Visualizing Immigrant Youth in Phoenix

Kristin Koptiuch

Arizona State University-West

Though largely unrecognized by official planning instruments and unacknowledged by the public in anti-immigrant Arizona, immigrants are transforming metropolitan Phoenix. Visualizing Immigrant Phoenix, a student-faculty research collaborative I direct at Arizona State University, explores these transformations by engaging its audience through vibrant visualization of immigrants’ imprint upon the Phoenix urban environment. This project occurs at a time when immigrants are increasingly demonized, criminalized, and denied due process. Our work responds by according due importance to migrants’ creative and deliberate impacts on everyday urbanism in transnationalizing cities.

In an era of unprecedented human mobilities, Phoenix diversity is not unexpected for a major American city. Current US Census data shows 20% of city residents are foreign born, 65% coming from Mexico, and 41% of the city population is Latinx. Stymied by reigning anti-immigrant sentiment, city residents and civic leaders are reluctant to acknowledge—let alone cultivate—creative ways that migrants already influence the city as informal, unintentional urban planners-from-below. Our projects track the ways in which immigrants have revived stagnant neighborhood economies, brought magical-realist redesign to the cityscape, added colorful flair to the city’s subdued design palette, infused global youth practices, and transnationalized Phoenix urbanism with local outcroppings of global religions, cuisines, cultures.

Immigrant and diaspora youth in particular play a critical role in bringing this realization into view. Our youthful team of undergraduate researchers brought fresh perspectives from their own migrant and diaspora communities. The inclusion of a Somali refugee, a first-generation Assyrian-Iraqi, and a Mexican DACA recipient this past spring extended the project’s reach and depth of insight. Although our gaze is not exclusively directed at youth, young migrants frequently do become central to our inquiry as team members engage their own networks to pursue their research.

Origins of the Project

Billboard in central Phoenix neighborhood (2012), Kristin Koptiuch

Visualizing Immigrant Phoenix is an extension of my long-term commitment to teaching, researching, and visualizing the impact of immigrants on metropolitan Phoenix, where I’ve lived for 25 years. Having taught courses on migration and worked with migrant advocacy organizations, I began to create ethnographic photo essays to defuse Arizonans’ hyper-sensitivity toward immigration, integrating emotion and affect with a resistant critical gaze (e.g. “Cruzando Fronteras/Crossing Phoenix,” 2012). To integrate students into these initiatives, I successfully applied for modest funding through a unique student-faculty research program offered by ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, which provides student teams with a budget of $500 and modest student stipends or two academic credits.

Thus far we have completed some two dozen photo essays and curated photo sets, accompanied by short descriptive and analytical ethnographic narratives. Researchers submitted drafts of their essays and photos, and revised them in response to my editorial comments and suggestions into finished projects, showcased on our website. At once visually stimulating and thought-provoking, we sought to share them with “live” audiences in a manner that preserved the immersive, visually rich digital format of the website presentations. We’ve experimented by creating an exhibition of our urban visual ethnography project, anchored by enlarged photos that capture the project’s key themes (immigrant portraits, artifacts, events, neighborhoods, businesses, landscapes).

Exhibit at Arizona State University-West (2017), Kristin Koptiuch

Presented first at the 2017 Society for Applied Anthropology conference in Santa Fe and then at our own West campus of Arizona State University, the exhibit also includes video shorts, sonic atmospherics, live website projection, a portfolio of printouts of individual projects, banners, promo materials, and QR codes that take viewers’ mobile phones straight to the website. To better engage our audience, we took seriously the truism that, welcome or not, “we are all immigrants.” Our interactive portrait booth (now featured on our website) drew an enthusiastic response from over 100 visitors who declared their solidarity as immigrants and their descendants.

Youth Circulations in Phoenix

Folkdance class, Assyrian Student Association of Arizona, Crystal Cespedes

Several of our stories track young migrants as they circulate through the city and beyond. For instance, many Iraqi refugees have resettled in metro Phoenix over the last 20 years, including Assyrian and Chaldean Christian minorities. Crystal Cespedes’ interview with a first-generation US-born Assyrian leader of the Assyrian Student Association of Arizona briefly unpacks the origins of Assyrian ethnics in Phoenix and highlights the importance accorded to education and cultural preservation by the student club at Arizona State University, through peer instruction of folk dances to traditional music.

Teaching modern Aramaic, Ileen Younan

The preservation of Assyrian language and history is also foregrounded in Ileen Younan’s piece on instruction in modern Aramaic by a young Iraqi-born teacher to first-generation children through their community church. The church also offers Aramaic education to older Assyrian youth like Younan herself, so they can learn to write and speak their parents’ native language.

Feast at weekly Iraqi family gathering, José Grijalva

José Grijalva’s visit to a weekly family gathering at the home of an Arab Iraqi classmate introduced him to Arab culture, language, and cuisine. Significantly, the lively family interactions and mountains of Middle Eastern food resonated with Grijalva’s experiences at his own Mexican American family’s cookouts in the Arizona border town where he grew up.

Phoenix is also home to post-colonial British diasporic communities whose youth perpetuate their parental legacy in the sport of cricket, an under-represented sport in what is otherwise a highly sports-conscious city. Hussein Mohamed’s short video introduces us to several immigrant and first-generation Pakistani team members of the Arizona Stallions Cricket Club. This is one of 18 Phoenix cricket teams comprised largely of immigrant youth hailing from cricket-playing nations like Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and South Africa. Interviews recount team members’ association of cricket with their families’ immigrant homeland roots.

Cricket match in Phoenix, Hussein Mohamed

DACAmented youth struggle for belonging and identity, Argenis Hurtado Moreno

As is well known, not all migrant youth have the luxury of open visibility. Argenis Hurtado Moreno invites us to hear the stories of two Mexican DACAmented youth, aka DREAMers, who struggle for belonging and identity in the America that enculturated them throughout their youth but stigmatizes them as young adults and legally excludes them from a pathway to citizenship. The two women interviewed express a palpable frustration and sense of injustice toward the nation that refuses to accept them as the exemplary made-Americans that they know they are.

Mexican pointy boot, José Grijalva

While doing fieldwork at Mercado de los Cielos, a Mexican makeover of a defunct mall anchor department store, José Grijalva was entranced by an elongated-toe boot on display at a shop selling Mexican cowboy boots. In sleuthing out the meaning this cultural artifact, Grijalva discovered that the Mexican pointy boot links transnational youth circulations on both sides of the US/Mexico border. Dance crews don custom-made boots with points as long as seven feet, offset by color-coordinated skinny jeans and cowboy hats. They perform choreographed steps to a recent style of Mexican music called Tribal, mixing Aztec and African sounds over a cumbia baseline, the DJ tapping into multi-ethnic and autochthonous Mexican roots that may carry special appeal to migrants far from the homeland. These dance competitions are popular in Dallas, Texas, as many Mexican immigrants there come from the state of San Luis, where Tribal is popular. Clearly, the pointy boot is an element of Mexican subcultural style that has easily crossed the border.

The Power of Migrants and the Subversion of the Community[i]

Through the subtle subversion of depicting these everyday migrant crossings and contributions, Visualizing Immigrant Phoenix seeks to intervene in the public perception of migrants in Phoenix. Our stories of migrant youth depict them as resilient as they are vulnerable. Youth are the site of intensive parental investment for perpetuating immigrant cultures, languages, histories (Heidbrink 2014). Yet migrant and diaspora youth connect as fluidly with local practices as they import transnational styles and fads through music, fashion, dance, relationships. Thus, they complicate simplified notions of “preserving” cultural forms. They cross virtual transnational bridges that span the spaces of their daily lives, rendering a subversive ordinariness to crossing borders (Leurs 2015). Their American dreams are defiant, insisting upon the legitimization of all of their global identities (Dissard & Peng 2013).

Visualizing Immigrant Phoenix’ collaborative ethnographic photo essays offer a visually rich counter-narrative to the intensifying discourse of fear promulgated by current instabilities in national and state immigration policies. By centering on migrants’ everyday mobilities, our critical visualization strives to (re)move walls and expand the appreciative embrace of immigrants in our city’s collective gaze.

Works Cited

Arau, S., Arizmendi, Y., & Guerrero, S. (2004). A Day without a Mexican. Televisa Cine.

Dissar, J. and G. Peng. (2013). Documentary: I Learn America. http://ilearnamerica.com/

Heidbrink, L. (2014). Migrant youth, transnational families, and the state: Care and contested interests. University of Pennsylvania Press.

James, S., & Dalla Costa, M. (1972). The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community. Consultado el, 5.

Leurs, K. (2015). Digital passages: Migrant youth 2.0. Diaspora, gender and youth cultural intersections.  Amsterdam University Press.

[1] This subtitle evokes the transformative, classic feminist treatise, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (1972). Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James argued that the centrality of women’s domestic work to the social reproduction of capitalist relations generating surplus value makes women key subversive protagonists in the struggle to re-appropriate the social wealth they produced. Migrants now are similarly positioned; its jokiness aside, films like A Day Without a Mexican (Sergio Arau 2004) show us that popular culture has already grasped the potential subversive power of migrants.

Kristin Koptiuch  is a cultural anthropologist and urban ethnographer who tries to practice anthropology as much performance art as social science. She is associate professor of anthropology in the School of Social & Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University-West.

I Still Have Your Luggage Tag

By William Lopez

On May 24th, 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a local Ann Arbor restaurant next to the University of Michigan campus. ICE agents went in with a warrant for single man, but arrested three to five others, including a Legal Permanent Resident. The community was angry that the agents had the gall to eat the food prepared by the staff and then arrest them—yet in many ways, this is an apt metaphor for perceptions of immigrants in the contemporary United States: We welcome your labor, but we do not welcome you.

While the thought of eating an omelet and then arresting the cook is abhorrent, I am struck by a process happening over and over in our country: The use of a single warrant to arrest anyone “suspected” of being undocumented. This amounts to legalized racial profiling. My doctoral research similarly focused on a home raid in which many Latinos were arrested although only a single individual was the alleged target.

At times like these, academic writing feels too constrained to cut to the core of the suffering we witness. For me, I turn to other forms of writing--poetry, prose, short stories--to capture what a peer-reviewed article cannot. This poem is a compilation of experiences of the raid I studied for years of my life and of this most recent raid on May 24th.

Photo credits: Celena Lopez

I Still Have Your Luggage Tag

I still have your luggage tag in my bag. I carry it with me, can't quite seem to let it go.

It's not a luggage tag really. It's a suitcase tag. It's a number, an identifier, a CURP, a code, with the matching code attached to a maleta that sat in the immigration office as your plane took off to deport you.

I thought I delivered the maleta on time. I remember doing it as soon as I could, blocking off a whole day to go to the immigration office so they could get it on your flight with you. I really care about your sister, and her heart was broken when you were taken, when her son lost the third father figure from his life. All because you happened to look like Ignacio. You and everyone else in the truck looked like Ignacio

I don't think they actually give a fuck who Ignacio is. I think they saw a truck at a gas station that looked like it was on its way to cut a yard, to fix a roof. I think they thought about the promise Congress made to fill 34,000 detention center beds a day. And I think they had a warrant for some Ignacio somewhere. And they saw a truck of three Ignacio look-alikes. So they followed you out of the gas station. They pulled you over. They asked you all for papers.

And they got three Ignacios closer to their congressional mandate.

So I took the maleta to the immigration office for your sister. I thought I was being kind, but really, I was just being privileged. Even though I'm brown, I have a driver's license. And I would never ask your sister to drive to Detroit. I-94 is a war zone. The body count is high.

I remember wondering what was in the maleta. What do you send to someone who has just been deported?

Of course, poverty knows no privacy, and as I stood outside the metal detector the security guard emptied its contents in front of me.

It was then that I started to understand what was happening.

There were small tubes of toothpaste. Bottles of shampoo and conditioner. A toothbrush. Soap. So you could be clean when you got back to Honduras.

Then there were the jeans.

They were nice jeans. With designs on the back pockets. Crosses made of gold and bronze studs. The kind of jeans that you could wear with alligator skin boots and a cowboy hat to a sobrino's first communion. Nice jeans. I wondered if they were brand new.

Then I noticed the sweatpants.

They still had the price tag on them.  They were new. Maybe the jeans were too. I imagined your sister making the decision to spend two day’s wages--two days of bending down to clean hotel rooms--on jeans and sweatpants. And I wondered why.

