Political Protest and Undocumented Immigrant Youth

(Re-) framing Testimonio

Stefanie Quakernack

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780815378525
• eBook ISBN: 9781351232210
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What does it mean to be a young undocumented immigrant? Current public debate on undocumented immigration provokes discussion worldwide, and it is estimated that there are more than 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the US, yet what it really means to be an undocumented immigrant appears less explicitly delineated in the debate.

This interdisciplinary volume applies theories from Media, Cultural, and Literary Studies to investigate how undocumented immigrant youth in the United States have claimed a public voice by publishing their video narratives on YouTube. Case studies show how political protest significantly shapes these videos as activists narrate and perform their 'dispossession', redefining their understanding of the mechanisms of immigration in the Americas, and of home, belonging, and identity. The impact of the videos is explored as the activists connect them to Congressional bills and present their activities as a continuation of the legacy of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

This book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students involved in debates on migration, communication, new media, culture, protest movements and political lobbying.

1 Introduction

Digital narratives of undocumented immigrant youth

1. On being ‘unauthorized’

Today, more than ever, the public debate on undocumented immigration fuels countless discussions all over the world. While opinions are easily formed, statements quickly made, what it really means to be an undocumented immigrant appears less explicitly delineated in the debate. Manuel et al., editors of a film project about the lives of undocumented youth in the U.S., summarize the implications that the immigration status holds for children growing up as undocumented as follows:

Approximately two million undocumented children live in the United States […]. Sixty-five thousand undocumented youth graduate from high school every year […] without ‘papers.’ In most states, they can’t get a driver’s license or state ID and in most cases it is against the law to work. It is difficult, if not impossible in some states, to attend college. […] Universities have varying policies about whether they accept undocumented students. If they are accepted, undocumented students are not eligible for federal financial aid.

(iv–v)

The list of impediments does not end here. Far from worries about higher education are more immediate problems: discrimination, criminalization, poverty, and fear of deportation, enforcing a life in the shadows.

In December 2005, the ‘Sensenbrenner Bill’, officially named the Border Protection, Anti-Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437), was ratified by the U.S. House of Representatives, turning undocumented immigrants and those who helped them into felons (cf. Mauk and Oakland 73). That following spring, the Immigrant Rights Movement experienced a revival that successfully staged mega-marches and massive public protest against the introduction of the Sensenbrenner Bill. It was young people, in particular, who formed “identified undocumented student groups and statewide networks” in ever-growing numbers to speak out against this act of legislative criminalization (Pérez 83). Nevertheless, this development has been missing in current research despite its urgency, Pérez notes (69). In particular, “the debate has largely ignored the civic engagement of immigrant youth”, he adds (ibid).

Who, then, are ‘undocumented youth’? As of 2015, there were approximately 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Of those, roughly 65,000 undocumented students get their high school degree each year, now seeking college opportunities (cf. Rusin 3). Further, “many of these children came here during the population boom in the 1990s” (2). Anguiano employs the term ‘1.5 generation’ to describe a generation that is stuck between the parental generation who grew up in the home country and their younger brothers and sisters who are U.S. citizens (cf. 6). By means of this definition, she highlights the identity conflict of this generation, an aspect that gains more attention when discussing the intersections of identities in the following chapters. These youths literally grow up “in-between” two cultures (4). These struggles, in addition to the impediments that undocumented status entails, would seem to defeat even the most determined attempt to find a political voice in U.S. society that speaks against the criminalization of a whole population. Or maybe not? Is it possible for undocumented immigrant youth to participate in U.S. society while ‘officially’ not being a part of the whole?

Seeking alternative ways to engage, Bendit observes that “even if formal participation of young people in existing political structures and institutions is decreasing in almost all societies everywhere”, they nevertheless “play an important – sometimes even central – role in social movements aiming at societal change and transformation”, often “based on voluntary work and informal participation” (37). But how so? When I asked an undocumented youth leader from Chicago how he relates his political participation to his ‘unauthorized’, undocumented status, his response was the following:

It’s saying like ‘I’m not allowed to do something’. And that’s how I see that word […]. I feel like I can do whatever I want, because I’m still here and I’m still human. […] We don’t have to be citizens in this nation to have that right of … be able to speak and be able to organize ourselves and be able to wish for a better treatment. And I think when you’re saying ‘unauthorized’, it’s like putting you into this conversation, this box, of like, ‘you’re not allowed to do certain things’ and I truly don’t believe that.

