“We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the US” [REVIEW]
In their newly released edited volume, Leisy Ábrego and Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales hold space for those often at the margins of academia and society. They make room for students and scholars to theorize about the incredibly nuanced and salient parts of their identity as undocumented and previously undocumented people. The introductory chapter, for example, reflects on their role as mentors providing support for these scholars at every stage of the academic process; whereas successive chapters challenge the popular notion of the “Dreamer,” highlighting how this narrative and identity has at times done more harm than good. The power of this book is that it is those who are undocumented that are contesting the theory, metaphor, and narrative behind the conceptualization of “DREAMer.”¹
Poignant accounts of undocumented Black, trans, queer, mothers, struggling students, and the lives of many others are juxtaposed with Trump’s anti-immigrant presidency as the backdrop to each chapter. In the introduction, the editors guide us through their journey of creating this book and delineating existing scholarship on undocumented communities by first pointing to literature on what is known and unknown about undocumented young people; before situating the context of the creation of the DREAMer narrative and how California’s specific legal context (AB 540 and the CA DREAM Act) influenced political organizing and mobilization that paved the way for national policies like DACA.² This section ends with positioning the concept of We Are Not Dreamers as an analytical and empirical interjection that shifts the terrain of studies about immigration and “illegality.”
Methodologically, it breaks ground as a premier body of work that positions undocumented (and previously undocumented) scholars as theory creators of the undocumented experience in the United States. This is essential because too often undocumented communities get studied in ways that are unintentionally harmful. Undocumented scholars understand the nuances and complexities of undocumented people, families, and communities. They are invested in conducting research that does not put people’s lives at risk. Moreover, this body of work stands in opposition to the exoticizing and pathologizing that scholars reproduce in marginalized communities. Undocumented people are more than subjects or objects, and these scholars do not only understand that principal, they live by it.
Gabrielle Cabrera, one of the contributors to this edited volume, generously published an open letter that serves as a call for reflection for faculty, researchers, and scholars who conduct work about undocumented people. It outlines the ways that scholars may consciously or unconsciously be unethical in their creation, implementation, and dissemination of research. This letter is a game changer. Cabrera articulates the ways universities have promoted the DREAMer narrative³ and continue to use the good vs. bad immigrant binary in their work. In fields that devalue the work of people studying their own experiences by calling it “mesearch” this work stands to expose the myth of objectivity. I echo Ewing in that the experiential knowledge of people of color not only is a legitimate source of evidence, but is in fact critical to understanding the function of racism as a fundamental American social structure.⁴ In this way, undocumented scholars are gifting us with powerful testimonies of the ways laws intersect with people’s everyday life.
Overall, the scholars in We Are Not Dreamers have a unified mission—to counter the DREAMer narrative. In so doing, they present new ways of seeing undocumented people outside of merit-based exceptionalist views that center education and capitalist productivity. These scholars, who are experts of their own experiences, are able to make connections to other movements and disenfranchised groups: those with criminal backgrounds, LGBTQ, queer, transgender migrants, students on academic probation, non-students, and older generations of undocumented people, amongst others. While the first part of the book explores theoretical concepts about illegality, “undocumentedness,” and the resistance to criminalization by the legal system, the second part presents a more quotidian look at life as an undocumented person, dealing with topics like family, love, and joy. This carefully curated book elevates the scholarship of ten authors who are currently or formerly undocumented. Though not all chapters are intimately reviewed here, I offer a closer look at a select few.
The first chapter of the book, “‘Other’ Borders: The Illegal as Normative Metaphor,” written by Joel Sati, presents a theoretical approach to the identity construction of the DREAMer. Drawing from Metaphors We Live By to understand metaphors in immigrant discourse, Sati looks at the terms Alien or illegal immigrant, and illuminates how this legal identity became reinforced by science fiction imaginations to describe an utterly fundamental foreignness void of humanness. In interrogating the metaphor of the immigrant as alien, the author asks us to consider, “What does the metaphor of immigrant as Dreamer do?” Ultimately, this chapter exposes how the Dreamer metaphor/identity serves as a campaign for counter “illegalization.” In other words, the Dreamer identity was actually harmful for the larger immigrant group like: parents, Black immigrants, those with criminal backgrounds, or the undereducated (39). One of the main takeaways of this piece is that the humanity of undocumented people should be presupposed, not defended. This work offers a reckoning with the narratives created by the immigration rights movements and implores us to reevaluate their metaphors, messages, and demands.