But I get it now. This is a despedida, a sendoff. This is how your sister says she loves you when she can't drive on I-94 herself, and, even if she could, she would be too distracted by the jingling of shackles to tell you she'll miss you.

So she bought soap, toothpaste, jeans.

She's trying to tell you that you can hold your head up high when you go back home. That you can walk into your campo from the main road clean and fly as hell with no shame cause you had ridden La Bestia. You had crossed the Rio Grande. You worked. You put more shingles on roofs than any citizen would ever think possible. You did what you had to do, got it done, and paid the 5% to Western Union to get it back to your family without complaint. She's telling you: Be proud. You are loved. You are a warrior.

I drop off the maleta at immigration and go home.

A week later I get a call. Can I come pick up the bag?

The maleta never made it on your plane. The ICE agent was very nice when he informed me. Asked how my day was, smiled. But isn't that how it works? You meet a nice cop, a nice agent, a neighbor who works for the force and brings your kid ice cream, and suddenly you care that Laquan McDonald had a teenage mom and suddenly All Lives Matter.

So the maleta sat in the immigration office as your plane took off.

Your sister tells me that you were so dirty when you got to the entry to your barrio that the cab driver didn't want to pick you up. I'm sorry. There was toothpaste in there for you. And brand new jeans. I'm sorry.

So I keep your luggage tag with me. I keep it in my bag. I can't seem to throw it away, even though I took the maleta back to your sister already. Even though I had to interrupt her child's birthday to give her back the maleta from his deported uncle. Even though immigration has long stopped giving a fuck about your suitcase.

It’s irrelevant now. Just like that original Ignacio on the warrant.

But I can't seem to stop giving a fuck about your suitcase or those of all the other Ignacio look-alikes out there.

Photo credits: Celena Lopez

Take Action: I worked closely with the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights to gather data for my dissertation research and continue to collaborate with them whenever possible. I support the Washtenaw ID Project, the first government issued ID in the Midwest, in their efforts to bring photo-identification to everyone in the county. Increasingly, immigration status, for which lack of ID is often used as a proxy, is used to restrict resources access to immigrant communities. The Washtenaw ID is one way to disrupt these inequitable systems of resource distribution, as discussed in my recent article in Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. I invite you to support our efforts.

William Lopez is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the National Center for Institutional Diversity and School of Social work at the University of Michigan. He is the son of a Mexican immigrant mother and Texan father. He grew up in San Antonio, TX, before acclimating to the Midwest in Indiana, where he received his BA in psychology at the University of Notre Dame. William returned to Texas to receive his MPH at the University of Texas Health Science Center Houston while working at a homeless services center and getting his first taste of qualitative work in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His mixed-methods work focuses on the effects of immigration policy on local Latino communities, specifically considering the health effects of immigration home raids. William’s work has been featured in Pacific Standard, The Conversation, and Nature.

From Undocumented to DACAmented: Can Changes to Legal Status Impact Psychological Wellbeing?

June 15 marks the 5-year anniversary of the DACA program. For the first time, a recent study analyzes DACA’s impacts on recipients’ psychological wellbeing. The results are clear: DACA can make you feel better, though it may not resolve concerns about deportation.

by Caitlin Patler and Whitney Laster Pirtle

Original art by Liliana Alonso and Andres "Rhips" Rivera.

Undocumented immigrant youth in the United States face a host of challenges that impact their psychological wellbeing. Many experience hopelessness, shame and self-blame, anxiety, fear of deportation, and concern about blocked social mobility. One recent study found that undocumented youth experience a loss of “ontological security,” or the inability to count on the stability of the future. Another study led by immigrant youth at the UCLA Dream Resource Center found that undocumented youth struggle with depression, anxiety, trauma, and emotional distress related to their status. There have even been reports of suicide among undocumented young people who felt they could not overcome the barriers imposed by their status.

It is clear that the legal marginalization undocumented immigrants face can detrimentally impact health. Yet there is still very little research that documents how undocumented young peoples’ psychological wellbeing might alter if their legal status were to change, even if temporarily.

Becoming DACAmented

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program provides a unique opportunity to understand the experiences of individuals who transition from undocumented status into other, even slightly less marginalized, statuses. Announced by President Obama in June of 2012, DACA allows eligible undocumented youth to apply for temporary (and revocable) lawful presence that includes work authorization, a social security number, and other related benefits, renewable every two years. As of the first quarter of 2017, 925,921 individuals applied for DACA, with 26% of applications coming from California, and the vast majority of applicants originating from Latin America. DACA allows us to ask: Can changes to legal status impact health, particularly psychological wellbeing?

Put differently, can getting DACA make you feel better?

We recently completed a study aimed to answer these questions. Our research provides the first statistical analysis of differences in psychological wellbeing between immigrant young adults, retrospectively measured before and after a transitioning from undocumented to DACAmented status. Our data come from original telephone survey data of 487 Latino immigrant young adults in California. These data were collected 2.5 years after the program’s initiation (between November 2014 and February 2015), in order to allow sufficient time to observe the impacts of the program. We compared a control group of young people who remained undocumented with those who transitioned into lawful presence via DACA. Specifically, we examined four outcomes related to immigrants’ psychological wellbeing: 1) distress (including reports of stress, nervousness or anxiety); 2) negative emotions (anger, fear, sadness, shame, and embarrassment); and 3) worry about deportation of one’s self or 4) one’s family.

Our study revealed several key findings. We began by asking about psychological wellbeing during the time when everyone in the study was undocumented (either prior to receiving DACA, for recipients, or in the past year, for respondents without DACA). Statistical tests of responses to these questions show that past psychological wellbeing was predicted almost exclusively by socioeconomic status. For example, those who were worse off financially reported higher levels of distress, negative emotions, and deportation worry.

However, current psychological wellbeing is most strongly predicted by whether or not someone has DACA. For example, the predicted probability of experiencing distress and negative emotions started out at 70% for both undocumented and DACAmented individuals(see Figure 1). However, current distress and negative emotions (measured in the 30 days prior to the survey) for DACA recipients dropped to under 20%, whereas they were over 40% for those without DACA. These results suggest that the change from ‘undocumented’ to ‘lawfully present’ is associated with improvements to psychological wellbeing.

Figure 1. Predicted Probability of Psychological Wellbeing Measures, by DACA Status (From Patler and Pirtle 2017)

Notes: N=487. Responses were collected between November 2014 and February 2015. Predicted probabilities account for respondents’ sex, age, years in the United States, trouble paying bills, educational level, mother’s educational level, mother’s legal status.

However, as Figure 2. demonstrates, DACA status does not significantly reduce worry about the deportation of family members, suggesting that programs that target individuals do not go far enough in addressing the overall wellbeing and needs of mixed-immigration-status families.

Figure 2. Predicted Probability of Psychological Wellbeing Measures, by DACA Status (From Patler and Pirtle 2017)

Notes: N=487. Responses were collected between November 2014 and February 2015. Predicted probabilities account for respondents’ sex, age, years in the United States, trouble paying bills, educational level, mother’s educational level, mother’s legal status.

“I feel like I belong and other people know I exist:” How Legal Status Transitions Impact Health

Our study showed that transitioning to DACA status after being undocumented was associated with significant reductions in distress and negative emotions. What might explain these results? In response to the question “What do you think has most changed for you since receiving DACA?” DACA recipients in our study shared:

“[I have] a changed outlook on my future because it was very uncertain before.”

“I have a better job, I am more stable, and not afraid to drive around. I have an ID now and I am more capable to do what I want. I feel better emotionally, physically, and psychologically.”

“The security of knowing that you can actually be outside without worrying that you’ll get deported. It brings a lot of benefits: better job and more work and you can actually apply for healthcare. In a sense, it brings you into the community.”

“Peace. [I can] breathe better. Hope. And knowing I exist. I feel like I belong and other people know I exist.”

Such sentiments indicate that DACA has had a legitimizing effect on recipients, in which access to lawful presence and new opportunities has improved their sense of security in their future, which is so closely tied to overall psychological wellbeing.

Looking forward

While we are encouraged by the positive nature of these findings, we remain cautious about whether DACA can offer permanent transformative effects on wellbeing. First, DACA provides individual relief from deportation but does not apply to family members. As we show, DACA recipients in our study were no less likely than non-recipients to report ongoing worry that a family member will be deported. This finding is consistent with research documenting pervasive fear of law enforcement and family separation among the children of undocumented immigrants.

Perhaps most importantly, though, because DACA is a temporary program and does not offer permanent legal status, it is likely that the emotional health benefits of the program could decrease over time if access to permanent status and citizenship remains elusive or if DACA is discontinued.

In the absence of any large-scale legalization program since the mid-1980s, an entire generation of children has grown up without legal status. We know that a lack of legal status impacts multiple aspects of immigrants’ lives, including health and wellbeing, and we also know that communities do not benefit when individuals are unhealthy. Our research shows that changes to immigrant legal status can improve psychological wellbeing. Inasmuch as individual wellbeing is linked to overall community health, then our findings are of critical importance as the country continues to debate policy solutions for undocumented communities.

Dr. Caitlin Patler is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis. Her research explores citizenship and legal status as axes of stratification that significantly shape opportunities for mobility. She is currently conducting longitudinal mixed-methods research studies on: 1) immigration detention, deportation, and the intersections of immigration and criminal law, and 2) the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 

Dr. Whitney N. Laster Pirtle is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced. Her research interests include race, identity, mental health, and quantitative methods. Her research is primarily informed by social psychological frameworks, and explores how social structures, such as racial hierarchies, might impact individuals’ lived experiences, wellbeing, and identities. Using historical, survey, and qualitative data, she is currently exploring the formation and transformation of the “coloured” racial group in post-apartheid South Africa.

Why the "bad hombre" Trump is the least of our worries: How state policies criminalize immigrant and undocumented youth

by Sophia Rodriguez and Timothy Monreal 

While Trump’s amplified attacks on immigrants—as “bad hombres”, rapists, and criminals—is disturbing, we must not let it overshadow restrictive state level policy contexts. In this blog, we share findings from our analysis of 10 years of South Carolina legislation to shed light on how state policies criminalize immigrants broadly and target undocumented immigrant youth specifically. We further connect these state-level policies to the larger hostile political climate in the United States.

Photo Credits: AP

When Trump announced his presidential campaign in a speech on June 16, 2015, he framed Mexican immigrants as an unwelcome and harmful group of people. He stated, “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else's problems. When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists.” Donald Trump characterized immigrants as takers, criminals, and threats one of the most prominent national stages—a presidential debate. The construction of the immigrant as problem motivated a nativist, conservative base and subsequently has fueled a series of anti-immigrant executive orders. Yet, a singular focus on Trump obscures how state level policy discourses have sought to create and perpetuate perspectives of immigrants as criminals or threats to society. In this piece, we connect the national debate with our current research on local policies in South Carolina.

Of course, Donald Trump is not the first policy-maker to advance racialized classifications of belonging and an immigrant-as-problem discourse. From the Chinese Exclusion Act, 1882 and the “one-drop rule” in the case of United States v. Thind, 1923 to segregationist practices against Mexican-American students such as the so-called  Lemon Grove Incident, 1931, the construction of immigrants as problems has a complex history in the U.S. These legal and social understandings of immigrants in the U.S. placed hurdles to integration at best, and criminalized immigrants in everyday social life at worst.

“What are the intentions behind creating the immigrant as problem?”

A problem calls for ‘rational’ solutions. In social science academic research, this is called policy problematization. This concept highlights how policy forms by framing marginalized groups as problems, and then justifies drastic ‘solutions.’ Take for example Trump’s Border Security (“the Wall”) executive announcement. Part of the announcement offers an expanded definition of who is a criminal: i.e., anyone who “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.” As Jennifer Medina writes in the New York Times, this loose definition of criminal covers people authorities believe to have broken the law. This new definition further links immigrants specifically to criminal behavior. As such, policy solutions work to restrict the actions of targeted groups with determined precision. The everyday lives of immigrants become further constrained, meaning they fear driving to work or even leaving their homes to attend school, resulting in a deep social isolation.

