ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the role of the state in creating legal categories into which immigrants are grouped, including the category of undocumented and other in-between or temporary statuses. Examining undocumented immigration as a legal status can presuppose an individual characteristic independent of the political milieu in which these legal categories are created. Highlighting the actions of the state moves us away from an emphasis on the individual immigrant to an angle that emphasizes the larger historical, political, economic context in the creation and maintenance of these legal statuses. The chapter examines programs that have created labor migrations that eventually give rise to undocumented flows, as well as the receiving state’s political demands and international relations that contribute to shape admission policies and protection criteria for certain groups but leave other groups with similar claims unprotected. These two examples illustrate the economic and political exigencies behind the creation of undocumented migratory flows to the United Sates.