(Gutiérrez, personal interview)

It is in this underlying conviction of the basic right to improve one’s personal situation through personal activism by all means in which undocumented youth frequently ground their basic understanding of immigrant rights activism, as this extract from the interview shows. Personal activism underlies a movement that steps beyond the sphere of action that the human is assigned to act within and which authorizes the individual to adhere to social and cultural norms (and matrices) (cf. Butler, Dispossession 21). Both aspects – the wish to improve one’s situation and activism outside of the assigned sphere – are not innovative but defining characteristics of any movement and/or activism. It is a particularly thought-provoking fact that “despite the dangers involved in speaking out publicly, many students […] are finding strength and courage in numbers” to ‘out’ themselves as undocumented in public (Pérez 84). What is more, many of these ‘coming out’ narratives can also be found online, on platforms such as YouTube – the platform that this project uses as a source for accessing narratives of undocumented youth. Three crucial factors explain this move. First, YouTube essentially has “its roots in youth culture” (Kavoori 4). Second, YouTube further serves as an excellent example of the observation that “that storytelling is at the heart of all media” (2). Third, while YouTube is widely famous for its role in entertainment culture, Jenkins stresses that “shifts in technical infrastructure, including the emergence of YouTube, have dramatically expanded the […] capacity to respond to human rights abuses” (121). Thus, in video clips posted on YouTube, undocumented youth come out as undocumented, refraining from any anonymity to protect their identity other than the enormous vastness of Web 2.0. They tell their stories of a life with undocumented status, connecting it to their undocumented peers, family, and community; ethnic and gender identity; and personal acts of resistance within the frame of a developing Immigrant Rights Movement. As Pérez has documented, “in efforts to claim rights and a political voice”, undocumented youth have actively spoken to the public during conferences or public events (83). Further, undocumented youth meet with officials from almost any institution that touches their lives, in the schools themselves and also in the community in order to “increase awareness of policies like in-state tuition laws” and improve their options for the future (ibid).

Having spent two months in such an organization, the Immigrant Youth Justice League (IYJL), in Chicago in spring 2014, I witnessed determined youth activism, manifested in, for instance, organization meetings and conferences, various acts of civil disobedience, emotional outbursts in personal interviews, and, most importantly, the National Coming Out of the Shadows Day that IYJL created. This unique event consisted of public speeches delivered annually by undocumented immigrants on Chicago’s federal plaza and in various other cities across the nation on March 10.

This act showed a different side of the undocumented population to the public and encouraged further people to participate (cf. Pallares, Family Activism 113). Being a witness to such events, I can legitimately affirm that the Movement¹ has gained momentum through its use of new media that is unprecedented in the history of immigrant civil rights struggles.

From an interdisciplinary perspective, intertwining insights from cultural, media, and literary studies, this study addresses Kellner and Hammer’s request to “overcome divisions” in the field of media and cultural studies (xxxiv) by providing perspectives on “an open-ended project” that takes seriously “the ways that different forms or examples of media and culture function in our society and can be read to provide enlightenment and insight about the society” (xxxv). Mediatization theory will be used for these purposes. In addition to that, the (political) context of the Immigrant Rights Movement since 2006 is the main referent to interpret the narrative’s political messages in eight digital narratives of undocumented youth published on YouTube. This approach to understanding the narratives reduces, in part, the risk that videos “get decontextualized as they enter this hybrid media space” on YouTube and, thus, bear “progressive potential” when recontextualized, as Jenkins emphasizes (122). Likewise, while the space to do so is limited, by applying theory on new media narrative and narratology, such as ‘intermediality’ and ‘multimodality’, this study will address Punday’s concern that “cybertexts […] are like some new species recently discovered”, lacking in “cybertext theory”, which consists of adequate categories and terms “that are fair to this new medium” (19). The Latin American narrative genre of the testimonio serves as a connection between media and cultural studies in the analysis of the narratives.

2. Waking the ‘sleeping giant’: the Immigrant Rights Movement in 2006

In early 2006, different immigrant organizations and institutions came together to plan a ‘National Day of Action’ on March 10 of that year (cf. Flores- González and Gutiérrez 5). Consequently, large marches took place in roughly 250 cities across the United States throughout the months of March and April. These protested against the ‘Sensenbrenner Bill’ – a bill that was considered “draconian” by the immigrant and (non-immigrant) population (Pallares and Flores-González xv). Especially in Chicago, the march became a (literally) huge success, as one hundred thousand people marched together toward the city center (cf. Flores-González and Gutiérrez 5). Consequently, the spring of 2006 became known as the ‘Spring of the Immigrant’, which counted among “the largest immigrant rights activities in U.S. history” (Pallares and Flores-González xv).