A glimpse at South Carolina's policy context

We analyzed South Carolina’s proposed and enacted immigration legislation from 2005-2016 to understand how policy language shapes public opinion about immigrants and restricts their access and opportunity to social advancement. To do this we used Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which seeks to uncover the authority of texts and their influence on social practices. This blog  draws from a multi stage ethnographic study enlisting CDA conducted by the first author (2015-present) to illustrate the effects of the restrictive policies in South Carolina. Our analysis, spanning six legislative sessions, reveals how immigrants are criminalized in everyday social life and restricted from accessing public institutions and social services. The focus on enacted and proposed legislation follows Stephen Ball’s (1994: 10) argument that policy research should tend to the “process” of policy production and focus on the “action, words and deeds, what is enacted as well as what is intended.” Our work accordingly demonstrates that local policy makers in restrictive state contexts like South Carolina propose and enact legislation that both constructs immigrants as problems to be dealt with and limits immigrants’ opportunities for thriving and advancing economically, educationally, and socially.

Source: Migration Policy Institute. U.S. Immigration Population by State and Country: South Carolina

The analysis of South Carolina policies impacting immigrant communities reveals an intentional construction of all immigrants as Othered individuals who are economic and security threats. This purposeful construction contributes to a belief that immigrants are in some way distinct or alien to ‘rightful’ citizens of the state. Proposed legislation such as S.706 and H. 3953 (11-12) characterizes “illegal aliens” as individuals who are criminals that need to be battled against. The policy documents read:

Whereas, the bill would also allow illegal aliens after arrest to be detained in a state or local prison or detention facility pending transfer to federal custody, thereby insuring that potentially dangerous criminals would remain in custody pending trial or adjudication…

It is important to note that this particular piece of legislation names “illegal aliens” as “potentially dangerous criminals,” rendering them as threatening and thus more susceptible to crime (even when this statement is factually inaccurate). Sadly, the above example is not an isolated instance. In our analysis, we located more than 25 proposed and enacted pieces of legislation that used similar language whereby immigrants are Othered, typically as economic and security threats. Senate Resolution S.1015 (13-14) typifies this threat:

"Over fifty percent of illegal aliens currently in the United States arrived here with visas and overstayed them upon expiration. These include radical Islamic Jihad students who come here under the pretext of study only to instigate acts of terror; and

Whereas, the burden placed upon our nation's governmental services, taxpayers, environment, and infrastructure is on a disastrously unsustainable path due to massive population growth directly attributable to immigration; and

Whereas, solutions to immigration policy include ending chain migration, verifying the visa entry and exit system, ending the visa lottery, ending birthright citizenship, and offering federal assistance for states to combat immigration problems."

This example identifies undocumented immigrants as “burdens,” “unsustainable,” and even “radical Islamic Jihad students,” both creating and reifying them as problems. By constructing the “immigrant problem,” policy-makers advance their solutions—solutions that politicize immigration enforcement and conflate the immigrant with the criminal and/or terrorist. These alarming and inaccurate depictions of immigrants coexist with the reality that South Carolina farmers largely recruit and depend upon immigrant labor. Amidst considerable recruitment of immigrant labor, immigrants paradoxically are accused of taking jobs and draining public resources. Taken as a whole, a picture emerges where immigrants are desired for their labor, but controlled as human beings. The construction of immigrants as problems allows for this dual reality. Immigrants continue to serve the South Carolina economy while policy solutions seek to constrain their material lives and force them to live in the shadows.

In practice, state legislative acts restrict the daily lives of migrants by limiting access to public services. For example, South Carolina is one of two states to ban entry into public higher education for undocumented students. Efforts have even been made to exclude non-citizens to all forms of public education in South Carolina H.3110 (07-08), including denying some undocumented youth in the state entry to public schools in clear violation of Plyler v Doe. Similarly, other legislative acts attempt to limit access to health care, worker’s compensation, and employment, thus formally demanding that immigrants first prove their status before receiving basic protections.

It is within this policy framing of immigrants as problems that the United States’ most egregious legislation towards immigrants has been enacted. Emulating Arizona’s infamous “Show Me Your Papers” law, South Carolina rushed to pass S.20 in 2011. S.20 granted, “Law enforcement authorization to determine immigration status, reasonable suspicion, procedures, data collection on motor vehicle stops.” Although the courts dismissed the most draconian profiling portions of the South Carolina law, the solution of increased law enforcement still presents a daily threat to immigrant communities. Since this legislation passed, students have expressed to us how anxiety-provoking simple activities like driving, going to school, or answering the door remains.

Policy effects on undocumented youth

The effect of constructing immigrants as problems is felt strongly in schools. Educators have the imperative to create safe and welcoming spaces for all students regardless of immigration status, one where the cultural knowledge(s), strengths, and experiences of immigrant students are valued. Yet, all too often strengths that immigrant students bring to school (bilingualism, resilience, cultural ways of knowing) are also problematized in schools. As we argue, educators can be at the forefront of the resistance to the criminalization regime. For example, they can recognize, mitigate, and resist the impacts of repressive policies that enshrine “immigrants are problems” on their students by framing students skills as assets rather than deficits.

Photo credits: AP/LM Otero

Take for example how restrictive policy contexts impact the lives of undocumented youth. Even D.A.C.A. recipients now confront uncertain futures in the U.S. Current research efforts has focused on recently arrived undocumented and unaccompanied youth in southern states like South Carolina, where their families reshape the southern landscape. Undocumented youth are highly aware of the contradictory language of the state policies while state continues to benefit from the work of Hispanic workers. Several youth with whom we work identified ways the state restricts their livelihoods and opportunities for social mobility. For example, undocumented youth in two Title I high schools in the first author’s larger study said: 

“This state is racist.”

“The state wants Hispanics to do their work for them, but we can’t go to school without being afraid? That is ignorance.”

“They don’t want to have a solution for us being here, but they want us to do the work they don’t want to do.”

“I am, like, stuck. I have scholarships to four state schools and cannot attend any of them. Here, they are ignorant of Hispanics. I don’t have papers, but I am smart.”

These lived experiences of youth in the South Carolina speak back to the negative language and stereotyping perpetuated in proposed and enacted legislation. While derogatory perceptions of immigrants appear amplified under Trump, it is important to note how historical precedents and state policies enable structural and institutional racism and the criminalization of immigrants to persist. The current political charades under Trump should not distract us from the broader and more pressing structural discrimination being institutionalized in policies and practices in restrictive states such as South Carolina.

Sophia Rodriguez, PhD, is an assistant professor of education and sociology at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. She conducts research on (un)documented immigrant youth activism and discrimination as well as the impact of educational and social policy on minoritized youth experiences broadly. Her published and forthcoming work on immigrant youth activism and education policy can be found here.

Timothy Monreal is a doctoral student in social foundations of education at the University of South Carolina. He is also a middle school teacher in South Carolina. He is interested in Latinx education in the U.S. South broadly as well as the intersections between teacher practice and education theory. To that end you can find him on Twitter where he mixes academic musings along with everyday classroom observations.

"Reflection of an Uncertain Dream": Counter-Narratives of Mobility in a New Era

In October, 2015, Youth Circulations ran a post by Julie C. Keller: "Beyond Trump: America's Dairyland and Multiple Regimes of Mobility." Still in the early stages of the campaign, it was easy to consider, and perhaps hope, that the options Keller presented –"[W]e could write off Donald Trump as merely a celebrity candidate pursuing a theatrical campaign for notoriety. We could refuse to engage with his platform" –would remain just that. With Trump's impending inauguration, however, we no longer have these options. Still, and perhaps even moreso, we remain committed to Keller's broader argument:

“...When we set Trump’s fiery rhetoric against the narratives of migrants, we see an even more complicated relationship between inclusion and exclusion—particularly when it comes to mobility.”

At a time when there is a lot of talk about talk –harassment, "post-truth,"  tweets, "Trump talk"– we choose to keep presenting counter-narratives that illuminate lived, restricted, foreclosed, and resisted mobilities. Recognizing the power of so many other voices, we are honored to present the work of Salvador Jiménez-Flores. Salvador is presently the Artist-In-Residence for the City of Boston and the Harvard Ceramics Program, and he is also a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and Wheelock College. Of his work, he writes:

I did not grow up wanting to be an artist until I migrated to the United States. I never thought that art was a necessity in my life, since there were many other more crucial needs such as food and shelter for my family. At first, art was merely a way of coping with the transition, but later due to my limited English, art became my tool for self-expression. Our nation is currently echoing messages of hate, xenophobia, racism, oppression and inequality. During times like this, it is clear to me how art can become a mechanism to create awareness and purpose actions through powerful images. 

As I reflect back to the time when I created “Reflections of an Uncertain Dream”, it is a bitter-sweet moment. I was personally struggling with the emotions of feeling unwelcome in my new “home” and lacking of a sense of belonging. This is a shared feeling with many new immigrants and the broken immigration system we have had for decades.

On Process and the Public: Creating the "Migration and Belonging" Series

(Spanish translation below)

Amidst so much disciplinary discussion about audience, open access, and applied anthropology, we want to follow Migration and Belonging: Narratives from a Highland Town with a more informal conversation with the series' creators. Below, Michele Statz talks with Giovanni Batz, Celeste Sanchez and Lauren Heidbrink about the challenges and possibilities of collaborative public ethnography. 

Almolonga. Photo credits: Giovanni Batz

Michele: It strikes me that when viewed as a whole, the potential of these posts suddenly exceed their goal. Each is immediately informative about global youth, deportation, and social reintegration, but together they confront the reader with additional questions about audience, voice, and translation. Did you ever discuss the academic “costs” of this kind of collection? Some of the posts are more formal or “traditional” in their style, while others are quite vivid and at times very intimate and heartfelt. I found the combination incredibly appealing, but still wonder: Is this type of analysis forever relegated to the blogosphere? As editors and contributors, who should read this series?

Giovanni, Celeste and Lauren: We hope that this blog series offers a nuanced yet accessible exploration of the issues and challenges emerging from and within sending communities. The images, at once powerful and provocative, invite a broad public to explore the rippling and enduring impacts of migration and deportation on individuals, communities and families. This public importantly includes loved ones and community members that are invested in Almolonga’s future beyond the academic or theoretical questions raised in the series. 

The bilingual series also offers a unique modality for collaborative research, one which showcases the voices of Guatemalan scholars, many of whom remain excluded from the largely English-speaking academic presses. 

“From the outset, we were committed to defying what has tragically become routine academic practice.”

M: Will it be shared with the community members with whom you conducted research?

G, C and L: From the outset, we were committed to defying what has tragically become routine academic practice--that is, students and researchers conduct studies in Guatemala, publish exclusively for English-speaking audiences, and fail to return or share findings with participating communities. It is a long-standing practice which dates to colonial times. We recognized that Almolonguenses generously and sometimes painfully entrusted their experiences of migration and deportation in us, and that these experiences belong to them. “Migration and Belonging” is the first in a series of innovations, including workshops, radio spots, community forums, and bilingual reports to be shared with community members and local and regional authorities.  

M: A number of the "Migration and Belonging" posts are translated into as many as three languages--or more, if you include framing this for an anthropological audience. What is gained and lost in translation?

G, C and L: Language is important to understand different worldviews. Translating is always a difficult task when trying to find the appropriate words and phrases to express a concept. As translators of the blogs, collectively we tried to respect the intent of the authors and maintain intact their passion and critical analysis in their original format. We consulted with the authors and each other to minimize losing meaning in translation. One of the authors (Amparo Monzón) translated her own poem into three languages (K’iche’, Spanish, and English).

M: What is missing from this series?

Almolonga. Photo credit: Lauren Heidbrink

G, C and L: One of the interesting aspects of this research was the uniqueness of each of our positionalities, especially since all of us have personal experiences with migration. Some of our team members have siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles or other relatives who migrated or had attempted to migrate to the US. In addition, two of us were born in the US to Central American parents, bringing into conversation varying experiences and understandings of migration, privilege, identity, and belonging. This research sparked a broad range of emotions in our professional work and our personal lives, sentiments that are not easily captured in virtual form.

After sharing our findings with the community this coming summer, we aim to supplement this series with digital narratives from community members--a vehicle to reflect on their experiences unfiltered by our experiences and perspectives.

M: When you consider the posts together, what do you find? And/or feel?

