Laura Veira-Ramirez - "Almost Perfect": The Cleansing and Erasure of Undocumented and Queer Identities Through Performance of Model Families and Citizenship

This thesis focuses on the way undocumented and queer people have to present their identities in a very clean way in their fight for security by looking at differing timelines of gay liberation and immigrant rights as well as binational same-sex couple advocacy and the case of Shirley Tan.

Queer people appeal to rights by positioning themselves as U.S. citizens who should have access to them…