Chapter 6, “Undocumented Young Adults’ Heightened Vulnerability in the Trump Era” by Carolina Valdivia centers the mental health of undocumented people post-Trump’s election. Through in-depth interviews of mixed-status immigrant families in San Diego, Valdivia captures the sharp contrast between Trump’s presidency and the Obama administration. The constant news stories about immigration policies and enforcement practices serve as constant reminders of people’s vulnerability to deportation and family separation. As such, young people face a constant flow of stress and fear in everyday life. Consequently, negative mental health outcomes can begin to manifest as psychosomatic symptoms like eye twitch, stomach aches, headaches, and others. This chapter invites us to serve both “as witnesses and actors in the struggle for immigrants’ rights; until the day that undocumented immigrants’ dignity, humanity, and rights are recognized, regardless of their immigration status” (143).
In chapter 8, “Me Vestí De Reina: Trans and Queer Sonic Spatial Entitlement,” Audrey Silvestre starts with an introduction to Zoraida Reyes, a transgender immigrant rights activist, who I had the pleasure of meeting when I lived in Orange County in 2013. We were introduced and she extended an invitation to an upcoming event for immigrant rights in Santa Ana, California. A year later in 2014, as this chapter explains, she was found dead. Here, Silvestre accounts for the powerful ways that the transgender community and the immigrant right movement specifically in Orange County, mourned, grieved, and celebrated her life. Drawing on queer of color critique and scholarship on sonic entitlement, Silvestre, illuminates the power of sound to shift and cope with the great loss that was Zoraida’s life. This chapter challenges dehumanizing notions of transgender people by centering the “nuances, silences, rebellions, resistance, sorrow, anger, and joy” (169). By including these complex aspects of transgender undocumented community members, the author argues that it serves to inform new theories and ways of organizing that lend themselves to transformative moments rather than simply for the sake of inclusion (170).
The last chapter of the book, “Undocumented Queer Parenting: Navigating External and Internal Threats to Family” by Katy Joseline Maldonado Dominguez brings to the fore the unique challenges that queer parenting and family formation present. The author exemplifies how queer immigrant families have to be creative in confronting things like homophobia which are as salient as other threats to their lives. Undocumented and heteronormative identities are not mutually exclusive. As such, an individual is not able to choose what structural system they are going to deal with at any given time. When a parent comes out as queer, all family bonds seem to need renegotiation. The author posits that often the negotiating centers “idealized expectations of family, as determined by their sexuality, gender, and legal status” (212). This reminds readers of the importance of transforming public consciousness and dismantling hegemonic cultural norms that harm and exclude. This book valiantly challenges the hetero-normative family concept and in chapter seven specifically calls to question the ways terms like UndocuQueer come to restrict the intersectionality of two different identities, as undocumented and queer individuals must constantly “come out” at multiple times in their lives, in various settings, and to different people (Ramirez, 153).
As a minor point of critique or a place to look ahead, I wonder what does scholarship authored by those who are the participants of each chapter look like? Possibly, future areas of collaboration can borrow from Participatory Action Research (PAR) and/or Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) or incorporate creativity in an attempt to visualize the diverse and intersectional experiences of the undocumented community. These methods could serve to expand the audience of this incredibly important work outside of academia. Moreover, a second edited volume could highlight the experiences and nuances of undocumented youth and communities outside of the already visible Latinx identity, specifically Mexican, Central, and South American. For example, shedding light on the undocumented Asian, Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, African diasporic, and Muslim communities. Indeed, this book is a point of entry to a multiplicity of experiences.