G, C and L: These posts were written by a diverse group of people from distinct academic disciplines such as political science, international relations, social work, anthropology, women’s studies, and development studies. Our own distinct experiences and lenses provided us with our own interpretations of migration as well as nurtured our own academic and professional passions, as you see in this multi-foci series. As a collective, the series provide a well-rounded, yet understandably incomplete, view of migration from Almolonga.  We hope that the reader may peek through our lenses to grasp the powerful and lived impacts of migration.

Giovanni Batz, MA, is a doctoral candidate in Latin American Studies at the University of Texas-Austin and a research assistant on a grant investigation the deportation and reintegration of youth in Guatemala.

Celeste N. Sánchez, MSW, is a Central American woman born and raised in southern California. She has several years of experience in direct work with children and adolescents in Guatemala and Honduras. She is currently working as the social worker for the Refugee Family Defense Program at Public Counsel in Los Angeles, CA and as a research assistant on this investigation the deportation and reintegration of youth in Guatemala.

Lauren Heidbrink is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Human Development at California State University, Long Beach. She is author of Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2014). She currently the PI on a multi-year NSF Law and Social Sciences grant investigating the deportation and social reintegration of youth in Guatemala.

Sobre el proceso y el público: creación de la serie "Migración y pertenencia"

Entre tanta discusión disciplinaria sobre la audiencia, el acceso abierto, y la antropología aplicada, queremos seguir Migración y Pertenencia: Narrativas de un pueblo altiplano con una conversación más informal entre los creadores de la serie. A continuación, Michele Statz habla con Giovanni Batz, Celeste Sánchez y Lauren Heidbrink sobre los desafíos y posibilidades de la etnografía pública colaborativa.

Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Giovanni Batz.

Michele: Me parece que, en su conjunto, el potencial de estas entradas excede su objetivo inesperadamente. Cada post es inmediatamente informativo sobre la juventud global, la deportación y la reintegración social, pero juntos confrontan al lector con preguntas adicionales sobre audiencia, voz y traducción. ¿Alguna vez discutieron los "costos" académicos de este tipo de colección? Algunas de las entradas tienen un estilo más formal o "tradicional", mientras que otras son bastante vívidas y a veces muy íntimas y sinceras. Encontré la combinación increíblemente atractiva, pero aún me pregunto: ¿Es este tipo de análisis relegado para siempre a la blogosfera? Como editores y contribuyentes, ¿quién debería leer esta serie?

Giovanni, Celeste y Lauren: Esperamos que esta serie de blogs ofrezca una exploración matizada y accesible a los problemas y desafíos que surgen de y entre las comunidades que envían migrantes. Las imágenes, a la vez poderosas y provocativas, invitan a un amplio público a explorar los impactos extensos y duraderos de la migración y la deportación de individuos, comunidades y familias. Importantemente incluye a un público de seres queridos y miembros de la comunidad que se invierten en el futuro de Almolonga más allá de las cuestiones académicas o teóricas planteadas en la serie.

La serie bilingüe también ofrece una modalidad única para la investigación colaborativa, que muestra las voces de los académicos guatemaltecos, muchos de los cuales permanecen excluidos de las prensas académicas anglófonas.

“Desde el principio, nos comprometimos a desafiar lo que trágicamente se ha convertido en una práctica académica rutinaria.”

M: ¿Se compartirá la serie con los miembros de la comunidad con quienes se realizó la investigación?

G, C y L: Desde el principio, nos comprometimos a desafiar lo que trágicamente se ha convertido en una práctica académica rutinaria--es decir, estudiantes e investigadores realizan estudios en Guatemala, publican exclusivamente para audiencias anglófonas y no regresan o comparten los hallazgos con las comunidades participantes. Es una práctica antigua que permanece desde la época colonial. Reconocemos que Almolonguenses generosamente y a veces dolorosamente nos confiaron sus experiencias de migración y deportación, y que estas experiencias les pertenecen a ellos. "Migración y Pertenencia" es el primero de una serie de innovaciones, incluyendo talleres, spots de radio, foros comunitarios e informes bilingües que se compartirán con los miembros de la comunidad y las autoridades locales y regionales.

M: Algunos de los posts de "Migración y Pertenencia" se traducen en tres idiomas o más, si se incluye plantearlo para una audiencia antropológica. ¿Qué se gana y qué se pierde en la traducción?

G, C y L: El lenguaje es importante para entender cosmovisiones diferentes. El traducir es siempre una tarea difícil cuando se trata de encontrar las palabras y frases apropiadas para expresar un concepto. Como traductores de los blogs, colectivamente intentamos respetar la intención de los autores y mantener intacta su pasión y análisis crítico en su formato original. Hemos consultado con los autores y entre nosotr@s para minimizar la pérdida del significado en la traducción. Uno de los autores (Amparo Monzón) tradujo su propio poema en tres idiomas (K'iche ', español e inglés).

M: ¿Qué falta en esta serie?

Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink.

G, C y L: Uno de los aspectos interesantes de esta investigación fue la originalidad de cada una de nuestras posiciones, especialmente porque todos tenemos experiencias personales con la migración. Algunos miembros de nuestro equipo tienen herman@s, prim@s, tí@s, u otros parientes que emigraron o habían intentado migrar a los Estados Unidos. Además, dos de nosotr@s nacimos en Estados Unidos a padres centroamericanos, poniendo en conversación diversas experiencias y entendimientos de migración, privilegio, identidad y pertenencia. Esta investigación generó una amplia gama de emociones en nuestro trabajo profesional y nuestras vidas personales, sentimientos que no son captados fácilmente en forma virtual.

Después de compartir nuestros hallazgos con la comunidad el próximo verano, nuestro objetivo es complementar esta serie con narrativas digitales de miembros de la comunidad--una modalidad para reflexionar sobre sus experiencias sin tener que filtrar por nuestras experiencias y perspectivas.

M: ¿Cuándo ustedes consideran las entradas en conjunto, qué encuentran? ¿Y/o sienten?

G, C y L: Las entradas fueron escritas por un grupo diverso de personas de distintas disciplinas académicas como la ciencia política, relaciones internacionales, trabajo social, antropología, estudios de mujeres y estudios de gestión social para el desarrollo local. Nuestras experiencias y lentes nos proporcionaron nuestras propias interpretaciones de la migración, y fomentaron nuestras pasiones académicas y profesionales, como se ve en esta serie multifocal. Como colectivo, la serie ofrece una visión integral, pero comprensiblemente incompleta, de la migración desde Almolonga. Esperamos que el lector pueda mirar a través de nuestros lentes para captar los impactos poderosos y vividos de la migración.

Giovanni Batz, MA, es candidato doctoral en Estudios Latinoamericanos en la Universidad de Texas-Austin y asistente de investigación en esta investigación sobre la deportación y reintegración de jóvenes en Guatemala. 

Celeste N. Sánchez, MSW, es una mujer centroamericana nacida y criada en el sur de California. Tiene varios años de experiencia en el trabajo directo con niños y adolescentes en Guatemala y Honduras. Actualmente es trabajadora social para el Programa de Defensa de Familias Refugiadas en Public Counsel en Los Ángeles, CA y asistente de investigación en esta investigación sobre la deportación y reintegración de jóvenes en Guatemala.

Lauren Heidbrink es antropóloga y Profesora Asistente de Desarrollo Humano en California State University, Long Beach. Es autora de Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2014). Actualmente es investigadora principal de una beca plurianual de NSF Law and Social Sciences que investiga la deportación y la reintegración social de los jóvenes en Guatemala.

For the previous blog in the series: Angélica Mejía: La Resiliencia: Generador de movilización y auto-crecimiento/ Resilience of Youth without Parental Care

La Resiliencia de Jóvenes Sin Cuidados Parentales/Resilience of Youth without Parental Care

by Angélica Mejía

(English translation below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

Actividad escolar. Créditos fotográficos:  Lauren Heidbrink

La falta de cuidados parentales es un problema que afecta a un número significativo de niños y adolescentes en Guatemala. De acuerdo al informe de la Red Latinoamericana de Acogimiento Familiar (RELAF)  (2010), más que 5,600 niños están institucionalizados en Guatemala, muchos de quienes experimentan inseguridad considerable mientras están transferido a través de orfanatos e instituciones por el país. Las razones por la ausencia de cuidado parental son diversas--como una alta prevalencia de enfermedades crónicas, pobreza extrema, el conflicto armado, un legado de la violencia a migración significante que pueden resultar a la desintegración familiar. Estos factores deben ser entendidos necesariamente como factores relacionados entre sí en lugar de entender como factores individuales o aislados que resultan en la pérdida de cuidados parentales.

Si bien las estadísticas son alarmantes, es importante reconocer cómo algunos niños y jóvenes sin el cuidado parental desarrollan la resiliencia. Al analizar cómo los jóvenes se emprenden proyectos de vida, tales como la búsqueda de educación formal y vocacional, así como sus fuentes de motivación, podemos empezar a desarrollar las instituciones y programas que inspiran más que impiden su desarrollo.

A través de mi colaboración desde 2007 con varias organizaciones comunitarias, he llegado a trabajar con 29 jóvenes, varios de los cuales encarnan condiciones de desigualdad y abandono al tiempo que demuestra al mismo tiempo la resistencia y la fuerza a pesar de estas condiciones. A pesar de encontrar algunos orfanatos e instituciones que disuaden a niños a partir de continuar su educación o el aprendizaje de las competencias profesionales, es decir, otras organizaciones sociales promueven el desarrollo personal y ofrecen importantes recursos educativos. Los que recibieron el apoyo y la oportunidad han terminado el ciclo de primaria, básico y bachillerato; algunos iniciaron una carrera en la universidad.

Actividad escolar. Créditos fotográficos: Angélica Mejía

Tal es la experiencia de Marcos(1), 17 años de edad en su último año de bachillerato y sus hermanos menores, Mercedes de 15 años de edad y Dario de 13 años de edad. Son becarios de la Fundación Portales de Esperanza, ellos lograron continuar su educación, recibir apoyo de una organización comunitaria, y sobreponerse ante las circunstancias socio-económicas. Otros han optado por estudiar en escuelas vocacionales—carpintería, cocina y mecánica—para lograr un empleo que les permita contribuir con sus familias.

En mi colaboración durante la última década con las instituciones y organizaciones que sirven a los jóvenes sin cuidados parentales, los jóvenes articulan varias fuentes de resiliencia—de un deseo de continuar su educación, a contribuir al sustento de su familia, a la creencia en su propio potencial, a un deseo para controlar sus propias condiciones y futuros. Aun cuando estamos a menudo rápidos alabar a organizaciones no gubernamentales, fundaciones privadas e iglesias de distintas religiones para "salvar" a los niños y niñas necesitados, hay que señalar que los propios niños y niñas demuestran la resistencia en la identificación y la búsqueda de oportunidades dentro de estas redes sociales.

La identificación de las fuentes de la resistencia interna de los jóvenes es crítica. También lo importante es apoyar a las instituciones estatales, sociedad civil, y los sectores privados que reconocen y fomentan la capacidad de niños y niñas de recuperación. Sólo por crear oportunidades para que la población infantil participe de manera significativa en estas conversaciones, que podamos satisfacer las necesidades de los niños y niñas sin cuidados parentales.

Bibliografía:

Informe situación de la niñez sin cuidado parental o en riesgo de perderlo en América Latina (2010). Contextos, causas y respuestas. Guatemala: Red Latinoamericana de Acogimiento Familiar.

Mejía, Angélica. (2014) Tesis: “Orientación, metodología para la atención escolar de los niños huérfanos”

Angélica Mejía (Angie) cumplió una Maestría en Gestión Social para el Desarrollo Local de la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala (FLACSO-Guatemala) y cuenta con estudios de licenciatura en administración de organizaciones educativas de la Universidad San Pablo de Guatemala. Ella ha trabajado en diversas organizaciones educativas con enfoque social en organizaciones locales principalmente atendiendo a la niñez en orfandad.

(1) Seudónimo.

Resilience of Youth Without Parental Care

School activity. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

The lack of parental care is a significant challenge confronting a growing number of young people in Guatemala. According to Red Latinoamericana de Acogimiento Familiar (RELAF) (2010), over 5,600 children are institutionalized in Guatemala, many of whom experience considerable uncertainty as they are routinely transferred between orphanages and institutions throughout the country. The reasons for an absence of parental care are diverse—from a high prevalence of chronic illnesses to extreme poverty to armed conflict to a legacy of violence to significant out-migration that may lead to family disintegration. These factors must necessarily be understood as interrelated rather than individual or isolated factors leading to loss of parental care.

