¡ILEGAL!: THE RACIAL POLITICS OF UNDOCUMENTED MEXICAN IMMIGRATION IN CALIFORNIA, 1970-1999

Abstract

This dissertation examines how undocumented Mexican immigrants were alternately constructed as both threats and economic necessities between 1970 and 1999. This study uses legislative debates, newspaper articles, and political rhetoric, to explore how exclusionary discourses shaped immigration policies and reinforced racial hierarchies. It argues that the category of the “illegal alien” was not just a legal designation but a racialized one used to justify exclusion, economic exploitation, and shifting definitions of national belonging. Focusing on three key immigration policies—the Dixon Arnett Law (1971), the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA, 1986), and Proposition 187 (1994)—this dissertation traces how undocumented Mexican immigrants were framed in moments of political and economic uncertainty. In particular, it looks at how the economic anxieties of the 1970s transformed Mexican migration into a crisis, reinforcing narratives of invasion and displacement. By the 1980s, immigration policies like the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) balanced selective inclusion—offering amnesty to some while expanding workplace surveillance and employer sanctions that deepened labor precarity. While IRCA introduced limited avenues to legalization, it also reinforced surveillance and labor control, paving the way for what takes place in the 1990s: a shift in the discourse from economic concerns to moralized and racialized preservationist rhetoric, culminating in Proposition 187’s attempt to criminalize undocumented immigrants’ presence in public life.

Using the Manufacturing Danger / Manufacturing Possibility framework, this dissertation demonstrates how narratives of crisis, control, and conditional inclusion actively shaped immigration policy to sustain racial and economic hierarchies. Rather than viewing exclusionary laws as inevitable responses to migration, this study reveals how they were strategically produced to sustain white dominance and economic precarity. By historicizing these shifts, this project challenges the idea that exclusionary immigration policies naturally respond to migration. Instead, it reveals how discourse has historically and strategically been deployed to justify exclusion, reinforce racial and economic hierarchies, and sustain cycles of criminalization. Understanding these historical patterns is essential for resisting contemporary efforts to criminalize and marginalize immigrant communities.