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More Than One Way: How Migrants Are Able To Achieve Belonging Beyond Their Legal Status, Claudia Soto

Theses and Dissertations

Is legal status a master status for migrant belonging? If not, how do other factors--such as social networks, religious participation, language and cultural familiarity--shape belonging? Over the past few years, some migration scholars have suggested that legal status is a "master status"which determines migrant outcomes (Gonzales 2015). Other literature suggests that migrant outcomes are determined by a variety of factors, asserting that migrant experiences can be better understood by studying the interaction between these factors (Enriquez 2017; Valdez and Golash-Boza 2020). Utilizing 73 semi-structured interviews with migrants in Utah, I compare the experiences of refugees, permanent migrants, temporary migrants, and …