While the statistics are alarming, it is important to recognize how some of the children and youth without parental care develop resiliency. By analyzing how young people undertake life projects, such as the pursuit of formal or vocational schooling, as well as their sources of motivation, we may begin to develop institutions and program that inspire rather than impede their growth.

Through my collaboration with several community-based organizations since 2007, I have been able to work with 29 young people, several of whom embody conditions of inequality and abandonment while simultaneously demonstrating resilience and strength in spite of these challenges.  While I have encountered some orphanages and institutions that dissuade children from continuing their education or learning vocational skills, that is to say, other social organizations promote personal development and offer important educational resources. Those receiving support and opportunity have finished primary, middle and high school; some are pursuing a college education.

School activity. Photo credits: Angélica Mejía

Take the experiences of Marcos(1), a 17-year-old in his last year of high school, and his younger siblings, 15-year-old Mercedes and 13-year-old Dario. With scholarships from the Fundación Portales de Esperanza, they have been able to pursue their education, receive support from a local organization, and begin to overcome difficult socioeconomic circumstances. Still others pursue vocational training—carpentry, culinary and mechanical—eventually securing employment to contribute much needed financial resources to their families.

In my decades’-long collaboration with institutions and organizations serving young people absent parental care, youth articulate varied sources of resilience—from a desire to pursue education, to contributing to their family’s livelihood, to a belief in their own potential, to a desire to control their own conditions and futures. While we are often quick to laud non-governmental organizations, private foundations, and churches for “saving” young people in need, it should be noted that young people themselves demonstrate resilience in identifying and pursuing opportunities within these social networks.

Identifying the sources of young people’s internal resilience is critical. So too is supporting state institutions, civil society, and the private sector that recognize and nurture their resilience. Only by creating opportunities for youth to meaningfully participate in these conversations, may we meet the needs of young people without parental care.

Works Cited

Informe situación de la niñez sin cuidado parental o en riesgo de perderlo en América Latina (2010). Contextos, causas y respuestas. Guatemala: Red Latinoamericana de Acogimiento Familiar.

Mejía, Angélica. (2014) Tesis: “Orientación, metodología para la atención escolar de los niños huérfanos”

Angélica Mejía (Angie) graduated with a Masters in Social Management of Local Development from Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala (FLACSO-Guatemala) and has a bachelor’s degree in Administration of Educational Organization from Universidad San Pablo of Guatemala. She has worked at various educational organizations with social focus on local organizations principally serving orphaned children. 

[1] Pseudonyms.

For the previous blog in the series: Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero: El Papel de las Comadronas de Almolonga/The Role of Midwives in Almolonga

For the next blog in the series: Celeste Sánchez, Giovanni Batz, Lauren Heidbrink, and Michele Statz: A Conversation on Translation/Una Conversación sobre Traducción

El Papel de las Comadronas de Almolonga/The Role of Midwives in Almolonga

por Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero

(English translation below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

En el municipio de Almolonga, las comadronas contribuyen una habilidad especializada para la comunidad—de salvar vidas. La población reconoce que ellas son portadoras de grandes sabidurías ancestrales, que trasladan de generación a generación.  Mantienen una relación integral con individuales, desde el vientre de una madre. Aunque para ser reconocidas, hayan pasado por otras luchas para contrarrestar discriminación por las autoridades médicas y por el personal en hospitales departamentales en el apoyo de sus pacientes.

Oficina de comadrona, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Durante mi participación en una investigación comunitaria en Almolonga, yo entreviste Maria Isabel, una comadrona de 86 años. Ella compartió que esta misión de comadronas la traen desde el nacimiento: “Cuando yo empecé a trabajar, yo me enfermaba mucho, pero fui a consultar a un anciano y me dijo que yo sería comadrona. Que solo mejoraría si realizaba mi destino.  Mi primer parto fue en Panajachel hace más que 50 años...Yo no sé escribir ni leer, pero gracias a Dios porque ni uno [de los bebés] se me ha muerto” (Entrevista personal, 4 de Junio 2016).

Para la población, las comadronas cumplen un papel importantísimo.  Ellas son consultadas a orientar en los temas de métodos de planificación familiar, diagnosticar y proveer tratamiento de enfermedades, cuidar las mujeres con tratamientos y cuidado prenatales, y atender mujeres en parto y postparto. También, son consultadas para varias temas sociales y culturales.  Además, son un recurso valioso porque conocen el contexto y los recursos con los que se cuenta en el municipio. “Entienden el idioma de la localidad, la cultura y las necesidades de las mujeres; no miden riesgos ni tienen límites para llegar al lugar donde deben atender la labor de parto, por ello son muy queridas y respetadas en las comunidades” (Pacay 2012).

Las comadronas se comunican en k’iche’, el idioma principal de las mujeres y jóvenes en Almolonga; es importante porque la comunicación en un mismo código produce confianza y facilita que se busque una solución a los problemas dimensionados.  Según las comadronas, las jóvenes son las que más frecuentemente buscar su apoyo, ya que tienen preguntas y buscar consejo, a veces con miedo o vergüenza a pedir a sus padres. Ellas explicaban que los adolescentes están en la etapa de la juventud en donde buscan ser escuchados por otras personas y cuando a veces no encuentran ese nivel de confianza en el hogar o con los padres. Ellas y ellos las buscan para contarles sus problemas y buscar respuestas a sus dudas con su salud. Una comadrona de 40 años reflejaba: “Esto me hace sentir satisfecha porque con esta labor me siento útil para mi municipio, en apoyar a la población joven en sus derechos sexuales y reproductivos.”

Centro de Salud, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

El director del Centro de Salud en Almolonga explicó que hace cuatro años atrás, ninguna mujer visitaba el centro de salud para su control de embarazo.  Ahora sí porque del papel de las comadronas en aconsejarlas para su cuido, y ahora el Centro de Salud ha tenido resultados más positivos. Las comadronas de la municipalidad mantienen que su relación con el Centro de Salud está cambiando.

Antes, las comadronas sirvieron a sus comunidades sin regulación estatal. Sin embargo, en el 2010, la Ley de Maternidad Saludable estableció una relación formal y regulatoria entre las comadronas y el Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social. “Los proveedores comunitarios y tradicionales brindarán los servicios de maternidad en el primer nivel de atención, aplicando normas y protocolos establecidos… En el caso de las comadronas, el Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social deberá formular coordinadamente para establecer un programa para la formación de comadronas capacitadas y certificadas a nivel técnico” (Pacay 2012).

Regresando del mercado, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

A pesar de las mejores intenciones, habría que ver si se está cumpliendo con estas leyes sin consecuencias adversas y exclusiones de comadronas.  Uno de los objetivos específicos de la Política Nacional de Comadronas (Acuerdo Gubernativo 102-2015) es: “Fortalecer la participación activa de las comadronas en concordancia con el Sistema de salud como una de las formas fundamentales de reconocimiento del derecho al ejercicio de sus prácticas ancestrales y medicina tradicional” (Política Nacional de Comadronas 2015-2025). En práctica, las comadronas de Almolonga realizan reuniones una vez al mes, manejan un carnet emitido por el Ministerio de Salud y documentan los nacimientos que atienden.

Con el cambio a una política de regulación, hay comadronas, particularmente las que son de mayor edad, que de repente no son autorizadas por el estado a practicar su vocación. Maria Isabel, la comadrona de 86 años tiene más que 60 años de experiencia, no ha recibido un carnet del gobierno.  A pesar de que la gente sigue buscando su cuidado. Las mujeres tienen confianza y respeta en ella, reconocen su sabiduría para que las atienda y les de consejos para el cuido de los bebés.  Aunque estas relaciones suceden en la práctica, tenemos que preguntarnos si la política está realizando sus metas. ¿Se debe cuestionar este carnet y sus consecuencias?  Aunque la política pretende de reconocer a las comadronas garantizando al mismo tiempo el cuidado de alta calidad, ¿discriminamos y arriesgamos a la una sabiduría ancestral?

Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Las comadronas son actores claves en Almolonga. Son parte fundamental en el desarrollo del municipio y también la nación. Los Acuerdos de Paz de 1996 dice: “Valorándose la importancia de la medicina indígena y tradicional se promoverá su estudio y se rescataran sus concepciones, métodos y prácticas” (Acuerdos de Paz 1996: 83). En consecuencia, es crítico que las comadronas no solo sean reconocidos por la comunidad sino también por las leyes. El futuro de Almolonga depende de ellas.

BIBLIOGRAFÍA

Gobierno de Guatemala y URNG. (1996). Acuerdos de Paz. Guatemala: Asamblea de la Sociedad Civil.

Pacay, M. (2012). El Don de Ser Comadrona. Revista: Amiga.

Ministerio de Salud Pública. 2015. Política Nacional de Comadronas de los cuatro Pueblos de Guatemala 2015-2025.

Municipio de San Pedro Almolonga. 2010. Plan de Desarrollo Municipal: Almolonga.

Pies de Occidente. (2001). El potencial de las comadronas en Salud Reproductiva. Quetzaltenango: Asociación para la promoción, investigación y Educación en Salud.

Pies de Occidente. (2006). Redes de Médicos Mayas en San Andrés Xecul. Quetzaltenango: Asociación para la promoción, investigación y Educación en Salud.

Ley de Maternidad Saludable. (2010). Decreto 32-2010, Artículo 17.

Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero es una mujer Maya Mam. Ella cumplió una Maestría en Gestión Social para el Desarrollo Local de Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala (FLACSO-Guatemala) y una Maestría en Violencia Intrafamiliar y de Género en la Universidad de Costa Rica y Universidad Nacional. Posee una Licenciatura en Pedagogía de la Universidad Rafael Landívar de Quetzaltenango. Ella trabajó  como investigadora colaborando en el estudio de migración y retorno en Almolonga en 2016. 

 

The Role of Midwives in Almolonga

by Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero

In the municipality of Almolonga, midwives contribute a specialized ability to the community–they save lives. The people recognize that they are carriers of great ancestral knowledge, which they transmit from generation to generation. They maintain an integral relationship with individuals, initiated in the womb of a mother. However, to be recognized, they have undergone various struggles to counter discrimination by medical authorities and hospital personnel in support of their patients.

Midwife Office, Almolonga. Photo credit: Lauren Heidbrink

During my participation in a community-based study in Almolonga, I interviewed Maria Isabel, an 86-year-old midwife. She shared that midwives carry their mission since birth: “When I began to work, I would get very sick, but then I went to consult an elder, he told me I would be a midwife. That I would only improve [my health] if I fulfilled my destiny. My first birth was in Panajachel over 60 years ago...I do not know how to read or write, but thanks to God none [of the babies] have died on me” (Personal interview, June 4, 2016).

For the population, midwives fulfill a very important role. They consult with people—providing knowledge on methods of family planning, diagnosing and providing treatment for diseases, caring for women with prenatal care and treatments, and attending to women during and after birth. Also, people consult midwives on a number of social and cultural topics. They are a valuable resource as they know the local context and available resources in the municipality. “They understand the language of the locality, the culture, and the necessities of women; they do not measure the risks nor have limits in arriving at a location where they have to attend the work of birth, for this they are very loved and respected within communities” (Pacay 2012).

The midwives communicate in K’iche’, the primary language of the women and youth in Almolonga. This is important because communication in the same language creates trust and facilitates the search for a solution to multidimensional problems. According to the midwives, the youth in particular most frequently seek their support because they have questions and seek counsel, at times afraid or embarrassed to ask their parents. They explained that adolescents are at the stage of their youth where they look to be listened to by other people; sometimes not finding the trust they seek in their homes or with their parents. They look to midwives to discuss their problems and respond to doubts about their health. A 40-year-old midwife reflected: “This makes me feel satisfied because with this work I have felt very useful with my municipality, in supporting the young population in their sexual and reproductive rights.”

Health Center, Almolonga. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

The director of Almolonga’s Health Center explained that four years ago, no women visited the health center to monitor their pregnancies. Now they do because of the role of midwives in advising them on their care, and now the Health Center sees more positive results. The midwives of the municipality maintain that their relationship with the Health Center is changing.

