“Staying out of Trouble” and Doing What Is “Right”

Alienation, Compensatory Mobilization, or Something Else?

Theories of political socialization contend that adult family members shape children’s political and civic engagement directly, through role-modeling, and indirectly by affecting children’s opportunities to acquire education, jobs, and income, all of which affect engagement. Parents can transmit general orientations about politics and civic engagement (e.g., feelings of political efficacy and trust), affect specific attitudes (e.g., political ideology, partisanship), and influence behavior, such as by modeling voting or protesting (Jennings, Stoker, & Bowers, 2009; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady, 1995). Transmission of values, attitudes, and behaviors is strongest when parents participate actively, when both parents share the same political views, and when parents provide clear and consistent cues (Jennings et al., 2009; Jennings & Niemi, 1981).

These conclusions are, however, based on research with native-born citizen parents who presumably acquire a lifetime of knowledge about and experience with U.S. citizenship. Immigrant parents, given their partial socialization outside the United States, have fewer opportunities and less time to build such knowledge and experience. As a consequence, having immigrant parents could depress U.S.-born children’s engagement in politics. Having parents without U.S. citizenship might exacerbate such effects. Especially when parents lack legal residency, they might be particularly likely to avoid civic or political engagement because of fear of deportation (Abrego, 2011). Indirectly, the modest socioeconomic circumstances in which many immigrant-origin youth grow up, especially the children of undocumented migrants, could also hurt political and civic engagement (Terriquez & Kwon, 2015). We might thus expect that children of undocumented parents, despite their own U.S. citizenship, end up unengaged or even alienated from the political system due to the legal constraints faced by family members, difficult economic circumstances, and pervasive negative portrayals of Latino migrants by some public commentators and media (Chavez, 2001; Santa Ana, 2002).

Conversely, there are reasons to imagine that the children of immigrants might become more engaged than a standard political socialization account predicts. During the Chicano movement of the 1960s, high school youth played a key role in walkouts, militating for a better, more inclusive education (Muñoz, 1989). The activism of these early pioneers might provide role models for contemporary youth, even absent parents’ involvement. García Bedolla (2005) argues that the usual positive correlation between higher socioeconomic status and greater political participation can be reversed in working-class families when parents foster a strong, positive group identity as Latino. There is also evidence that anti-immigrant political debates in California in the early 1990s spurred greater political involvement by Latinos (Ramakrishnan & Espenshade, 2001), a process arguably repeated during the immigration protests of 2006 (Voss & Bloemraad, 2011). Viewed through the lens of social movement mobilization, it is possible that second-generation youth become active to compensate for their parents’ lack of voice.

A third possibility is that parents’ legal status has no strong effect, either to depress or to spur political and civic engagement. In this scenario, birthright citizenship, attending U.S. schools, and lifetime exposure to American society, from American peers to mass media, mitigate the intergenerational transfer of illegality, such that the children of undocumented parents are no different than any other young person in the United States. This does not mean that parents’ illegality is irrelevant. Indeed, existing research on political socialization clearly shows that having parents with more resources and greater political interest tends to facilitate engagement among young people, while those whose parents are disaffected or experience poverty and have limited education are less likely to participate (Callahan & Muller, 2013; Terriquez & Kwon, 2015). To the extent that having undocumented parents makes one more likely to live in difficult economic circumstances and less likely to have political role models, this will harm the chances of engagement among young people. But preliminary research suggests that the dynamics of inequality, applicable across the U.S. population, are not much worse (or better) for the children of Latino immigrants compared with other youth with similar socioeconomic backgrounds (Humphries, Muller, & Schiller, 2013; Terriquez & Kwon, 2015). ¹

We thus investigate whether and how parents’ undocumented status might alienate or mobilize U.S.-born youth—or have little independent effect—by examining young people’s reported civic engagement, their political participation, and the way they talk about what makes someone a “good” citizen. We pay particular attention to the contexts in which engagement is fostered or hindered, the processes by which these dynamics occur, and the language young people use to talk about citizenship.

