The American Dream, (Cruel) Meritocracy and DREAMers in Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore how Karla Cornejo Villavicencio frames the myths of the American Dream and meritocracy in The Undocumented Americans (2020). For this purpose, it attempts to summarize the current understanding of the American Dream and its connections with meritocracy, and how they impact Latinxs and unauthorized immigrants nowadays. By means of a close reading of Cornejo Villavicencio’s work, intertwined with and supported by multidisciplinary research on undocumented immigration to the United States and its complex consequences, the study asks how undocumented immigrants currently perceive meritocracy and the American Dream, as they are constituents of the ethos and national identity of the United States, and they also shape their expectations and experiences of migration. In this work, described by Cornejo Villavicencio as “creative nonfiction” (2020, xvi), the author questions meritocratic arguments and the romanticized vision of the American Dream by giving visibility to the hardship and distress endured by multiple unauthorized individuals. Moreover, this paper explores how DREAMers, a small segment of the migrant population, hold unique views on meritocracy that nonetheless have an impact on the entire migrant community. While they are regarded as an embodiment of the American Dream, the social acceptance of DREAMers often comes at the expense of criminalizing other undocumented individuals. Finally, this article explains how undocumented migrant storytelling has deep political implications that should be assessed with caution, and how migrant narratives have the potential to expand social views on immigration and foster a discussion on the ethics of care.