Returning from the market, Almolonga. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

Before, midwives functioned without state regulation. However, in 2010, the Law of Healthy Maternity established a formal regulatory relationship between midwives and the Ministry of Public Health and Social Assistance. “The community and traditional providers provide maternity service at a first rate level, applying establishment norms and protocols…In the case of midwives, the Minister of Public Health and Social Assistance should coordinate in establishing a program for the instruction of trained and certified midwives at a technical level” (Pacay 2012).

In spite of best intentions, there is a need to verify that these laws are being implemented without adverse consequences and exclusions of midwives. One of the specific objectives of the National Policy of Midwives (Government Decree 102-2015) is: “To strengthen the active participation of midwives in accordance with the health system as one of the fundamental forms of recognizing the right to exercise ancestral practices and traditional medicine” (Política Nacional de Comadronas 2015-2025). In practice, midwives of Almolonga meet once a month, maintain a Ministry of Health-issued license, and document the births they attend.

Almolonga. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

With the change to a regulatory policy, there are midwives, particularly elderly ones, who have automatically become unauthorized by the state to practice their vocation. Maria Isabel, the 86-year-old midwife has more than 60 years of experience, has not received a government-issued license. Yet people continue to seek her care. Women trust and respect her and recognize her wisdom to attend their births and to provide guidance in caring for their babies. While these relationships continue in practice, we must ask if the policy is realizing its stated aims. Should we question this license and its consequences? Although the policy claims to recognize midwives while ensuring high quality care, are we not discriminating against and risking ancestral knowledge?

Midwives are crucial actors in Almolonga. They are foundational to the development of the municipality as well as to the nation. The 1996 Peace Accords states: “Valuing the importance of indigenous and traditional medicine will promote its study and will recover its concepts, methods and practices” (Acuerdos de Paz 1996: 83). Thus, it is critical that midwives are not only recognized in practice by the community but also under the law. Almolonga’s future depends upon them.

Works Cited

Gobierno de Guatemala y URNG. (1996). Acuerdos de Paz. Guatemala: Asamblea de la Sociedad Civil.

Pacay, M. (2012). El Don de Ser Comadrona. Revista: Amiga.

Ministerio de Salud Pública. 2015. Política Nacional de Comadronas de los cuatro Pueblos de Guatemala 2015-2025.

Municipio de San Pedro Almolonga. 2010. Plan de Desarrollo Municipal: Almolonga.

Pies de Occidente. (2001). El potencial de las comadronas en Salud Reproductiva. Quetzaltenango: Asociación para la promoción, investigación  y Educación en Salud.

Pies de Occidente. (2006). Redes de Médicos Mayas en San Andrés Xecul. Quetzaltenango: Asociación para la promoción, investigación y Educación en Salud.

Ley de Maternidad Saludable. (2010). Decreto 32-2010, Artículo 17.

Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero is a Mam-Maya woman. She completed her Masters in Social Management in Local Development from Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala (FLACSO-Guatemala), and a Masters in Interfamilial Violence and Gender at the University of Costa Rica and National University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Pedagogy from the University of Rafael Landívar in Quetzaltenango. She worked as a researcher collaborating in the study of migration and return in Almolonga in 2016. 

For the previous blog in the series: Catarina Chay Quiej: A la Intersección de Género, Relaciones Familiares y Migración/At the Intersection of Gender, Family Relationships and Migration

For the next blog in the series: Angélica Mejía: La Resiliencia: Generador de movilización y auto-crecimiento/ Resilience of Youth without Parental Care

A la Intersección de Género, Relaciones Familiares y Migración/At the Intersection of Gender, Family Relations and Migration

Por Catarina Chay Quiej

(English translation below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

Aunque conocido como el país de la eterna primavera con un ecosistema rico, Guatemala sufre de desigualdad socioeconómica extrema, con altos niveles de desnutrición, limitadas oportunidades de empleo, y exclusión de género, entre ellos la violencia contra la mujer, femicidio, racismo y exclusión social. Como revela nuestra encuesta comunitaria en Almolonga, la migración también es prevalente. Para algunas familias, es la única opción a pesar de la incertidumbre tremenda—no solo en los peligros del viaje, pero también, los riesgos de la desintegración familiar a largo plazo. 

Casa de remesas, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

En nuestra encuesta, los padres cuentan de experimentar una presión psicológica y emocional para proveer las condiciones adecuadas para el desarrollo saludable de los hijos y su familia. Entre las limitadas opciones, buscan la mejor alternativa considerando factores como la educación, conseguir un empleo, ahorrar sus ingresos, y mandar remesas. Las familias buscan las oportunidades de comprar terreno, construir una casa, amueblarla, agenciarse de electrodomésticos que facilitan la vida, y dar una buena educación a los hijos. Este es el mejor escenario.          

Vehículos en Almolona. Créditos fotográficos:  Giovanni Batz

Como encontramos en Almolonga, a veces la realidad es bastante diferente—llena de riesgo, deuda, pérdida y con pocas garantías. Los que quedan, quedan angustiados al ver como su querido se obliga a las incertidumbres del viaje. En los casos más tristes, sus queridos terminan desaparecidos o muertos. En otras ocasiones, aunque el migrante llega a su destino, la llegada viene con una mezcla de emociones dado a los traumas y la violencia que sufren en el camino mientras que felizmente celebran una llegada como un gran logro. Las familias nos dijeron que, si bien el migrante busca conseguir rápidamente un empleo, la familia que queda lucha para subsistir y pagar su deuda migratoria hasta cuando las primeras remesas llegan. Varias de las mujeres que entrevistamos describen que viven en la casa de los suegros sin sus esposos resultando en su pérdida de privacidad y libertad de realizar actividades que beneficien su entorno social, emocional o familiar. Algunas mujeres describieron ser vigiladas constantemente y ser víctimas a explotación laboral de parte de sus suegros; al llegar las remesas, los suegros se apropian del dinero, no permiten que sean autónomas ni independientes.

Si bien la migración puede contribuir a mejores condiciones económicas y materiales, también puede transformar las estructuras familiares cambiando los roles típicos de género. Como nos encontramos en nuestro estudio, cuando el padre de familia migra, las madres se quedan como cabezas de la familia, asumiendo responsabilidades de sustento económico de la familia y de lidiar con la educación de los hijos. En estos casos, las madres cuentan que trabajan de más para cubrir los gastos familiares, deudas y, a veces, para enviar remesas inversas; es decir, algunas mandan dinero al esposo en Estados Unidos mientras este se establece. En Almolonga, nos encontramos mujeres también que migran, luchando para mejorar sus situaciones económicas. Sin embargo, la migración también trae sus riesgos. Según los entrevistados, las mujeres son más vulnerables a sufrir violaciones, robos, enfermedades, discriminaciones, y sufrimientos.

Muñecas en Escuela. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Entre las mujeres que permanecen en Almolonga, algunos describen que buscan una pareja extramarital o formalizan una nueva relación sentimental para apoyarlas. En algunas situaciones, estas relaciones resultaron en un descuido de sus hijos o una separación de sus esposos que también buscan otras parejas en los Estados Unidos, dejando de apoyar a sus hijos que permanecen en Guatemala.  

En resumen, los riesgos de la migración son significativos y múltiples y las consecuencias de la migración son profundas. Desde la violencia a la deuda a los cambios en los roles de género a la desintegración familiar, la migración trae tanto cambios estructurales como cambios íntimos en la vida de las familias, cambios importantes que merecen un examen más detallado.

Catarina Chay Quiej es estudiante de la Universidad Rafael Landívar-Quetzaltenango en la carrera de Relaciones Internacionales de la Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales. Ella ha trabajado en su comunidad en la Municipalidad de Zunil con grupos de mujeres indígenas a través de capacitaciones en sus derechos e incidiendo en la participación ciudadana. Ella trabajó como investigadora colaborando en el estudio de migración y retorno en Almolonga en 2016.  

 

At the Intersection of Gender, Family Dynamics and Migration

by Catarina Chay Quiej

Although known as the land of eternal spring with a rich ecosystem, Guatemala suffers from extreme socio-economic inequality, with high levels of malnutrition, limited employment opportunities, and gender exclusion, among them violence against women, femicide, racism and social exclusion. As our community-based survey in Almolonga revealed, migration is also prevalent. For some families, it is the only option in spite of the tremendous uncertainty--not only the dangers of the journey but also, the risks of family disintegration over the long-term.

Remittance home, Almolonga. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

In our survey, parents report feeling the psychological and emotional pressure to provide adequate conditions for the healthy development of their children and families. Within the limited options, they search for the best alternative—in many cases migration—considering factors such as education, securing employment, saving earnings, and sending remittances. Families search for opportunities to buy land, build a house, furnish it, acquire appliances that make life easier, and, importantly, to secure a good education to their children. This is the best scenario.

Vehicles in Almolonga. Photo credits: Giovanni Batz

As we found in Almolonga, sometimes the reality of families with migrants is quite different—filled with risk, debt, loss and few guarantees. Those that remain are anguished as their loved ones undertakes the uncertainties of the journey. In the saddest situations, their loved one ends up missing or dead. At other times, although the migrant arrives at his or her destination, the arrival is met with mixed emotions given the traumas and violence experienced en route while happily celebrating one’s arrival as a great achievement. Families told us that while the migrant seeks to quickly secure employment, they struggle to survive and to now pay the additional migratory debt until the first remittances arrive. Several interviewed women described that living without their spouse in the home of their in-laws has resulted in a loss of privacy and freedom from activities that benefit their social, emotional, and familial surroundings. Some women describe being constantly surveilled and others describe their in-laws exploiting their labor; when the remittances arrive, the in-laws seize the money, not allowing for autonomy or independence.

While migration may contribute to improved economic and material conditions, it may also transform family structures by changing the traditional gender roles. As we found in our study, when a father migrates, the mother who remains may become head of the family, assuming responsibility for the economic livelihood of the family and directing their children’s education. In these instances, mothers explained that they work more to cover the family expenses, pay debts, and at times send inverse remittances; that is, some women described sending money to the husbands in the United States until he got settled. In Almolonga, we encountered women who migrate as well, struggling to improve their economic situation. However, their migration also comes with risks. According to interviewees, women are more vulnerable to experiencing rape, robbery, illnesses, discrimination, and hardship.

Dolls in a school. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

Among women who remain in Almolonga, some describe looking for an extramarital partner and/or building new emotional relationships to support them. In some situations, these relationships resulted in neglect of their children or a separation from their husbands who also may have established new relationships or families in the United States, neglecting to support their children who remain in Guatemala.

In sum, the risks of migration are significant and multiple and the consequences of migration are profound. From violence to debt to shifting gender roles to family disintegration, migration brings both structural and intimate changes in the lives of families, important changes that warrant closer examination. 

Catarina Chay Quiej is a student of the Universidad Rafael Landívar-Quetzaltenango studying International Relations in the Political and Social Sciences department. She has worked in her community in the municipality of Zunil with groups of indigenous women through workshops on their rights and the importance of civic participation. She worked as a researcher collaborating in the study of migration and return in Almolonga in 2016. 

For the previous blog in the series: Alejandro Chán: Almolonga: una interpretación a partir de la migración a Estados Unidos/ Almolonga: an interpretation of migration to the United States

For the next blog in the series: Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero: El Papel de las Comadronas de Almolonga/The Role of Midwives in Almolonga

Almolonga: Una interpretación a partir de la migración a Estados Unidos/Almolonga: an interpretation of migration to the United States

por Alejandro Chán

(English translation below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

Actividad con jóvenes sobre la migración, Sibinal. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink.

Después de meses participando en una encuesta comunitaria, entrevistando familias en Almolonga, un municipio del departamento de Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, se pudo tener aproximaciones sobre algunas dinámica social, económica, política y cultural; de manera que en esteblog pretende a capturar algunos fragmentos de la vida cotidiana a la intersección de familia y migración. Aunque de inicio fue difícil, no obstante, de encuesta a encuesta, de entrevista a entrevista, poco a poco se fue conociendo sobre el sentir, la percepción y la opinión de las personas en el tema de migración. No importando contar con vivencias directas o ajenas, siempre hubo una opinión. Era evidente que hay muchas experiencias de sufrimiento que no se hablan-- que no se comparten, sino que se sufren en silencio; muchas familias toleran o reprimen los aspectos negativos que provoca la migración.