Data and Methodology: Growing up in Mixed-Status Families

We base our analysis on 54 in-depth interviews conducted over a 2-year period with 40 teens from Mexican-origin immigrant families, all of whom live in the San Francisco Bay area and participated in the Immigrant Families’ Political Socialization project. One of the project’s goals was to examine the effects of parents’ legal status on youth political socialization. We thus recruited, in the first phase of the project undertaken in 2006, roughly equal numbers of parents with one of three legal statuses: undocumented (12 parents), legal permanent resident (13 parents), or naturalized citizen (14 parents). We also recruited four families in which the parent was a U.S.-born citizen as a comparison point. Families were recruited primarily through four public high schools with large Latino populations in Oakland and Richmond, California using nonprobability recruitment methods. ² A number of additional families were recruited through snowball sampling to capture families with students at private (often religious) schools or in a few neighboring cities. ³ In each family, we interviewed a teenage son or daughter of our parent respondent. ⁴ In 2008, we did a second round of interviews with a subset of the original respondents, including 14 youths. Interviews lasted from 45 minutes to 2 hours and were transcribed. Given our focus on the U.S.-born second generation, we concentrate on the youth interviews in our analysis here. ⁵

We compare the views and experiences of youth living in families with different legal configurations. We used semistructured questionnaires to ask open-ended questions about teens’ conceptions of politics, citizenship, and their own identities. We also asked a series of survey-style questions about respondents’ current and past civic and political engagement, including participation in and attitudes toward the massive immigrant rights rallies of spring 2006. Interviewers, who were bilingual and bicultural, were encouraged to follow up on respondents’ answers to probe the processes by which people became engaged and respondents’ feelings about citizenship and politics.

We underscore that our research, situated in the San Francisco Bay area, cannot be generalized, at the empirical level, to the rest of the United States, much less to undocumented populations in other countries. The Bay area in the early 21st century is a region quite supportive of immigrants, including undocumented residents. Police chiefs and city councils in cities around the Bay have vowed not to work with federal immigration authorities so as to protect undocumented residents who want to report crimes or use city services. Students and school officials at all levels, from elementary schools and high schools through to community colleges and universities, have mobilized on behalf of undocumented students and their families. Richmond, despite its modest size relative to Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose, hosted large immigrant rights rallies in 2006 (Bloemraad & Trost, 2008). As a result, our findings need to be seen as a conservative estimate of the lingering effects of undocumented status among U.S.-born youth. In those cases where we find little differences between youth based on parental legal status, results might be different in locations more hostile to undocumented migrants. To the extent that we find some differences among youth, they need to be seen as lower bound estimates of the effect of parental legal status. At the same time, we believe that our analysis—including the idea of civic “safe spaces” and identification of multiple, distinctive citizenship discourses—is theoretically generalizable to other places.

Civic Engagement: The Importance of Schools and Safe Spaces

We found that U.S.-born youths’ civic engagement did not seem negatively affected by parents’ lack of legal status. We asked teens about their participation in nine areas: religious organizations, sports clubs, youth organizations, school service groups, community service groups, school clubs, Internet groups, other organizations, and community volunteer work. Irrespective of parents’ legal status, the teen respondents reported participation in 3.5 activities. The teens of undocumented parents were slightly more involved, with 4 activities on average, followed by children of naturalized parents (3.8 activities), children of U.S.-born parents (3.3), and children with legal noncitizen parents (2.8). Given nonprobability sampling, we do not want to make too much of any particular number, but differences are not large, and they are not correlated with parents’ legal status in any clear way. ⁶ This is consistent with an argument that being born with citizenship and growing up in the United States can mitigate intergenerational inequities in civic and political participation.

At the same time, it is important to note that much of the youths’ civic participation occurred in “safe spaces.” By “safe spaces,” we mean institutional locations that were somewhat more violence-free than neighborhood streets and relatively “safe” for undocumented families because the activities and people involved turned a blind eye to or mitigated the importance of legal status.

A key safe space were schools. ⁷ Of 40 respondents, 22 participated in a school club and 13 participated in a school-based service organization. Of the 27 who reported having done volunteer work outside of school, for many such participation was school-related, either organized in the context of a class or school-based club, or as volunteer work done for school credit. Research on school-based civic education and community service learning finds that such programs can increase interest and engagement among majority and native-born minority youth (e.g., McDevitt & Chaffee, 2000; Youniss et al., 2002). Our interviews suggest that schools also serve as safe spaces for immigrant youth to cultivate civic skills and participate in voluntary groups and associations regardless of parents’ status (see also Callahan & Muller, 2013). ⁸ This is consistent with the argument advanced by Gleeson and Gonzales (2012) that the institutional context of schools renders documentation status largely irrelevant to a degree not seen in workplaces.

