Navigating “illegality”: Undocumented youth & oppositional consciousness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.04.016Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Immigration discourse shapes the political consciousness of undocumented youth.

  • Undocumented youth consciousness is forged through the navigation of “illegality”.

  • The negotiation of fear/shame and exclusion are generative in this process.

Abstract

In recent years, a vibrant political movement has emerged, led by a sector previously thought to be too vulnerable to engage in public protest-undocumented youth. This article explores the experiences of undocumented youth and their emergent activism. I posit that growing up within the context of dominant discourses regarding immigration in a moment marked by a re-entrenchment of borders and citizenship shapes not only the lived experiences, but also the political consciousness of many undocumented young people. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research with undocumented Latino youth activists in California, this article argues that oppositional consciousness is forged through the constant navigation of “illegality”. I examine two sites upon which this navigation takes place – the negotiation of fear and shame and the navigation of the exclusion – and explore the way in which negotiation of “illegality” in these sites of daily life contributes to the development of an oppositional consciousness.

Introduction

Miguel1 nearly died crossing the border. He was 4, too tired to walk anymore, and stacked on the shoulders of the reluctant coyote. When the coyote stumbled in the dark, Miguel tumbled to the hard earth below, smashing his head against a jagged rock. His mother scooped him up, held him close, and began checking his head to assess the damage. He remembers thinking this is how you check a melon at the market. His mind wandered to the mercado in their pueblito, and in that moment, with a throbbing head, in his mother’s arms, all he wanted was to go home.

Miguel still thinks about home, though his memories have faded. He can't get a clear picture of the mercado anymore, or even his grandmother's face. Fifteen years have passed, and he is not sure if he will ever get there. His life is here now, and because he is undocumented, going home means risking the loss of the life he has built for himself here. So he makes himself content with what he has, tries to ignore the nagging reality that his future is uncertain, and keeps hoping that something, somehow might change. Undocumented young people like Miguel grow up amid a fierce anti-immigrant discourse that casts them as intruders, undeserving, and inferior; they are relegated to the shadows by a hostile society, continually navigating the space between profound institutional exclusion and the supposed promise of the American Dream.

In recent years, however, the terrain has begun to shift both legislatively and related to public opinion. More than 20 states have passed or are considering legislation aimed at making it more feasible for undocumented young people to enroll in college through in-state tuition and state-specific financial aid policies. President Obama's landmark 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals decree provides an opportunity for undocumented youth to apply for temporary work permits and protection from deportation. TIME magazine's June 25, 2012 issue featured a cover story by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pultizer-prize winning journalist and undocumented childhood arrival himself, with the title “We Are Americans*: * Just Not Legally.” The cover dons Vargas, surrounded by an ethnically-diverse group of DREAMers – undocumented young people whose precarious status could be fixed by the passage of the federal DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act. The political terrain is shifting; a shift that can only be attributed to the growing grassroots movement led by undocumented young people across the nation, who refuse to accept a life in the shadows and demand recognition.

In recent years, scholars have done important work to document and analyze this emergent movement. In this article, I examine a particular aspect of the movement that has only begun to be theorized in this nascent body of literature — the meaning-making processes that come to shape the political engagement of undocumented youth activists. Drawing on Jane Mansbridge's concept of oppositional consciousness (2001), I explore the ways in which growing up within the context of dominant discourses regarding immigration in a moment marked by a re-entrenchment of borders and citizenship shapes the political consciousness of many undocumented youth. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic research with undocumented Latino youth activists in California, I argue that oppositional consciousness among undocumented youth is often an expression of their constant navigation of “illegality.” I examine two sites upon which this navigation takes place – the negotiation of fear and shame and the negotiation of exclusion and outsiderness – and explore the way in which navigation of “illegality” in each of these daily contexts contributes to the development of an oppositional consciousness.

I begin by laying the broader context for this study with a discussion of California's undocumented youth and their struggle for educational justice, and bring this context into conversation with Jane Mansbridge's concept of oppositional consciousness and other relevant literature. After introducing my study and my role as a researcher, I then present data from 18 months of fieldwork first examining the fear and shame that undocumented youth experience and then exclusion and outsiderness as generative sites of oppositional consciousness. I conclude with a discussion of the relevance of these findings for social work.

Section snippets

California's Undocumented Youth and the Struggle for Educational Justice

Of the estimated 12 million undocumented people living in the United States, one million are children under the age of 18 (Passel and Cohn, 2011). It is estimated that 65,000 undocumented young people graduate from U.S. high schools every year (Gonzales, 2008). Undocumented youth live in the United States without legal authorization to do so; some cross the border without documentation, others immigrate legally and overstay their visas. Some are in the process of “fixing their papers” and others

“Illegality,” ideology & consciousness

Critical to an understanding of this current moment is understanding immigration policy as both discourse and practice (Chavez, 2001), two mutually constitutive processes that characterize contemporary racial politics in California. Leo Chavez (2008) asks, “How did Mexican immigration…come to be perceived as a national security threat in popular discourse? Such ideas do not develop in a vacuum. They emerge from a history of ideas, laws, narratives, myths, and knowledge production” (p. 22).

The study: methods & positionality

My methodology blends formal and informal interviews with participant observation in three interconnected spheres. First, between 2007 and 2009, I conducted 50 life-history interviews with undocumented Latino youth activists aged 16–28 involved in the DREAM Act campaign in Northern California. These interviews allowed me to map their political trajectories and their theories about race, racism, and inequality. Secondly, I conducted participant observation during the 2007-2008 school year at a

Building community out of fear and shame

Fear is a reality of daily life for undocumented youth, ebbing at moments and subsiding at others yet distinct in its continual presence. Ixchel, a 3rd year university student, reflects on how she took cues from her parents about feeling fearful. “I felt the most scared when I was around my parents because they were scared so I felt that energy from them. We didn't go out a lot. We stayed home a lot because they felt safe in the house they worked in. And I remember I would cry because I wanted

Conclusion

Social work is intimately concerned with the ways in which individuals are shaped by and through their social environment, and the ways in which the social environment can foster greater social cohesion and social functioning. The lack of meaningful immigration reform in this country has resulted in a larger and larger community of undocumented migrants who are making their way in a society that ignores them, at best, and persecutes them, at worse. The plight of undocumented children is of

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