Layla Mayorga Gonzalez

In the U.S., birthright citizenship is secure, but naturalized citizenship can be revoked, creating a hierarchy that leaves some people vulnerable. This undermines the ideal of equal citizenship, since legal status shapes how people are recognized and participate in society. Thinkers like Dewey and Hegel show that citizenship affects identity and community belonging, yet U.S. law often uses it to exclude and marginalize. This dissertation suggests rethinking citizenship as a flexible, relational “skin” that allows all people to interact as equals and move freely across nations. The internet already supports these global connections, offering a model I refer to as Technological Cyber-Supranational Citizenship (TCSC) that could promote freedom, equality, and justice.

Universities are no longer just centers of learning; they increasingly function as sites of surveillance. Systems of data tracking, monitoring, and cooperation with state authorities shape campus life, especially for immigrant and international students. For migrant students—particularly those who are undocumented or have unstable visa status—this scrutiny carries serious risks, including detention, deportation, or loss of legal standing. This surveillance is often invisible, operating through routine administrative processes and federal databases that monitor students’ movements and status. Although presented as necessary, these practices reveal that universities are not neutral institutions but active participants in broader systems of control that regulate and constrain vulnerable populations.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s unfinished poem, “Like a Spider in Her Web,” introduces envisioning a dream world within one’s refuge while simultaneously enmeshed in another realm’s dreamscape, epitomizing Nepantla as a threshold of interconnectedness. This paper, inspired by her poem, proposes the notion I call a “Nepantla-Spider process,” amalgamating Anzaldúa’s Nepantleras, Brian Burkhart’s locality, and José-Antonio Orosco’s pragmatic interculturalism framework. I argue that a Nepantla-Spider process facilitates an expanded understanding of interculturalism that includes the non-living, animals, and the Land as requirements for interculturalism and democratic justice under a pragmatist approach to growth and pluralism.

ABSTRACT This article critically examines Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s concept of the Absolute Spirit, Mexican philosopher José Revueltas’s reinterpretation of Hegelian dialectics, and Carlos Alberto Sánchez’s phenomenological analysis of undocumented immigrant reason. This article argues that fixed narratives, epitomized by Hegel’s Absolute Spirit, obscure the authentic experiences of undocumented immigrants. By synthesizing Hegel, Revueltas, and Sánchez, the article proposes the concept of Espíritu de Muerte, or Spirit of Death, reminiscent of the Holy Death as a counter to the Absolute Spirit, advocating for a historiographical shift that acknowledges and liberates forgotten memories as a canonical history of undocumented reason. Taking Revueltas’s emphasis on unseen histories offers a means to surpass Hegelian limitations and reveals a notable inconsistency in Sánchez’s observations regarding the undocumented experience: namely, that undocumented reason inherently serves as a counternarrative always.

The DACA program, administered by the Department of Homeland Security, protects Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. However, without legislative support, Dreamers face the imminent threat of losing their homes, rights, and deportation. I argue for the passage of the DREAM Act, which would protect Dreamers from unfair targeting and provide a path to citizenship. Dreamers possess a unique social membership in American society, and it is ethically imperative to shield them from deportation and grant them equal rights as fellow citizens if we ought to demonstrate a commitment to addressing oppression and injustice.