A second prominent activity among young people was participation in a sports team, reported by 24 teens; some were school-based, while some participated in recreational and competitive leagues outside school. Organized sports kept youth off the street and were supervised by one or more adults. The sidelines of a soccer field or downtime after soccer practice even served as a place or time to mobilize youth and parents for further civic or political engagement in some cases (Bloemraad & Trost, 2008).

Participation in religious organizations, reported by 19 youths, was the third major type of engagement and is another safe space to foster civic engagement. The religious message of churches, inclusive of all of God’s children, and the composition of congregations, that at times included a fair number of undocumented parishioners, contributed to feelings of safety and community. When church leaders supported action, or a few activist congregants took a leadership role, churches could also become a space to mobilize around political causes (see also Mora, 2013). Parents who otherwise reacted with suspicion or fear to having their son or daughter participate in extracurricular activities—due to worry over safety, bad peer influences, fear of immigration enforcement, or other concerns—tended to be okay with school-based and church-based groups.

Attention to safe spaces is important in the context of socialization theories. If schools and religious institutions can foster engagement at a young age, chances are higher that participation will continue through the life course. In follow-up interviews with 14 teens 2 years after our first round of interviews, civic engagement had declined for 8 respondents, remained the same for 2, and increased for 4. Declines or increases were modest for most people, but in a few cases, being a full-time college student dramatically increased participation as opportunities, interest, and recruitment increased. Conversely, leaving high school, being thrust into full-time work, and, for two teens, embarking on parenthood left young adults with much less time and fewer invitations or opportunities for civic engagement. To the extent that U.S.-born young people with undocumented parents might have a harder time entering postsecondary schooling, perhaps because they lack financial resources, educational support, or feel that they need to work to support the family, parental undocumented status may affect civic engagement indirectly through curtailed education.

Political Engagement: Voting, Protesting, and Other Political Acts

Civic engagement in safe spaces also carries consequences for routinized political participation. We know, for example, that among the general U.S. population, people who are active in voluntary associations and church are more likely to vote (e.g., Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993; Verba, Schlozman, & Brady 1995). At the time of the second interviews, 9 of 14 respondents were old enough to register to vote, and 5 reported having done so by summer 2008. ⁹ Of the four young people who had not registered to vote, three said they did not have the time or interest, while the fourth felt that neither of the major parties represented his views. These responses are similar to those reported in studies of why U.S.-born citizens do not vote.

Among the young adults who had registered—and were excited to vote—a number viewed voting as intrinsically important, even if it is hard to argue that a single vote will sway an election. A 20-year-old woman, who was going to college and working part-time, explained, “I really want to vote for the presidency you know. Like, I don’t want to be [one of] those type of people that’s ‘oh my vote is not going to matter.’” Her mother, a U.S.-born Mexican American, felt political engagement was important. Another respondent, the child of a Mexican-born parent, suggested that those fortunate enough to have citizenship should exercise political rights for those who cannot. She explained:

I’m kind of nervous; I never done it [voted] before. I don’t know. I just had been wanting to vote, and now that I have the chance. . . . So it’s like some people want to vote and they can’t. So I might as well.

We see a hint of compensatory engagement in this interview, though compensation is not direct, since the young woman’s parents have voting rights as naturalized citizens.

Indeed, even if parents are documented, it is possible that young second-generation Mexican Americans are influenced by the pervasiveness of illegality in the Mexican immigrant community. Fifty-eight percent of all those without papers in 2010, an estimated 6.5 million individuals, were born in Mexico, representing 56% of all Mexican-born immigrants living in the United States (Passel & Cohn, 2011). Living in a neighborhood with other people who, like their parents, were born in Mexico, or interacting with undocumented family, peers, and parents’ friends exposes these young people to the hardships of life without papers. Many of our respondents seemed to use the term “immigrant” to refer to undocumented individuals, perhaps using it as a euphemism for “illegal.” Processes of racialization, ones that link Mexican immigrant origins with illegality, might also be at play.

