tennessee. I investigate how they: engage in formal and informal forms of social change work; understand the social contexts in which they are embedded; and, hope to effect change at the individual, community, state, and national levels. This process is examined in relation to the social and structural barriers that emerge through municipal, state, and federal immigration policies, practices, and discourse. The tactics of subversion and overt contestation employed by youth individually and collectively are shaped by local contexts and the broader sociopolitical landscape. Youth deploy these tactics strategically in an attempt to address the causes and consequences of injustice as they manifest individually, relationally, and structurally. Immigration policy and practice in the U.S. is currently a topic of much debate and one that could be subject to public pressure, generated in part by the organizing efforts and activism of undocumented youth. Hence, it is hoped that this dissertation will inform scholarly and public discussion on how everyday acts of resistance and the social movement participation of undocumented youthand more broadly, marginalized youthcan shape social policy and practice in contemporary American society.
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