Central American Migrants

This chapter employs a queer migration approach to analyze the implications of liberal advocate and activist organizing around the child in political and movement discourse about Central American migration. Turning to rhetorical appeals from the 2014 “crisis” of child migration, the chapter reveals that liberals’ compassionate response and pro-family rhetoric in defense of the child paradoxically justifies militarized and securitized futures that are decidedly anti-migrant and anti-children. As Obama’s 2014 executive actions on immigration indicate, liberal pro-family, pro-child rhetorics traffic in discourses of vulnerability, innocence, and compassion that are easily deployed to extend stringent immigration policies that harm all migrants, including the children they claim to protect.