The Search for Connection Online

This chapter takes a close look at immigrant activism online. Because many undocumented immigrants are prohibited from higher education and professional employment, much of their narrative activism has found its home on the internet, where production costs are low, amateur professionalism is the norm, and the option for anonymity is still vaguely present. Digital reclaimant narratives serve more than a single purpose, and the narrators demonstrate how the act of story sharing online may serve as a path to self-actualization, help to mitigate one’s fear and uncertainty, offer a means for communal coping, or satisfy a sense of responsibility. A close look at these varied and profound outcomes reveals digital reclaimant narratives as powerful tools in the hands of individuals who in other contexts face constant limitations. But it is clear that creating reclaimant narratives in digital contexts incites particular hazards, including the difficulty of gaining an audience for heterogeneous perspectives, the normalization of free labor, the facilitation of hateful and xenophobic responses, and the perpetuation of the confirmation bias.

Reclaiming the Story and Finding the Frame

This chapter offers both theoretical and pragmatic contextualization as activist narrators describe the diverse ways they conceive of and negotiate narrative frames and strategies toward the goal of immigration reform. The chapter chronicles the public work of undocumented immigrants who use their own stories as persuasive evidence that immigrants deserve a path to citizenship, and the narrators discuss the power and limitations of different immigrant rights strategies. I illuminate the strategies the narrators describe by way of textual analysis of some exemplars of each, demonstrate the ways members of the movement have lobbied for necessary shifts in the framing of their messages, and explore how these negotiations are promoted and implemented in grassroots activism. The resulting work reveals the power of storytelling in public media and the centrality of strategic communication to social movements.

Learning the Story for Myself

This chapter chronicles the ways young undocumented immigrants uncover their lack of legal status experientially—through interactions with parents and others, in attempts to pursue rites of passage reserved for citizens, and as audiences of political and popular media. The narrators featured in this chapter recount their immigration stories and explore the personal and social ramifications of discovering their status, including feelings of isolation and anomie. It explains how these experiences influence one’s decision about whether to cultivate a public voice, and the narrators reflect on the processes of determining how to narrate their experiences in the context of activism. After undocumented youth learn and grow to understand the implications of their undocumented status, they come to a crossroads: Will they come to see themselves as part of the story of immigrant activism, or does this story belong to others?

Introduction

This chapter introduces the role of storytelling in the immigrant rights movement. It presents the questions that animate the remainder of the book: How and why are young undocumented activists in New York choosing to use their stories as activism? What are the prospects and limitations of storytelling for developing a public and political voice? How do immigrant-produced mediated narratives abate the effects of isolation for undocumented immigrants and facilitate communal coping? By what means do immigrant activists confront foundational notions that predispose many US citizens to believe that the United States is simultaneously a result of the labors and dreams of an ideal class of immigrants and the victim of a new class of unworthy and illegal job stealers who refuse to “get in line” for citizenship? The chapter offers an overview of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and explicates how this paradigm is applied to the context of undocumented storytelling. The chapter contains a literature review, a detailed description of the methods of oral history, critical-rhetorical ethnography, and narrative analysis, and concludes with a chapter outline.

Inside Story

This chapter reveals the centrality of narrative and storytelling to the sociopolitical status of undocumented immigrants living in the United States. It offers a theorization of reclaimant narratives by illuminating the experiential, partial, public, oppositional, and incondensable nature of the stories undocumented activists tell. Despite attempts to essentialize and distill this narrative, the reality of undocumented immigration is a complicated story with no easy one-size-fits all tagline. This reality complicates the process of public education about immigration and works both for and against immigrants who use their stories as activism. The emergence of voices of undocumented storytellers in the immigrant rights movement has the capacity to engender empathy, motivate listeners, and even advance reforms in laws and policy. But these narratives also have the capacity to decelerate the movement by detracting from systematic problems and the tangible actions needed to advance reform.

Conclusion

This chapter argues that the future of the immigrant rights movement hinges on the power of storytelling. It illuminates the ideological role of audience knowledge and ignorance to the movement and demonstrates that the voting power to advance immigration reform may rest in the hands of individuals who favor a path to citizenship but do not know what policy changes would be necessary for that to happen. Bishop interrogates both nationalism and citizenship to demonstrate their critical relationship to the contested nature of immigration in the United States. The chapter details several areas of potential future work that could extend academic understanding of the role of storytelling in the immigrant rights movement.

In Pursuit of an Audience

This chapter turns from undocumented creators to their audiences to illuminate how immigrant storytellers conceive of and characterize US citizens who encounter reclaimant narratives. The narrators describe their frustration with citizens’ apparent lack of knowledge about immigrant rights and policy. I illustrate the link between US audiences’ perceptions of immigrants and the tropes present in mediated portrayals of immigrants in public discourse, and the narrators describe their own reactions to these portrayals. Finally, in response to the question “What do you wish US citizens knew about undocumented immigrants?” they explain why it is so important that citizens recognize immigrants as human, take a bigger picture view of the historical reality of undocumented immigration, acknowledge the factors that lead immigrants to give up their homes and communities and flee to the United States, and understand the privilege of citizenship.