The DREAMers: How the Undocumented Youth Movement Transformed the Immigrant Rights Debate. By Walter J. Nicholls. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013. Pp. xiv+226. $85.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

In recent years, undocumented youth have come out of the shadows to claim their rights in the United States. By sharing their stories, these youth gained a voice in the public debate. This article integrates insights from the literature on narratives and emotions to study how story-telling is employed within the undocumented youth movement in Chicago. I argue that undocumented youth strategically use storytelling for diverging purposes depending on the context, type of interaction, and audience involved. Based on ethnographic research, I show that storytelling allows them to incorporate new members, mobilize constituencies, and legitimize grievances. In each of these contexts, emotions play a key role in structuring the social transaction between storyteller and audience. Storytelling is thus a community-building, mobilizing, and claims-making practice in social movements. At a broader level, this case study demonstrates the power of storytelling as a political tool for marginalized populations.

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Students on the Rise

Human Rights and Ethics ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-6433-3.ch012 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 195-213

Author(s):

Elizabeth Bishop

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

New York ◽

Critical Literacy ◽

Urban Youth ◽

Literacy Learning ◽

The United States ◽

Community Based ◽

Immigrant Rights ◽

Undocumented Youth ◽

Ethical Learning

This chapter discusses the recent findings of the Drop Knowledge Project in New York City (DKPNYC). The DKPNYC is a cultural studies research project designed to excavate the discourses of urban youth activism and organizing in relation to critical literacy learning. In this chapter, the authors look at the work of the DKPNYC youth activists around issues related to immigrant rights and educational justice in out-of-school spaces. Amongst the interconnected issues surrounding this work, the youth participants in the DKPNYC all organize around issues related to the struggle of undocumented youth to access quality education in the United States. Data collected from the study is decidedly cross-cultural, with participants articulating visions of themselves and their future in relation to their cultural heritage and their inter-subjective ethical learning. Implications from the study provide insight to educators, researchers, and community-based organizations about educating immigrant youth and others on pressing issues around immigrant learning.

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Sticking to the Script

10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190618049.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Sujatha Fernandes

Keyword(s):

Young People ◽

Undocumented Students ◽

Political Engagement ◽

Dream Act ◽

Immigration Reform ◽

Immigrant Rights ◽

Undocumented Youth ◽

Legislative Agenda ◽

The Media ◽

American Society

This chapter looks at how storytelling was used by mainstream immigrant rights groups to produce an aspiring class of upwardly mobile and self-reliant undocumented youth while defusing broader migrant rights activism. In the campaign for legalization through a DREAM Act, the undocumented students known as Dreamers told their stories to the legislature and the media. The students were given scripts to follow that emphasized their achievements, assimilation into American society, and rejection of their home countries. In the lead-up to the 2008 national election and the subsequent push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CIR), groups of young people were mobilized in mass storytelling trainings across the country to support the electoral and legislative agenda of mainstream organizations. Eventually, many young people rebelled against this orchestration and sought to take control over their own representations. Some even began to move away from storytelling as a mode of political engagement altogether.

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