The Documentation Status Continuum: Citizenship and Increasing Stratification in American Life

Public discourse on immigration and benefits access has been contentious. Amid increasing anti-immigrant sentiment, scholars have examined immigrants’ marginalization as a form of civic stratification, where boundaries based on documentation status affect immigrants’ experiences and benefits granted by the state. This scholarship lacks a framework outlining existing documentation status categories, their alignment relative to each other, and how policy (re)configures those categories over time. This article argues that the documentation status continuum (DSC) framework fills these gaps. In the DSC, undocumented immigrants are at one end and citizens are at the other, with many documentation statuses in between. Public policy creates these statuses and generates stratification through allocating benefits based on one’s DSC position. Policy also shapes movement along the continuum, which shapes benefits eligibility. Using the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) as a policy example and interviews conducted with 153 immigrants, healthcare professionals, and immigrant organization employees in Boston, this article demonstrates that life along the DSC reveals stratification between citizens and noncitizens. This has implications for various outcomes that sociologists examine.