Beyond voting, citizens and noncitizens can engage in political acts such as protests and participating in demonstrations. From early February through May 2006, an estimated 3.7 to 5 million people took to the streets in over 160 U.S. cities to rally for immigrant rights (Bloemraad, Voss, & Lee, 2011). The immediate catalyst for the marches was passage of the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act in the House of Representatives on December 16, 2005. Among its provisions, H.R. 4437, as the bill was known, mandated substantial investment in border security, more high-tech document control, greater cooperation between federal immigration officials and local law enforcement, stiffer penalties for employers hiring unauthorized workers, and the criminalization of anyone committing an immigration violation. Even those who assisted undocumented migrants, including people working for religious, humanitarian, or legal aid organizations, risked criminal charges. In the face of such provisions, millions of immigrants and their supporters took to the street to pressure the U.S. Senate to drop the bill and pass comprehensive immigration reform, including legalization.

We were recruiting teens as these events unfolded, and asked youth whether they participated in a direct action related to the protests in the spring of 2006. Overall, 24 of the 40 teenagers engaged in some action. Broken down by parents’ status, 7 of 11 youths with an undocumented parent participated (64%), as did 8 of 12 youths with legal, noncitizen parents (67%), 7 of 13 youths with naturalized citizen parents (54%), and 2 of 4 youths with U.S.-born parents (50%). ¹⁰ Since our recruitment was based on nonprobability sampling, we cannot make claims to broader generalizability. We do find, however, that among those we interviewed, youth with noncitizen parents—precisely the adults who cannot participate in formal electoral politics—were more likely to take to the streets than teens with citizen parents. This is consistent with the argument that teens’ citizenship, combined with their parents’ lack of citizenship, spurred U.S.-born youth to compensatory engagement.

In some ways, this is not surprising. Immigrant families with unauthorized members had the most to fear from H.R. 4437 and some noncitizen immigrants with legal residency felt insecure in the face of the legislation. As Serena, who has an undocumented mother, explained:

My parents are affected by it, which means then I am affected by it. . . . And a lot of family and friends. I don’t think it is fair and I feel like I want to do something about it, like help out people. Because I see my parents driving me [and] my mom saying, “oh, I can’t drive too late.” In case there is a retén [checkpoint].

Or, as another teen put it, after being asked why he was interested in the issue of immigration despite his own U.S. citizenship, “Because a lot of my family members, a lot of them are not citizens and I care because a lot of them suffer because they are not citizens; they don’t have good job.”

In some cases, children and parents marched together or supported each other’s engagement over immigrant rights (Bloemraad & Trost, 2008). Beyond marching, Serena explained that her mother encouraged her to write a letter to political representatives and go to the state capitol in Sacramento to tell the story of her family and the importance of immigration reform. Reflecting on her participation, Serena recounted:

It made me feel good. It made my mom feel good. And it made me feel good that my mom felt good, that she was, like, happy that I am trying to do something about it. And not just, like, embarrassed or trying to hide away that my parents are immigrants. And, it made me feel good when—when Barbara Lee, I think—told me she wasn’t going to vote for that, that she agreed with me 100% and it feels good.

Despite her mother’s lack of legal status, Serena was clearly influenced by the sort of parental encouragement highlighted in the traditional literature on political socialization. This suggests that lack of legal status is not an absolute barrier to intergenerational political engagement.

Four teenagers with undocumented parents did not engage in a protest or boycott. Two explained that they wanted to participate but were forbidden by their parents, who worried about violence, their children’s schooling, and other negative consequences, including perhaps drawing attention to family members’ undocumented status. A 14-year-old Mexican American teen wanted to boycott school and protest, “I wanted to go, like, to help out the immigrants . . . but my parents told me it was better for me not to protest, I wouldn’t get in trouble in school.” So the young woman did not protest, but she wore a white t-shirt at school in solidarity, “to protest in silence, and show support for our immigrants.” Another teen with an undocumented parent called her mother and father for permission to join a march. She reached her mother first:

I asked her if I could go on the walkout with everyone, she told me not to, that I shouldn’t do that. . . . She said that it was just like, dangerous and whatever. She didn’t want me to like get in trouble or anything. ¹¹

Undocumented parents, in particular, expressed fears over participation, admonishing children to “stay out of trouble.” Here, we see some evidence that parents’ legal status can, in some cases, suppress young people’s political engagement. ¹²

These cases of suppressed participation were, however, the minority. A majority of youth participated, providing an important counterexample to hypotheses about possible alienation among the children of noncitizen parents. Young people participated because the issue affected them directly, because they wanted to be part of a collective mobilization, and because other members of their community encouraged them (Bloemraad & Trost, 2008; Pallares & Flores-González, 2011). At least during the protests of 2006, we find no evidence of political alienation.

