Reframing Citizenship: Narratives of Undocumented Immigrant Exclusion

Given that undocumented immigrants cannot legally belong in the United States because of their “illegal” status, in what ways do they seek other modes of belonging—if this is even possible to begin with? This thesis seeks to argue that it is not only exclusionary laws that determine citizenship or “illegality” within the nation state, but also socio-cultural belonging or the absence of it. The thesis also specifically investigates the questions of citizenship and belonging through the undocumented immigrant figure within the Asian American population, and specifically the undocumented Asian American womxn. It interrogates citizenship and belonging through the examination of two novels: Hualing Nieh’s Mulberry and Peach (1976) and Lisa Ko’s The Leavers (2017)—novels that are about undocumented Chinese womxn in two different American eras, who trouble and challenge the notions of borders and belonging through time, but also what happens within the undocumented immigrant psyche