This dissertation examines how the law creates social categories that exacerbate social inequality through the context of mixed-citizenship American families. It has two main research questions: first, how do US immigration laws categorize individuals and families and determine whether or not families qualify for official membership in the US? Second, how do mixed-citizenship families navigate the US immigration system and its outcomes? My project draws on extended in-depth interviews with over fifty mixed-citizenship couples living within and outside the US, supplemented with extended ethnographic observation of a subset of families and legal analysis of the US immigration laws associated with spousal reunification.

My research reveals that the current family reunification system in the US promotes a system of socioeconomic class preferences––regarding the class status of both the citizen and immigrant spouses––rather than family reunification between US citizens and their non-citizen partners. Recent legal changes specifically penalize lower class immigrants and citizens and limit their ability to access what is purportedly a universal citizenship right. I also find that bias in these laws as written is exacerbated in practice, as families’ varied approaches to engaging with the law also affect their family reunification outcomes. Families with more social, educational, economic, and legal capital are often able to navigate––and even manipulate––the law in ways to secure a positive immigration outcome, even when they do not technically meet the legal requirements for qualification. Families without these resources, who disproportionately face the class-based barriers to family reunification mentioned above, are even less likely to secure a positive legal result, leading to a long-term and potentially permanent bar to legal status in the US. Families’ opportunities and outcomes shift dramatically depending on whether they can secure legal immigrant status or not. Those that do experience increased incorporation by both partners into American society and maintain stronger ties in the immigrant partners’ country of origin. Those that do not undergo dissimilation from the US and alienation in both the US and abroad. I also find that transnational actors also bear a burden of alienation and dislocation, even as their regular movement across borders builds relationships and connections between individuals and communities that would otherwise remain disconnected.