Conceptions of Citizenship: What Makes a “Good” Citizen?

We examined youths’ political and civic engagement since such actions are linked to notions of “good” citizenship, especially in a country like the United States, which is built on a strong normative ideal of civic nationhood. ¹³ This is an ideal that all the young people we interviewed would have been exposed to in some measure through American media and their attendance in American schools. Indeed, of 34 youths who answered a question on what makes someone a good citizen, 8 (24%) mentioned voting or other forms of political engagement as a primary characteristic of good citizenship, and another 3 youths (9%) mentioned it as a relevant secondary characteristic. ¹⁴ For example, a 14-year-old young woman, whose parents are naturalized citizens, responded to the question “Tell me how you would describe a good citizen in this country,” by answering, “Well I think first of all that you should vote . . . and I guess be active in your neighborhood . . . in your city and in your community.” Mentioned by 11 youths, reference to voting or other political acts was nevertheless only the third most common answer among our respondents.

The second most common answer, given by 13 youths (38%), viewed citizenship not as political action but within a broader civic framework of helping others, helping the community, or giving back in some way. ¹⁵ A young woman whose parents have legal residence but not citizenship said that you show you are a good citizen by “trying to contribute. Uhm . . . trying to do good to the country and for other people.” A 17-year-old young man with naturalized parents told us, “Helping others if they’re down. Maybe—just doing what’s good and what’s best for everyone else, maybe not being selfish and—taking care of those who need the help more. Or giving back.”

If we group together all “civic” and “political” answers about speaking out on issues, being involved in civic or political engagement, being knowledgeable about current affairs, and helping others, 27 youths (79%) gave some sort of a civic or political response to the question of good citizenship. Since many of these forms of participation are accessible to almost anyone, regardless of ethnoracial background, economic condition, or even in many cases legal status, these views suggest an open, active notion of American citizenship, one that fits into the mainstream civic ideal of citizenship in the United States, albeit with the important caveat that those who lack citizenship cannot vote.

But we also heard a different theme, alone or in conjunction with this active civic ideal. Many of our respondents also linked good citizenship with staying out of trouble and being law-abiding. Over a third of our respondents, 12 (35%), said that respecting laws and rules is very important for good citizenship, and another 3 youths (9%) named it as relevant. This was the most common single response to our question about what constitutes good citizenship and was articulated by youth across parental legal statuses. ¹⁶ A few youth were specific about not breaking the law or committing crimes, while others spoke more broadly about following rules and staying out of trouble. For example, a woman with naturalized parents said, “Good citizen? I don’t know what that means. Staying out of trouble.” The daughter of undocumented parents told us, “Not to get into trouble, like, follow every rule.” In numerous cases, being law-abiding was also part and parcel of participation and helping others, as was the case for a young woman whose mother was a naturalized citizen, “belonging to a community, charity and help people out. And don’t break laws . . . [Good citizens] want to have a good country, like a safe place for them.” Equating citizenship with being law-abiding is arguably a more diffident ideal: Active citizenship, such as that discussed above, can include mobilization to change the law; “staying out of trouble” takes the law as it is. Such feelings can come from a moral or ideological commitment to respecting the rule of law, from a fear of challenging authority given the repercussions of being caught up in the justice system, a limited sense of political efficacy, or feeling that laws cannot be changed.

We might think that a law-abiding version of good citizenship would be problematic for children of undocumented migrants, given a strong public discourse that unauthorized migrants “broke the law.” Or, alternatively, given that any brush with law enforcement might sweep unauthorized loved ones into deportation procedures, youth with undocumented parents might be particularly sensitive to “staying out of trouble.” Yet for the most part, differences in parents’ legal status did not have clear effects on young people’s conception of good citizenship. Half of youth with undocumented parents mentioned obeying laws (5 of 10), as did half of youth with naturalized parents (6 of 12), a group whose parents cannot be deported due to their U.S. citizenship. The language of obeying the law was less prevalent among those with U.S.-born parents (1 of 3) and those with legal permanent resident parents (3 of 9), a group that holds papers, but is still at risk of deportation if found guilty of a crime.

Parental legal status also had no clear effect on civic notions of citizenship, if we distinguish between those with citizen parents (naturalized or U.S.-born) compared with those with noncitizen parents (undocumented or legal noncitizen residents). Two thirds of youth with U.S.-born or legal resident parents discussed helping others or the community, while only about a third of youth with naturalized or undocumented parents did so.

