Seventeenth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper considers how young undocumented Koreans in the U.S., uniquely positioned as a nearly invisible and undesirable model minority, engage with competing futures. Drawing on ethnographic research on their immigrant justice activism, I explore relations of power that reproduce the U.S. state’s imperial prosperity through the labor of young people of color. Undocumented youth temporality is a core theme of this project. In coining this term, I reference a captive state in which they are haunted by the past and constantly disparaged as an underclass undeserving of a stable future. In examining undocumented youth temporality, I theorize what I call imperial futurity, an oppressive system that sustains the prosperity of the U.S. and is predicated on white supremacist and settler colonial mentalities that trap undocumented youth of color in a liminal state. I explore these young people’s political reworking of imperial futurity into critiques of exclusionary citizenship, which have inspired creative and radical efforts to dismantle systems and launched a movement for collective liberation. Unexpired is timely, as this group has become a leading force in undocumented immigrant activism. A critical examination of their work and achievements is overdue.