Vista de Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Giovanni Batz

Escuchar, por ejemplo, la experiencia de rupturas entre esposas y esposos, entre padres e hijos y viceversa. O de los peligros que corren los migrantes, la violación constante y permanente de sus derechos más elementales: la vida, la dignidad y la libertad. Es decir, que el derecho de migrar o no migrar no traen garantías algunas.

Derechos humanos se desvanecen en distintas rutas--ante las largas caminatas que emprenden los migrantes en los desiertos donde exponen y arriesgan su vida. El camino de los migrantes supone el despojo de sus derechos y con ello sus sueños de tener una vida digna. Muchos mueren buscando al “Sueño Americano.” Otros llegan y logran obtener un trabajo. Sin embargo, no significa el fin de los sufrimientos; sino que se transforman por otras formas de sometimiento--el racismo, la discriminación y la explotación en las interacciones económicas, sociales y políticas de los Estados Unidos.

¿Cuántos migrantes son despojados de sus derechos, del esfuerzo, fruto de su trabajo? ¿Cuántos aguantan esta explotación por el hecho de buscar una “mejor vida”?

Marcas de la migración, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Giovanni Batz

Es cierto que en algunas ocasiones los migrantes logran de mandar dinero a sus familias y con éste pueden comprar o mejorar sus viviendas o comprar tierra para cultivar los alimentos para sus familias que se quedan. Pero no equivale a tener una vida digna. Dichos logros tienen costos inmensurables: separarse de la familia, vivir solo, desconectado del pueblo, lejos del sueño de una vida mejor.

Y para los que se quedan también es difícil. Como mencionó una de las entrevistadas: “No es lo mismo educar a los hijos en pareja que uno solo.” Esto es solo uno de los tantos retos que enfrentan las familias que se quedan en espera del ser querido que fue a buscar el “Sueño Americano.”

En este sentido, el “Sueño Americano” es solo una ilusión que obliga a millones de personas a migrar al Norte. Ya estando allí el sueño del migrante es el menos beneficiado; es el que lo menos importa. Lo que le importa a Estados Unidos es el trabajo que ofrecen los migrantes de forma barata. Un migrante retornado relató: “a nosotros los migrantes guatemaltecos, nos dan los trabajas más duros y por ser indocumentados no nos pagan lo que es justo.” No obstante jornadas largas de trabajo en las peores condiciones, aun así el migrante sigue trabajando.

De manera que Estados Unidos absorbe la fuerza de trabajo de los empobrecidos de países como Guatemala y comunidades como Almolonga. Millones de personas por la pobreza que impone el sistema económico global vigente se ven obligados a tomar la única alternativa que el mismo sistema económico global ha fabricado--la migración irregular--para luego ser explotados en el “primer mundo” si llegan.

A como está el panorama se puede ver que aquí o allá el Estado, el supuesto garantes y protectores de los derechos humanos, se ha convertido en la mayor estructura criminal que persigue, asesina y empobrece a los migrantes.

Cruzando la frontera de Guatemala y Mexico. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Y por si fuera poco, detrás de esta explotación se fortalece cada vez un negocio donde se visualizan estructuras, instituciones, organizaciones y personas que explotan al migrante. Como se ve en Almolonga, por ejemplo, los coyotes que son los primeros en cobrar una cantidad exorbitante de dinero a las familias o personas que quieren migrar, luego se encuentran por los préstamos con intereses sumamente altos de los bancos, cooperativas o prestamistas. Las autoridades fronterizas corruptas que, al igual que las estructuras criminales como los Zetas, cobran cuotas a los migrantes con la finalidad de tener derecho de paso por los territorios nacionales. Todo dicho, la cantidad de los actores e instituciones que aprovechan la vulnerabilidad de los migrantes son impresionantemente numerosos.

Una vez que los migrantes logran integrarse en la economía de la explotación de los Estados Unidos, los mayores beneficiados nuevamente son los bancos o instituciones financieras donde tiene lugar las transacciones de las remesas. En tándem, los centros comerciales se benefician por publicar y cultivar una cultura de consumo en las familias receptoras de las remesas.

Aun en estas condiciones, es fundamental que reconocemos y aprendemos de las múltiples resistencias que consolidan los migrantes para esperar por un mundo mejor, así como también los familiares que se entretejen con su experiencia en búsqueda por una vida más digna.

Alejandro Chán es Maya K’iche’, originario de San Andrés Xecul, Totonicapán. Maestro en Gestión Social para el Desarrollo Local, por FLACSO-Guatemala y Politólogo por la Universidad Rafael Landívar. Ha publicado en revista El Observador,  sobre reconfiguración del territorio.

Almolonga: An interpretation of migration to the United States

by Alejandro Chán

Activity with youth about migration. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

After months of participating in a community survey, interviewing families in Almolonga, a municipality in the Department of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, it was possible to approximate some of the social, economic, political and cultural dynamics. This blog aims to capture some of the fragments of daily life at the intersection of family and migration. While it was difficult at the beginning, from survey to survey, from interview to interview, little by little, we gradually came to know the feelings, the perceptions, and the opinions of the people on the topic of migration. Regardless of having direct or indirect experiences with migration, there was always an opinion. It was evident that there were many experiences of suffering that are never discussed--that are not shared, but rather suffered in silence. Many families tolerate or repress negative aspects that incite migration.

View of Almolonga. Photo credits: Giovanni Batz

Take, for example, the ruptures experienced between wives and husbands, between parents and their children and vice versa. Or the dangers that immigrants face, the permanent and constant violation of their most fundamental rights: life, dignity and liberty. That is to say, the right to migrate and the right to not migrate do not come with any guarantees.

Human rights vanish along different routes--before the long journeys migrants undertake across the deserts where they expose and risk their lives. Migrants’ paths imply the displacement of their rights and with it their dreams of a dignified life. Many die searching for the “American Dream.” Still others arrive and are able to obtain employment. However, this does not mean the end of their suffering; they are transformed to other forms of subjugation--racism, discrimination, and exploitation in their economic, social and political interactions of the United States.

How many migrants are stripped of their rights, their efforts, the fruits of their labor. How many endure this exploitation in seeking a “better life?”

Marks of migration. Photo credits: Giovanni Batz

On some occasions migrants may succeed in sending money to their families and with it, their families can buy and improve their houses or purchase land to cultivate the sustenance for their families who remain. But this is not equivalent to having a dignified life. These achievements come with immeasurable costs: separation from family, living alone, disconnected from the community, far from the dream of a better life.

And for those who remain, it is also difficult. As one interviewee mentioned: “It is not the same to educate children as a couple than alone.” This is just one of the many challenges that families confront, as they wait for their loved one who left in search of the “American Dream.”

In this sense, the “American Dream” is only an illusion that forces millions of people to migrate to the North. Once there, the migrant’s dream is least valued; it is the one that matters least. What matters to the United States is the cheap labor that migrants provide. A returned migrant related: “To us Guatemalan migrants, they give us the hardest jobs and because we are undocumented, they do not pay us justly.” In spite of a long day’s work in the worst conditions, the migrant still continues working.

In this way, the United States absorbs the workforce of impoverished countries like Guatemala and communities like Almolonga. Because of the imposition of the current global economic system, millions of people find themselves in poverty and see themselves obligated to take the only alternative that the global economic system itself has created--irregular migration--to only then be exploited by the “first world” if they arrive.

In this panorama, the State here and there, the so-called guarantors and protectors of human rights, has become the greatest criminal structure that persecutes, assassinates, and impoverishes migrants.

Crossing the Guatemala-Mexico border. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

And if that were not enough, behind this exploitation is a business network that is increasingly strengthened by structures, institutions, organizations and people that exploits migrants. As we see in Almolonga, for example, coyotes [smugglers] are the first to charge a exorbitant amounts of money to families or people who want to migrate, followed by high-interest loans from banks, cooperatives or money-lenders. Corrupt border officials who, in the same manner as criminal structures such as the Zetas, charge fees to migrants, as if they own the right of passage through national territories. All told, the number of actors and institutions that take advantage of migrants’ vulnerability are breathtakingly numerous.

Once migrants are integrated into an exploitive US economy, the principal beneficiaries are yet again the banks and financial institutions where remittances pass. In tandem, commercial centers benefit by publicizing and cultivating a consumer culture among families receiving these remittances.

Even in these conditions, it is critical that we recognize and learn from the multiple forms of resistance that strengthen migrants to hope of a better world are recognized and admired, as well as their family members whose experiences are interwoven in the pursuit for a more dignified life.

Alejandro Chán is Maya K’iche’ from San Andrés Xecul, Totonicapán. He has a Masters in Social Management of Local Development from FLACSO-Guatemala and is a Political Scientist at the University Rafael Landívar. He has published in the magazine El Observador regarding the reconfiguration of territory in Guatemala.

For the previous blog in the series: Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato: Deudas y Migración: Explorando a la realidad de Almolonga/ Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality

For the next blog in the series: Catarina Chay Quiej: A la Intersección de Género, Relaciones Familiares y Migración/At the Intersection of Gender, Family Relationships and Migration

Deudas y Migración: Explorando a la realidad de Almolonga/Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality

por Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato

(English translation below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

La falta de empleo y la situación correspondiente económica en Guatemala son algunos de los factores que influyen fuertemente en la decisión de migrar. En el municipio de Almolonga en Guatemala, tal es la situación de varias familias que participaron en nuestra investigación. Según los participantes, una de las primeras etapas en decidir de migrar es la identificación de cómo financiar la migración. En 2016, el viaje desde Almolonga hacia Estados Unidos tiene un costo entre 50,000.00 quetzales hasta 60,000.00 quetzales, una cantidad significativa para una comunidad agraria en donde los entrevistados cuentan con ingresos diarios de 15 quetzales a 150 quetzales al dia.

Tercer Lugar: America. Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

En este contexto, los que deciden de migrar hacia Estados Unidos se tropiezan con dificultades significativos para agenciarse de tal financiamiento.  Las entidades crediticias reguladas, como bancos o cooperativas, no financian este tipo de actividad debido al riesgo que representa el viaje y la incertidumbre de pasar la frontera exitosamente. Ante ello algunos habitantes de la localidad recurren a solicitar préstamos con prestamistas locales, familiares, amigos o conocidos. Es preciso señalar que piden préstamo no exclusivamente para financiar la migración sino también para satisfacer otras necesidades como el financiamiento para la cosecha estacional, emergencias de salud, o gastos funerarios.

Desde un punto de vista financiero, “La deuda…se puede referir a un saldo establecido tanto en efectivo como en especie (tal como un favor que debe ser pagado)” (Villareal, 2004: 14). En Almolonga, el financiamiento que algunas personas obtienen con prestamistas —entidades crediticias no reguladas —préstamos que se pueden catalogar como deuda, la cual implica una tasa de interés, una garantía como la escritura de un bien inmueble y un plazo de tiempo designado para el pago.

Tienda de fertilizantes, Almolonga. Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink. 

Los pobladores de Almolonga también recurren a entidades crediticias reguladas —bancarias o cooperativas. Se considera que “El crédito se usa habitualmente para relaciones más formales con bancos u otras instituciones… Se tiene el derecho a recibir ciertos fondos y se reconoce la obligación de pagar una tasa de interés” (Villarreal; 2004:14). Los montos que otorgan las entidades crediticias reguladas para esta actividad oscilan entre 10,000.00 quetzales hasta 40,000.00 quetzales y las tasas de interés que cobran se ubican entre 18% al 30% anualmente. Esta modalidad de préstamos también incluye un requisito de una garantía–bien inmueble–que avala el cumplimiento o el pago del monto otorgado en crédito o deuda. 

Las entidades financieras reguladas existentes en Almolonga tienen normas y parámetros establecidos para otorgar créditos, entre los cuales figura la garantia de un bien inmueble con escritura registrada. Algunas de las personas que recurren a estas entidades crediticias no cuentan con tal garantía y, así, no reúnen los requisitos establecidos. Como resultado, buscan un respaldo familiar, colega profesional, o contacto personal para que sirva como “fiador.” De esta forma, la responsabilidad de pagar la deuda es compartida. Este tipo de relaciones es compleja pues no solo encierra el compromiso de “cumplir con la palabra” sino también tiene un sentido profundo para la población Maya K’iche’. Implica un compromiso moral que tiene más valor que la firma de documentos legales escritos requerido por una entidad crediticia.  