We saw a clearer difference by parents’ legal status in references to voting or other forms of political participation. This was mentioned as part of “good” citizenship by 7 of 15 youths (47%) whose parents had citizenship (through birth or naturalization) and only 4 of 19 youths (21%) whose parents were noncitizens (whether legal residents or unauthorized). Parents’ lack of citizenship might be affecting children’s political socialization by weakening the link, in their minds, between “good” citizenship and formal political engagement. Alternatively, children of noncitizen parents might be reconceptualizing citizenship to focus less on formal political rights so as to include their parents in a notion of citizenship that goes beyond legal status.

Another subtle, but we think consequential, difference involved emotive conceptions of citizenship. Relatively few respondents, only five (15%), talked about good citizenship as tied to patriotism, pride in the United States, appreciation of rights, or a sense of belonging to a large community beyond oneself. But all five who did so had parents with secure status in the United States; in four cases, this meant citizenship. As a Mexican American woman with U.S.-born parents put it:

A good citizen would be someone who, I guess, is patriotic, you know, they love their country. . . . I guess you could say that they don’t put it down . . . a good citizen is grateful for the rights that they have because in other countries they probably don’t have those . . . someone who loves their country and, I guess, can show a helping hand for their country, someone who’s involved with the country.

Children of undocumented parents did not provide such emotive responses, despite their attendance in the same schools as peers with documented or citizen parents and common exposure to American media.

In comparison, the U.S.-born children of undocumented parents were more likely to mention economic traits and work ethic as attributes of good citizenship. A 16-year-old young man with an undocumented parent said, after a short silence:

a good citizen [is] a person that works. Umm . . . I think that someone that has studied a lot, that has gone to the university or college. . . . I don’t know. . . . Not like some citizens that spend most of the day just smoking and drinking with friends, doing those things. Because sometimes we see a lot of people in the streets, drinking with their friends near the stores. Sometimes they are sleeping in the bus stops. I think that a good citizen would not do that.

A 15-year-old woman, also with an undocumented parent, said, “[A good citizen is] involved with politics. Respect. [pause] [Do] what they are supposed to do . . . umm. . . . Don’t do drugs, don’t sell them. Have a job, support people.” Overall, nine respondents (26%) made reference to paying taxes, holding a job, supporting the economy, or going to school as things that a good citizen should do. Of the nine, one had a naturalized parent, three had noncitizen parents with legal status, and five had undocumented parents. The children of noncitizens, especially the undocumented, might be disposed to redefine good citizenship to include hard work in order to expand notions of membership to incorporate their own parents. ¹⁷

Discussion and Conclusion

We started this project asking whether parents’ legal status would lead to active, compensatory political and civic participation by U.S.-born young people, or whether parents’ lack of citizenship—and lack of legal residence—would produce an apolitical, even alienated view of citizenship due to limited political socialization in the family or resentment over their parents’ situation. Alienation could also be fueled by the widespread, erroneous perception that most Latinos are migrants and overwhelmingly “illegal.” Such perceptions can generate fear and stigma for U.S.-born children (Dreby, 2012) and even lead third- and fourth-generation Latinos to be identified as illegal aliens through the dynamics of racialization (Jiménez, 2009). Does birthright citizenship and political socialization in institutions such as American schools and exposure to American peers and media rupture inequalities in civic and political engagement based on parents’ legal status?

Our interviews reveal no evidence of widespread apathy or disengagement. Whether we consider participation in civic engagement, the 2006 immigrant rights protests or, for a subset of youth, voting in U.S. elections, young people are active (or inactive) irrespective of parents’ status. Some undocumented parents did restrict their children’s participation in the 2006 marches, telling them to “stay out of trouble,” but other undocumented parents encouraged their children to give voice to the plight of undocumented migrants. Schools, sports activities and churches appear to provide institutional “safe spaces” for youth to participate in community groups, volunteer efforts, and even political action irrespective of parents’ status, a finding consistent with other emerging research on immigrant background and political socialization (Callahan & Muller, 2013; Terriquez & Kwon, 2015).

