The golden cage of (un)belonging: Cultural identities and resistance in the journeys of U.S. Mexican DACA students

This article examines how Mexican DACA recipients communicate, avow, and contest cultural identities throughout their U.S. educational journeys. Guided by Cultural Identity Theory (CIT) from a critical lens, we analyze eighteen podcast interviews and oral histories from 2017 to 2024. Critical thematic analysis reveals three interrelated themes: becoming undocumented before DACA, avowing Mexican DACA identity/ies, and engaging in activism. Together, these themes illuminate DACA’s “Golden Cage,” in which access to work and education coexists with surveillance, exclusion, and legal uncertainty. For intercultural communication, the study shows how legal temporality and structural power shape cultural identity negotiation and belonging in U.S. higher education.