The Inclusion of Citizenship Status in Intersectionality: What Immigration Raids Tells us About Mixed-Status Families, the State and Assimilation

When immigration raids sweep through a community, they do not only affect undocumented individuals — they tear through entire families, including U.S.-citizen children, legal residents, and mixed-status households. In this article, Mary Romero argues that any meaningful analysis of immigration must account for how citizenship status functions as a dimension of intersectionality alongside race, class, and gender.

Drawing on documented cases of immigration enforcement actions, Romero examines how raids create cascading effects that destabilize families, traumatize children, and undermine the social fabric of communities. The article reveals how the state’s power to classify, surveil, and deport operates differently depending on the intersection of an individual’s legal status with their race, gender, and class position.

Published in the International Journal of Sociology of the Family, this article has become an important reference point for scholars working at the intersection of immigration studies and intersectional theory.