Becoming White in a White Supremacist State: The Public and Psychological Wages of Whiteness for Undocumented 1.5-Generation Brazilians

This study draws on in-depth and longitudinal interviews with twenty-nine 1.5-generation Brazilian immigrants, all of whom can pass as white and experienced illegality in young adulthood. I argue that they benefit from what W.E.B. Du Bois calls “the public and psychological wages of whiteness”. That is, white and white-passing, undocumented 1.5-generation Brazilian men and women can largely navigate public space without being stopped, questioned, arrested, detained and/or deported. Additionally, they benefit psychologically—as they gain confidence due to perceived whiteness, even as their immigration status would render them vulnerable to exploitation in the labor market and deportation. These public and psychological wages of whiteness can facilitate social and material gains. I argue that there are three mechanisms by which they experience the wages of whiteness. First, whiteness brings assumed innocence. Second, white racial solidarity with other whites facilitates opportunities and protection. Third, some 1.5-generation Brazilians actively construct whiteness to accrue the public and psychological wages. These findings challenge the master status perspective of illegality and underscore the importance of an intersectional framework for understanding immigrants’ varied experiences with illegality, bringing to light the quotidian, gendered practices and identities that sustain the structures of white supremacy.