This study focuses geographically upon events in Chicago, Illinois in order to define the development of the Immigrant Rights Movement. Next to the fact that the many personal conversations with activists² and leaders of IYJL during my research stay in Chicago heavily informed my understanding of the Movement, the choice of this city as a ‘base’ has multiple other empirical advantages: The focus on this city, according to Pallares and Flores-González, sheds light on the “different types of organizations, institutions, and social actors that have shaped the contemporary immigrant rights movement” (xxi). Further, Pallares and Flores-González stress the city’s “complex history of immigrant activism” (ibid). Not only has the city hosted the largest Coming Out of the Shadows event in 2010, it could also be described as the “ground zero for the first day of actions” (Anguiano 152).

With regard to its immigration history, the city not only counts as the “second-largest Mexican community (after Los Angeles)” (Anguiano 152), it can also safely be called a ‘city of immigrants’ (cf. Misra n.pag.). Naturally, Latino activism has been a vital part of the city’s culture and politics since the 1920s (cf. Pallares, The Chicago Context 38). Insights gained in more recently emerging Chicago immigrant youth activism thus serves as a rich basis for analyzing narratives of undocumented youth.

In multiple attempts, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act failed in summer 2007, causing “great disappointment” among immigration activists (Pallares, Family Activism 41). However, the protests clearly articulated Comprehensive Immigration Reform as their general objective, as well as the halt of the deportations of undocumented immigrants (cf. Pallares, Family Activism 96 and 112–113). In this mobilization for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, the marches became the “movement’s main muscle” (Pallares, The Chicago Context 54). In particular, in these gatherings, new networks and coalitions were formed, “essentially consolidating the immigrant rights efforts that emerged after the 1986 reform” (5) and demonstrating a political power that had been underestimated by all (cf. Flores-González and Gutiérrez 7): Now, and for all, the metaphor that compares the Latin@ population of the United States to the body of a sleeping giant has been exposed as inadequate (cf. Pallares, The Chicago Context 58). Most importantly, the resurgence of the Movement expressed that undocumented immigrants need to claim their “rights to have rights” (ibid).

Focusing upon strategies for publicity and an agenda as a means for defining politics, this study opens the discussion for the affordances and challenges that the new media sphere brings upon young activists. The analysis of the eight narratives of undocumented youth, produced between 2006 and 2013, places the political message that these narratives produce in the context of the Immigrant Rights Movement since its revival in 2006.

3. Mediatizing politics: testimonial storytelling online

A concept useful for grasping the changes in testimonios through new media is ‘mediatization’, a theoretical perspective that “refers to the meta process by which everyday practices and social relations are historically shaped by mediating technologies and media organizations” (Livingstone x). The basis for mediatization is the observation of “the increasing presence and importance of the media in all parts of social and political life” (Schulz 9). Nowadays, according to Hjarvard, the media “organize public and private communication in ways that are adjusted to the individual medium’s logic and market considerations” (17), which results in a (political) society that becomes increasingly dependent on media (cf. Lundby, Introduction: Mediatization 12). As the key to the public sphere, media not only ‘mediate’ (political) content but actively form public opinion (cf. Esser and Strömback 4). But which processes are actually at work?

Because we lack a detailed conceptualization, Esser and Strömbäck have described four dimensions of the mediatization of politics (cf. 7): The first dimension understands media as a source of information about politics and society. The second dimension emphasizes the growing autonomy of media as an (or many) institution(s). Both of these dimensions have been well-known and researched.

The third and fourth dimensions point to the “degree to which media content and the coverage of politics and current affairs is guided by media logic or political logic” and how political actors and organizations are “guided” by these logics (Esser and Strömbäck 7). These latter two dimensions serve as the basis for understanding online narratives of undocumented youth in this study. For our purposes, we need to understa...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: digital narratives of undocumented immigrant youth
• 2 The movement, politics, and media logic in YouTube narratives of undocumented youth
• 3 Reframing testimonio: mediatizing political storytelling on YouTube
• 4 Stories of the dispossessed
• 5 Visual dispossession(s) and the dynamics of the performative: moving image
• 6 Activism in soundscape: voice, noises, and music in digital narratives
• 7 Intermedial spaces: written language, static image, and props
• 8 Conclusions
• Index