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How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship

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How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship Bard College Bard Digital Commons Senior Projects Spring 2016 Bard Undergraduate Senior Projects Spring 2016 The Transformation of Self in Everyday Life: How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship Caley Emmaline Cross Bard College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016 Part of the Inequality and Stratification Commons, Latin American Studies Commons, Politics and Social Change Commons, and the Race and Ethnicity Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Cross, Caley Emmaline, "The Transformation of Self in Everyday Life: How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship" (2016). Senior Projects Spring 2016. 130. https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_s2016/130 This Open Access work is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been provided to you by Bard College's Stevenson Library with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this work in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Transformation of Self in Everyday Life: How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College by Caley Cross Annandale-on-Hudson, New York May 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To Red Hook ESL, for teaching me why this is important To my new friends and allies in Georgia, for inspiring me To my friends, professors, and advisors, for supporting me in everything I decided to do To my family, for bringing me to this country so that I too could have a better life Thank you. ABSTRACT The purpose of this extended case study is to determine what institutional, social and cultural factors contribute to undocumented Latino youth identity formation. Based on one month of qualitative interviews and participant observation at Peachtree University, a modern day freedom school for undocumented youth in Georgia, I examine how undocumented Latino youth identity evolves within state and societal pressures, and the formation of a commitment to activism through these youths’ experiences. Taken as a whole, this study traces the transformation undocumented Latino youth make from a position of social and political exclusion to actively claiming rights, recognition, and inclusion in the public sphere. Furthermore, this study examines post-national conceptions of citizenship and human rights. Through political activity and the formation of a collective identity, undocumented Latino youth at Peachtree University critique the limits of citizenship as state membership through the construction of a post-national political community in which they perform citizenship as an identity. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: WELCOME TO PEACHTREE UNIVERSITY …………………………… 1 Rationale of Study …………………………………………………………………..…… 8 Chapter Overview ………………………………………………………………………. 11 CHAPTER 1: CONEXT OF STUDY ………………………………………………………..… 14 Literature Review ……………………………………………………………….……… 14 Theoretical Framework ……………………………………………………………….… 30 Methods …………………………………………………………………………..…..… 34 Pseudonym Chart …………………………………………………………………….… 38 CHAPTER 2: PERFORMING “ILLEGAL” …………………………………………..……….. 41 Latino Identity Construction ………………………………………………………….… 41 Undocumented Identity Construction …………………………………………………… 56 CHAPTER 3: PERFORMING “STUDENT” …………………………………………………… 70 Discovering PTU …………………………………………………………………….…. 75 Everyday Life at PTU ………………………………………………………………..… 82 Undergoing Cognitive Liberation ……………………………………………………… 90 CHAPTER 4: PERFORMING “ACTIVIST” ………………………………………………..… 98 Empowering Initial Experiences…………………………………………………..……. 100 “This Is What Community Looks Like!”…………………………………………….… 108 The “Activist” Identity………………………………………………………………… 118 CONCLUSION: PERFORMING CITIZENSHIP ……………………………………………. 125 Summary and Findings ……………………………………………….……….…….… 125 Post-National Citizenship and Human Rights ……………………..………….………. 129 AFTERNOTE: PERFORMING “RESEARCHER” ………….……….……….…….……….. 134 REFERENCES: ………………………………………………..………….………………..… 136 APPENDIX A: IRB INTERVIEW QUESTIONS …………………………………….……… 143 !1 INTRODUCTION: WELCOME TO PEACHTREE UNIVERSITY It's a typical first day of school. I sit in the classroom, watching as the students slowly trickle in and exchange glances with one another. Some students walk in confidently, taking their seats and smirking at their friends sitting across the circle from them. Others walk in with the same wide-eyed overwhelmed expression that every new student experiences as they walk into a room full of unknown peers on the first day of school. Students who know each other quietly chat while the professor prepares her materials at the front of the room. The chatter dies down, and a buzzing excitement fills the air. Professor M turns around, widely grinning at all the new and returned faces, "Welcome to a new semester at Peachtree U! Let's begin by going around and introducing ourselves. Could you please say your name, what high school you went to and what you're excited about for this semester?" Students begin to stand up and nervously introduce themselves. As each returning student speaks, they make the point of letting the new students know that they should feel free to approach them if they need help with anything, or have any questions. As one new student introduces himself, he mentions he is currently taking online classes, but wanted to come to Peachtree U to get a feel for the “real” college classroom experience. Professor M asks, "If you don't mind me asking, can you tell me your status?” The new student quickly blurts without hesitating," Yeah, illegal. I'm illegal.” This is followed by an awkward pause. “Uh, no you're not," says Professor M with an !2 awkwardly tense grin, "You're undocumented." The room fills with voices as other students chime in with the same enthusiastic supportive response,"Yeah! You're undocumented!" Peachtree University (PTU) is not your typical school: it is a freedom school for undocumented students, founded on the belief that “no human being is illegal.” At PTU, students learn that the term “illegal,” is not a synonym for “undocumented,” but a stigmatized term tied into the historical constructions of race, criminality, and citizenship in the U.S (Soltis 2015). PTU’s mission statement is, “to empower undocumented youth and fulfill their human right to education.” Modeled after the Southern Freedom schools of the Civil Rights Movement, the tuition-free non-accredited school provides college level classes, scholarship assistance, and movement leadership training to undocumented students in Georgia. PTU first opened its doors in 2011, in response to two new discriminatory policies in education designed to deny undocumented students admission to select public universities and access to in-state tuition. In the freedom school tradition, the creation of PTU was a symbolic act of civil disobedience. In bringing undocumented students together in a space to learn, it symbolized undocumented student solidarity, equality in education, and an act of resistance against the discriminatory policies implemented by the state of Georgia (Peña 2012). The circumstances undocumented students face in Georgia today represent only a part of the much greater, yet widely untold, story of undocumented immigration in the United States. Since 1965, there has been a dramatic increase in immigration from Latin America, as the Latino population living in the U.S has risen from 4% in 1965 to 18% in 2015 (“Pew Research Center” 2015). Today, Latinos are not only the largest minority ethnic population in the U.S., but are also the largest undocumented population (De Genova 2004). There are approximately 11.3 million !3 undocumented people living in the U.S., 77% of whom are Latino (Passel and Lopez 2012; Passel and Cohn 2015). Additionally, the number of undocumented adults who have been living in the U.S. for at least a decade has nearly doubled (Passel and Cohn 2015). The population remains relatively young, as approximately 4.4 million of the undocumented population are under the age of 30 (Passel and Lopez 2012). As of 2011, there were 2.1 million undocumented youth living in the U.S. since childhood, at least one million of whom have now entered adulthood (Gonzales 2011). “Undocumented youth” refers to the population of young people who came to the U.S. without authorization before the age of fourteen, most often accompanied by their parents. This population has become known as the 1.5 generation, to categorize the experience of being born in a different country than the one they were raised in (Portes and Rumbaut 2006). As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court case Plyer vs. Doe (1982) decision, undocumented immigrant children were granted the right to receive K-12 public school education (Gonzales 2011). Consequently, the 1.5 generation learn English, attend public school, and are socialized along side their American peers. Many undocumented students are unaware of their immigration status until they attempt to apply for a job, a driver’s license, or financial aid for college. While some states now permit undocumented students to attend college, not having a social security number denies them access to financial aid in most states. Given the current state of the U.S.
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