Protracted Precarity: The Politics of Temporary Protected Status, 1983-2026

The categories immigrants are placed into have profound consequences for their lives. But how are different legal categories created in the first place? What are the political consequences of their creation? And how do immigrants and their advocates contest these processes?

In my dissertation, I use the empirical case of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in the United States to examine how precarious legal categories are created, governed, and contested over time. I use a variety of qualitative methods, including semi-structured interviews, archival research, ethnographic observations, and document analysis.

This work has generously been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, the Social Science Research Council-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program, and the Center for the Study of Race & Ethnicity in America at Brown University.