Intersectionality as a multipurpose collective action frame: The case of the undocumented youth movement

Ethnicities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Terriquez ◽  
Tizoc Brenes ◽  
Abdiel Lopez

During the early 2010s, undocumented youth activists were leading the charge to gain congressional support for the federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, which sought to provide a pathway to citizenship for eligible undocumented youth in the United States. Led primarily by Latino college students and graduates, this movement became very attentive to and inclusive of the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer members. Drawing on semi-structured interviews of Latino lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer undocumented youth and other documentary evidence, this article demonstrates how activists can deploy intersectionality as a collective action frame that serves multiple purposes. Specifically, intersectionality can function as: (1) a diagnostic frame to help activists make sense of their own multiply-marginalized identities; (2) a motivational frame to inspire action; and (3) a prognostic frame that guides how activists build inclusive organizations and bridge social movements. We show how this frame guided the ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and other undocumented activists interpreted their own life experiences, prompted them to build inclusive organizations, and broadened the scope of their movement. We conclude by arguing that activists have the potential to adopt intersectionality as a master frame that strengthens ties among various movements mobilizing marginalized populations.

Author(s):  
Maggie Dominguez ◽  
Miriam L. Frolow

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program enabled more than 700,000 undocumented youth and young adults since 2012 the chance to have a lawful presence in the United States for a 2-year renewable period. With DACA status, college students could have access to financial aid and possibly in-state tuition, as well as opportunities to work legally. A correlational study was conducted in 2016-2017 with 30 DACA college students of Mexican Origin who were residing in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. They completed an anonymous online survey about their intent to persist to degree completion, their views on the college climate for diversity, and their sense of belonging on campus. The results of the study confirm the need for higher education faculty and staff to provide services and resources and to build trust with this vulnerable student population.


Collections ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-142
Author(s):  
Uta Larkey

This article highlights new research opportunities on oral history interviews and storytelling. From 2003 to 2013, Goucher College students interviewed Holocaust survivors in Baltimore, Maryland, and publicly retold their stories on campuses, in schools, and in synagogues. These oral history interviews and storytelling presentations are stored in digital form in the Special Collections at the Goucher Library and are currently in the process of being made available online. The students used their chronologically structured interviews to develop their own narration of the survivors’ accounts. The interviews and presentations include a wide variety of survival experiences all over war-torn Europe as well as the survivors’ recollections of their arrival in the United States. The Goucher Testimony Collection adds another aspect to existing archived oral history interviews: the survivors entrust their stories to interviewers the ages of their own grandchildren. The interviews as well as the digitized storytelling presentations are a rich source for comparative analyses with interviews from other collections and/or other forms of testimonies. The techniques and approaches are also applicable to other oral history/storytelling projects, such as with war veterans or immigrants.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016059762093014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily R. Cabaniss ◽  
Jeffrey A. Gardner

This article examines the narrative identity work that undocumented youth activists used to shift the boundary of and claim membership in the social category “American.” Despite the seemingly inflexible, legalistic way American is conventionally defined in the United States (as a native-born or naturalized citizen), activists adopted a fluid interpretation that made room for them. Our theoretical contribution centers on articulating how the construction and deployment of identity codes within narrative processes can open spaces for claiming collective identification and belonging in seemingly closed collectivities. However, the use of such codes may unintentionally close access for others seeking to identify as part of the same collective. Data were collected through ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews, and our analysis integrates insights from sociological research on identity with interdisciplinary work on storytelling. We outline activists’ three main approaches to signifying Americanness, including constructing American as (1) a subjective feeling, (2) a status that can be earned, and (3) a quality that one can demonstrate through political engagement in the United States. We conclude by discussing the implications of such narrative identity work strategies for other undocumented immigrants who may face challenges presenting themselves as equally fitting “Americans.”


Author(s):  
Ala Sirriyeh

This chapter examines how a shift from the notion of compassion that is felt at a distance to a practice of compassion as suffering with one another in solidarity has been achieved by the undocumented youth movement in the United States. It begins with an overview of the origins of the undocumented youth movement, followed by a discussion of their campaign for the rights of the country's undocumented young people, their campaign for the passage of the federal Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and their response to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) introduced by President Barack Obama. It also considers the movement's use of storytelling as testimony in their DREAM Act campaign and shows how compassion as solidarity and co-suffering can play an important role in enabling witness bearing and the building of a more inclusive and enduring resistance to suffering and social injustice.


Author(s):  
Ina Batzke

This chapter explores the intersectionality of seeking citizenship and gender on the movement strategies of undocumented youths by tracing the evolvement of the Undocuqueer movement within the overall undocumented youth movement in the United States since 2001. By analyzing both tactics and narrative self-representations of Undocuqueer activists, it describes the specificities of UndocuQueer challenges and opportunities in order to trace how LGBTQ representations of undocumented youth legitimized themselves within the larger scope of the movement. In the course of this discussion, it is clear that the UndocuQueer tactics are not be understood as a parallel occurrence to earlier representations of undocumentedness, but instead as an intersecting one in the fight for social justice, which almost organically grew from within the overall undocumented community.


2021 ◽  
pp. 088626052199793
Author(s):  
Tiffany L. Marcantonio ◽  
Danny Valdez ◽  
Kristen N. Jozkowski

The purpose of this study was to assess the cues college students use to determine a sexual partner is refusing vaginal-penile sex (i.e., refusal interpretations). As a secondary aim, we explored the influence of item wording ( not willing/non-consent vs refusal) on college students’ self-reported refusal interpretations. A sample of 175 college students from Canada and the United States completed an open-ended online survey where they were randomly assigned to one of two wording conditions ( not willing/non-consent vs refusal); students were then prompted to write about the cues they used to interpret their partner was refusing. An inductive coding procedure was used to analyze open-ended data. Themes included explicit and implicit verbal and nonverbal cues. The refusal condition elicited more explicit and implicit nonverbal cues than the not willing/non-consent condition. Frequency results suggested men reported interpreting more explicit and implicit verbal cues. Women reported interpreting more implicit nonverbal cues from their partner. Our findings reflect prior research and appear in line with traditional gender and sexual scripts. We recommend researchers consider using the word refusal when assessing the cues students interpret from their sexual partners as this wording choice may reflect college students’ sexual experiences more accurately.


Author(s):  
Natasha N Johnson

This article focuses on equitable leadership and its intersection with related yet distinct concepts salient to social justice pertinent to women and minorities in educational leadership. This piece is rooted and framed within the context of the United States of America, and the major concepts include identity, equity, and intersectionality—specific to the race-gender dyad—manifested within the realm of educational leadership. The objective is to examine theory and research in this area and to discuss the role they played in this study of the cultures of four Black women, all senior-level leaders within the realm of K-20 education in the United States. This work employed the tenets of hermeneutic phenomenology, focusing on the intersecting factors—race and gender, specifically—that impact these women’s ability and capability to perform within the educational sector. The utilization of in-depth, timed, semi-structured interviews allowed participants to reflect upon their experiences and perceptions as Black women who have navigated and continue to successfully navigate the highest levels of the educational leadership sphere. Contributors’ recounted stories of navigation within spaces in which they are underrepresented revealed the need for more research specific to the intricacies of Black women’s leadership journeys in the context of the United States.


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