Precarious labor and the social construction of “illegality”: Ecuadorian indigenous families in New York city

Abstract

This article examines the migration of Ecuadorian indigenous families to New York City in the context of the 2008 Financial Crisis and the tightening of immigration policies in the United States. Migration trajectories show increasingly risky travel conditions, and significant changes in labor market integration as well as settlement. The article shows that job insecurity and the social condition of illegality are mutually connected in the different stages of the migration trajectory and constitute a different experience from that of Ecuadorians who emigrated in previous decades.