Hidden in Plain Sight: How Unauthorised Migrants Strategically Assimilate in Restrictive Localities in California

Abstract

Both classic and revised theories of immigrant assimilation suggest that, over time, immigrants exchange their ethnic and cultural behaviours for the practices and norms of the receiving society. Despite a rise in restrictive subnational policies targeting unauthorised immigrants, the immediate legal context of destinations are absent in this logic, leaving the applicability of assimilation theory for newcomers in such localities an open question. Drawing on qualitative interviews and survey evidence, I find that in hostile receiving communities unauthorised Mexican immigrants present the culture of the dominant core population through their public, outer selves as a protective strategy rather than, as assimilation theory would have it, incorporating the dominant culture into their inner selves. To avoid detection, immigrants' presentation of self is a reactive, purposive and strategic process. Yet trying to pass as a non-suspect native may nevertheless have an assimilatory effect, as the unintended consequences of this practical strategy incrementally contribute to adaptation.