Jessica Taghvaiee (She/Her) is a Political Science Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine. Broadly, she is interested in U.S. and comparative racial/ethnic, gender, and immigration politics. Her research centers on how political institutions affect marginalized groups and how these groups navigate the politics of such hegemonic structures. Presently, she is studying the way democratic states like the U.S. use time, "temporal borders," to exclude migrants from obtaining legal status and state protection/benefits. Such research is necessary to understand how temporal borders impact migrants and in what ways their experience of time via the immigration system affects their livelihoods.
Taghvaiee will study the temporal borders migrants experience when applying and potentially being excluded from obtaining legal status through immigration policies like the U.S. amnesty. Focusing on the U.S. 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, Taghvaiee plans to use the study of IRCA to focus on a specific and important instance where the U.S. used temporal borders to value certain migrants’ time and exclude others. However, she is considering extending the study to cases of migrants excluded from DACA or impacted by Temporary Protected Status programs.
The project will address these research questions:
1) How, why, and under what conditions did the U.S. use temporal borders to exclude certain migrants from legalization through its first comprehensive amnesty program?
2) How did the temporal borders this amnesty established impact the livelihoods of migrants who were excluded?
What is their legal status (illegalized, permanent resident, or citizen, etc.)?
What is their socioeconomic status (income, occupation, education, and healthcare)?
What is the state of their well-being (physical/psychological health)?
Zotero Bibliography (link)