Event

On July 16, 2021, a federal judge blocked the Biden administration from approving new applications for the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, putting the program’s future in peril. While this development was jolting for immigrant communities, it was not unexpected. World-renowned scholar of the lives of immigrants in the United States and author of the landmark book Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America, Roberto Gonzales argues that time limited and partial statuses like DACA endow their beneficiaries with a duality of experiences – of both security and vulnerability. While tension between these competing experiences remains unresolved, control over one’s circumstances is often shaded if not threatened by hostile and exclusionary contexts.