Legal Power in Action: How Latinx Adult Children Mitigate the Effects of Parents' Legal Status through Brokering

Abstract

Scholars have long demonstrated that Latinx children engage in cultural and linguistic brokering on behalf of their immigrant parents. This article adds to this literature by examining how the transition to adulthood enables adult children to deploy their legal power to assist their immigrant parents. This study identifies three types of brokering using legal power: securing loans or access to credit, sponsoring immigration petitions, and becoming a legal guardian for siblings. Using 37 in-depth interviews with adult children, parents, and extended family members with varying legal statuses in California, I show that citizen adult children have greater capacity than DACAmented adult children in mixed-status families to exercise legal power when brokering. In addition, adult children's legal power may be enhanced or limited by incomplete paperwork, family tensions, and economic background. These findings provide an understanding of how the transition to legal adulthood affects the way adult children of immigrants help their undocumented parents access resources and information, negotiate the effects of immigration laws, and reduce some inequality suffered by their families.