Ultimately, this work can take a toll when you are theorizing, researching, analyzing your own experiences as an undocumented scholar. The constant cognitive demand when thinking about the areas of your life that are impacted by things like legal status can be exhausting, if not retraumatizing. I urge undocumented scholars, as I remind myself, that in doing this work it is of the upmost importance to center rest, to remember to breathe deeply, and to ask and accept help when it all seems like too much to bare. We are keepers of one another. And in speaking truth to power, we must prioritize safety and longevity in the long fight for social justice.
Rich with the details about the unique ways undocumented scholars grapple with the realities of what they are thinking and living through, this book is for families, parents, self-proclaimed dreamers and non-dreamers, citizens, students, and scholars in all fields. Finally, it is important to note that the authors have donated the royalties generated from We Are Not Dreamers to Al Otro Lado, a “binational legal services organization serving deportees and refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as families separated by unjust immigration laws and policies of family separation.” In theory and in practice, these scholars are guided by the importance of centering those who are at the margins of the undocumented debate.
We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States
Editor(s): Leisy J. Abrego, Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales
264 pp. Duke University Press. $26.95.
Author’s Notes
DREAM Act: “The federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (dream) Act was first introduced in 2001 and was meant to provide a path to citizen- ship for undocumented migrants who arrived in the United States as children (Gonzales and Chavez 2012; Abrego 2011). The proposed legislation has been under debate for nearly two decades. This legislation would provide conditional access to legal permanent residency and eventually citizenship, if individuals can prove that they arrived in the United States before they were six- teen years old, have at least five years of residence in the United States, have graduated from a two-year college or have studied for at least two years toward a higher degree and/or have served in the U.S. Army for at least two years (Gonzales and Chaves 2012). Recently, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2019 was introduced, and would expand legal status to a much larger group than solely dreamers, specifically Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) recipients (Gelatt 2019)” (Page 236). DREAMer: “The term dreamer draws from the narratives that were used to challenge the negative depictions of undocumented immigrants in order to justify the federal dream Act (Lauby 2016). dreamer refers to an undocumented individual who arrived in the United States as a child, has been raised and educated in the United States, and is often depicted as a high-achieving student deserving of legal status (Lauby 2016). Authors in this book challenge the dreamer narrative, which only upholds a few “deserving” undocumented im- migrants while excluding and further marginalizing the rest of the undocumented community. The dreamer narrative is rooted in notions of “achievement, innocence, meritocracy, individualism, and injustice, which together create the story of the ideal, high-achieving undocumented youth who is unfairly prevented from gaining access to college and pursuing his or her dreams” (Lauby 2016, 376)” (page 237).
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) On June 15, 2012, the Obama administration announced the DACA federal program, which provides temporary relief from deportation and work authorization for eligible undocumented young adults. Every two years, beneficiaries have to apply to renew their DACA. Five years later, in September 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the program, preventing young adults from submitting initial DACA applications and leaving current DACA beneficiaries in greater uncertainty” (143).
“Dreamer Narrative, “defined as an undocumented student with “good grades and appealing as cultural Americans” (Schwiertz 2015, 2)—tends to center on only these students’ academic excellence. While it is important to highlight the academic achievements and contributions of undocumented youth, it is also necessary to recognize that there are diverse experiences, many of which do not fit into this stereotype of high performance” (page 45).
Ewing, E. L. (2018). Ghosts in the schoolyard: Racism and school closings on Chicago's South Side. University of Chicago Press.
Silvia Rodriguez Vega is currently a New York University Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Applied Psychology at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She holds a Ph.D. in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Silvia is a community-engaged artist and scholar informed by her own undocumented experience growing up in Arizona. Her research explores the ways anti-immigration policy impacts the lives of immigrant children through new methodological tools centering art and creative expression. Specifically, her research highlights the understudied preadolescent children of immigrants—both U.S.-born citizens and undocumented immigrant children.
Reach her at: www.silviarodriguezvega.com Twitter: @SilviaSiSePuede