This is not to say that legal status does not matter. Questions about “good” citizenship, in particular, hint at how illegality and legal consciousness might affect young Mexican Americans. The overwhelming majority of our respondents, about four out of five, articulated a conception of citizenship that included political or civic engagement, in line with a “civic ideal” of U.S. citizenship. Yet the single most common answer to our question of what makes a “good” citizen centered on respecting laws and not breaking rules. It is plausible that charges those living without documents are “criminals,” immigrants’ fear of deportation if caught in the criminal justice system, and the emphasis on being law-abiding in immigration procedures to adjust one’s status or become a citizen influence young people to internalize a more diffident “don’t rock the boat” notion of citizenship. To the extent that this is true, it may be that the stigma and fear generated by illegality pervades the Mexican immigrant community so broadly that it also influences U.S.-born young people whose parents’ status is secure; the prevalence of undocumented status is such that its effects ripple widely (see also Dreby, 2012).

Our questions about “good” citizenship also illuminated another process, one not captured in our original question of whether young people compensate, disengage, or face little difference in political socialization based on their parents’ legal status. All three possibilities take as given a native-born baseline of citizenship acts and ideals. Our interviews suggest a different possibility, namely that some U.S.-born youth attempt to redefine citizenship, consciously or unconsciously, to include their noncitizen parents. A language of being law-abiding is one way of doing this, but so too are appeals to economic contributions, a good work ethic, and a general notion of being a “good person.” Among the limited differences between teens was the tendency of some teens with citizen parents to talk about citizenship as an emotional connection to other Americans or to the country, whereas teens with noncitizen, and especially undocumented parents, at times articulated membership through economic contribution. A focus on work, paying taxes, and economic independence, combined with a rhetoric of staying out of trouble, evokes a more privatized and diffident relationship to the state, a sort of “market citizenship” (Nawyn, 2011). This contrasts with a more engaged, active citizenship that could lead to changes in law and political power. Such distinctions in discourse should not be pushed too far, however, since young people’s actual engagement did not differ much by parents’ legal status. And in the protests of 2006, those with noncitizen parents were more likely to mobilize. Future research must probe further the repercussion of legal status for political and civic engagement, especially as it intersects with economic conditions and racialization dynamics.

In short, the children of immigrants—and especially the children of unauthorized migrants—face dual demands. On one hand, there is a pressure to remain quiet so as to protect their families, “stay out of trouble,” and not draw the attention of authorities to them or their parents. As Serena, whose mother is undocumented, explained:

There was a time when I wasn’t very active and I was just like really calm . . . when we go to [soccer] tournaments, [the others] are just like, “Oh, didn’t your mom come?” And I don’t say, “Oh, she can’t because she doesn’t have papers.” I say, like, “Oh, she is working,” or something. And it’s so hard because . . . you are not going to go and tell them, you know, because maybe—There’s a lot of people that will just turn [their] back against you. . . . And my mom, she tells me, “Don’t tell them that I don’t have papers, that I am not legal here.”

But on the other hand, these young people’s birthright citizenship provides them with rights and standing to make claims on behalf of family members with no formal voice in the political system, to do what is “right.” While undocumented parents cannot model traditional political acts such as voting and they might fear exposure, they can act as role models in other ways and they can provide inspiration for young people to redefine notions of citizenship to include their parents. This was the case for Serena, who proudly recounted a time in the grocery store when a “really old” White woman said that people such as Serena’s mother should leave the country.

And my mom told her, “Because of us, this is what the country is now, because of us, this is how strong we are, economically . . . ” My mom was, like, “I am not just going to be quiet, I am going to step up and tell her.”

Serena is both silenced by her mother’s unauthorized status and inspired by her mother’s resistance.

Her mother’s example and Serena’s family situation also create, for her, a complex notion of “good citizenship” in the United States. Later, asked what being a good citizen means to her, Serena responded:

Umm, a good citizen, I think, is someone that speaks what they believe, is not afraid. . . . Somebody who, I guess, [is] following the rules, but then again, if you don’t agree with it, just try and do something that you think is right, that would change things for the good, not for the bad . . . they just have to, I don’t know, just do what they believe is right.

Serena includes both a definition of citizenship that is somewhat diffident and perhaps shaped by immigration laws (follow the rules), but also a notion of active citizenship (speaking out, working to change things). In light of the stigma attached to her mom’s undocumented status, Serena expands the definition of citizenship to focus on doing what you believe is “right.” As more and more children of immigrants come of age, many of whom have parents who are or who previously were unauthorized, notions of American citizenship may shift, even as these young people’s engagement mirrors that of citizens without immigrant parents.