Las condiciones para cumplir con el compromiso son precarias y las consecuencias de no cumplir son graves. Para algunas familias, cumplir con el compromiso de pago mensual representa largas e intensas jornadas de trabajo (de hasta 15 horas, 2:00am – 5:00pm) y el involucramiento directo de todos los miembros de la familia. Además, las familias enfrentan eventualidades que no son posibles de anticipar —condiciones climáticas, bajas en los precios de los productos, cambios drásticos en el mercado local y extranjero, y enfermedades o accidentes de miembros de la familia.  Si no paga, hay un incremento abrumador de la deuda que puede resultar en la pérdida total de sus bienes inmuebles y/o fragmentación de relaciones con familiares o amistades.

Prestamos hipotecarios en 24 horas, Departamento de Quetzaltenango (Anonimizada).  Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

—Es preciso señalar que existen casos en los cuales las personas recurren a entidades crediticias y solicitan crédito para el uso en agricultura o comercio, pero realmente es utilizado para financiar la migración irregular. Esta situación no es reconocida “oficialmente” por el sistema bancario o el sistema cooperativo. También sucede que las personas recurren a la deuda con entidades financieras no reguladas —prestamistas —quienes conceden los montos solicitados siempre y cuando exista una garantía de bien inmueble sin importar el tipo de escritura; además se debe firmar un documento/contrato privado ante un abogado y notario que puede ser un “Reconocimiento de Deuda” o una “Cesión de Derechos” sobre el bien inmueble que figura como garantía. Los montos que otorgan oscilan entre los 20,000.00 quetzales y 60,000.00 quetzales y las tasas de interés se ubican desde 3% hasta 5% mensual (su equivalente de 36%  hasta 70% anual).

Independientemente si el préstamo viene de una entidad financiera regulada o no regulada, esta dinámica de crédito y deuda genera una serie de efectos en las familias. Aquí, se remarcan dos específicamente

1. Varios entrevistados cuentan del monto adeudado se utiliza directamente para el ‘pago del coyote.’ Si la persona que realiza el viaje no logra pasar, al regresar a Guatemala, generalmente la deuda ha incrementado; no tiene un trabajo que le permita generar ingresos económicos suficientes para asumir el compromiso adquirido. Esto genera atrasos en los pagos. En algunos casos ante no poder pagar la deuda, como consecuencia la familia pierde el bien inmueble que fue otorgado en garantía. En ocasiones, es el único patrimonio familiar que poseen. Es decir que las condiciones económicas precarias se acentúan, limitando la alimentación, salud y educación de todos los miembros de la familia.

2. En otros casos, el monto adeudado también es utilizado para financiar la migración y la persona logra llegar a su destino. El o ella encuentra un trabajo y genera ingresos económicos suficientes para luego enviar remesas a su familia. Generalmente, las familias cuentan de priorizar el pago de la deuda para recuperar el bien inmueble que garantiza la deuda. Luego de ello se destina cierta cantidad de las remesas para las necesidades familiares como alimentación, educación, y salud. En algunos casos, a pesar de las remesas, las familias describen recurrir nuevamente al uso de la deuda o del crédito para financiar actividades agrícolas y de comercio, compra de bienes inmuebles como terrenos para la agricultura, o construcción de viviendas que posteriormente serán habitadas por la familia. Es decir que la deuda o el crédito se vuelve recurrente en la vida de los migrantes en los EE.UU. y los que fueron deportados.

Bibliografía

Villareal, Magdalena 2004  Antropología de la deuda. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social CIESAS.

Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato es una mujer Maya Kich’e’, originaria del Municipio de Totonicapán, Guatemala. Ella es una profesional en gestión del desarrollo con experiencia en investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa. Tiene maestría en Gestión Social para el Desarrollo Local por la Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales FLACSO-Guatemala y licenciatura en Administración de Empresas por Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.

Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality

by Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato

The lack of employment and corresponding economic situation in Guatemala are some of the factors that strongly influence the decision to migrate. In the municipality of Almolonga in Guatemala, such is the situation of several families who participated in our study. According to participants, one of the first steps in deciding to migrate is identifying how to finance migration. In 2016, the journey from Almolonga to the United States cost between 50,000.00 quetzales to 60,000.00 quetzales, a significant amount for an agrarian community in which respondents have a daily income ranging from 15 to 150 quetzales per day.

Third place: America. Almolonga. Photo credits: Lauren Heidbirnk

In this context, those who decide to migrate to the United States are faced with significant difficulties to wangle such funding. Regulated lenders, such as banks or credit unions, do not fund this type of activity due to the risk of the journey and the uncertainty of successfully crossing the border. In response some residents resort to borrowing from local moneylenders, family, friends or acquaintances. It should be noted that people solicit loans not only to finance migration but also to meet other needs such as financing seasonal harvests, health emergencies, or funeral expenses.

From a financial standpoint, "Debt ...can refer to a balance established both in cash and in kind (such as a favor to be paid)" (Villareal, 2004: 14). In Almolonga, in order to secure financing from moneylenders —unregulated credit entities —in the form of a loan often requires a guarantee such as the deed to property. The terms of this agreement, which can be classified as a debt, also establishes a period of time for repayment that includes variable interest rates.  

Fertilizer store, Almolonga. Photo credits: lauren Heidbrink

The people of Almolonga also resort to regulated credit entities —banks or cooperatives. It is considered that “Credit is commonly used in more formal relationships with banks or other institutions...One has the right to receive certain funds and the obligation to pay a rate of interest [for those funds] is recognized” (Villarreal; 2004:14). The amounts granted by regulated lenders for these activities vary between 10,000.00 and 40,000.00 quetzales, and the interest rates they charge are between 18% and 30% annually. This mode of loans also includes a requirement of collateral —normally real estate —that guarantees the fulfillment or payment of the granted amount in credit or debt.

Regulated financial entities that exist in Almolonga have established norms and parameters to grant credit, which include collateral in the form of real estate with registered documentation. Some people who seek these lenders do not have this guarantee, and therefore, do not meet the established requirements. As a result, they look for backing via a family member, professional colleague, or personal contact to serve as “guarantor”. In this way, the responsibility to pay the debt is shared. These types of relationships are complex since it not only includes the commitment to “fulfill your word” but also has a profound meaning for K’iche’ Maya people. It implies a moral commitment that has more value than a signed legal documents required by a lending entity.

The conditions to fulfill the commitment are precarious and the consequences of noncompliance are great. For some families, fulfilling the monthly payment commitment represents long and intense work days (up to 15 hours, 2:00 am - 5:00 pm) and the direct involvement of all members of the family. Besides, families confront unexpected events--weather conditions, declines in commodity prices, drastic changes in local and overseas markets, accidents and illnesses of family members. If they do not pay, there is an overwhelming increase in debt which may result in the total loss of their property and/or the fragmentation of relationships with family or friends.  

24 hour Mortgage Lender, Department of Quetzaltenango (Anonymized). Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

It should be noted that there are cases in which people turn to lenders and apply for credit to use in agriculture and trade, while in actuality, it is used to finance irregular migration. This situation is not recognized "officially" by banks and cooperatives. It also happens that people turn to loans from non-regulated financial entities —moneylenders —who grant requested amounts as long as there is a guarantee of property regardless of the type of deed; they must also sign a private contract before a lawyer and notary which serves as an "IOU" or "Assignment of Rights" on the real estate listed as collateral. Amounts granted range from 20,000.00 and 60,000.00 quetzales and interest rates range from 3% to 5% per month (an equivalent of 36% to 70% annually).

Regardless if loans originate from a regulated or unregulated financial entity, this dynamic of credit and debt generates of series of effects for the families. Here, I discuss two specifically:

1. Various interviewees indicate that the acquired amount is utilized directly for the ‘payment of the coyote.’ If the person who undertakes the trip is unable to cross, upon returning to Guatemala, generally the debt has increased; there is no job that allows for sufficient income to fulfill their commitment. This creates delays in payment. In some cases when unable to pay the debt, the family ultimately lose the property offered as collateral. In some instances, it is the only property the family has. This is to say that their precarious economic conditions are exacerbated, limiting nutrition, health and education of all family members.
2. In other cases, the acquired amount is also used to finance migration, but the individual is able to reach their destination. She or he finds employment and earns sufficient income to send remittances to family. Generally, the families prioritize the payment of the debt to recover the property utilized as collateral. Afterwards, a certain amount of the remittances is destined to cover family needs such as nutrition, education and health. In some instances, in spite of remittances, families describe once again returning to the use of debt and credit to finance agricultural or commerce activities and, to buy property such as land for agricultural production, or to construct their homes which will be inhabited by the family. That is to say, debt and credit becomes recurrent in the lives of migrants in the U.S. and those deported to Guatemala.

Works Cited

Villareal, Magdalena 2004  Antropología de la deuda. Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social CIESAS.

Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato is a K’iche’ Maya woman, originally from the Municipality of Totonicapán, Guatemala. She is a professional in Development Management with experience in qualitative and quantitative research. She has a Masters in Social Management for Local Development by the Latin American Department of Social Sciences FLACSO – Guatemala and a bachelor’s in Business Administration at the University of San Carlos, Guatemala.

For the previous blog in the series: Amparo Monzón: Botas Negras/Tuqxajab’ q’eq/Black Rubber Boots

For the next blog in the series: Alejandro Chán: Almolonga: una interpretación a partir de la migración a Estados Unidos/ Almolonga: an interpretation of migration to the United States

Botas Negras / Tuqxajab’ q’eq / Black Rubber Boots

By Amparo Monzón

(K'iche' and English translations below. For additional posts in this series, visit: "Migration and Belonging.")

Créditos fotográficos: CMFOTO

El contexto de este poema surge a través de las múltiples vivencias de sabidurías compartidas por mujeres, hombres, niñas, niños, jóvenes, ancianos y ancianas durante la investigación de campo sobre migración en Almolonga realizada en el verano del 2016 en Guatemala.

Describe en su forma orgánica la vida de una familia agricultora de Almolonga que se levanta aproximadamente a las 2:00 a.m. y termina su día laboral alrededor de las 7:00 p.m. Por consiguiente, la narración de este poema está dividida en las horas que rigen la dinámica agrícola de la población de dicho municipio.

Las primeras tres estrofas consisten en un cuestionamiento sobre la vida que lleva la familia actualmente y las últimas dos la solución que resuelven tomar. Cansados, la pareja decide migrar a los Estados Unidos.

Ellos narran su viaje. En el sexto verso, la escritora narra en tercera persona, describiendo la voz callada de muchos migrantes que han desaparecido sin saber de ellos.

Escrito en Español, K’ iche’ e Inglés, este poema es dedicado a las miles de personas que migran, asumiendo los costos diarios y humanos de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos.

************************************************************************************

The context for his poem emerges from the many life experiences of shared wisdom by women, men, children, youth and elders that resulted from conducting fieldwork on migration in the Summer of 2016 in the municipality of Almolonga, located in the western highlands of Guatemala.

The poem organically describes the life of an agricultural family in Almolonga who wake up approximately at 2:00 a.m. and end their work day at about 7:00 p.m. Accordingly, the narration of this poem is divided into the hours that coincide with the agricultural cycle of Almolonga.

The first three stanzas question the family’s present-day life and the last two are about their resolution. Tired, the couple in the poem decide to migrate to the United States.

They narrate their trip and journey north. In the sixth verse, the author narrates in third person describing the silenced voices of many migrants who have disappeared and whose whereabouts are unknown.

Written in Spanish, K’iche’ and English, this poem is dedicated to the thousands of people that migrate, bearing the everyday human costs of US foreign policy.

Botas Negras

2:00 a.m. (Aún no ha salido el sol)

Yo no necesito reloj para levantarme.

Solo siento el olor de mis botas negras para recordarme.

Yo no necesito ver la tierra para sentirla.

Solo necesito mis manos,

para limpiarla, sembrarla, picarla y cosecharla.

6:00 a.m. (Mercado Local vs. Mercado Global)

Yo no necesito que me repitan que los precios de las verduras han bajado.

Solo necesito llevar mi bulto al mercado.

Yo no necesito que ella me vea los ojos cansados,

para saber que estamos bien ‘pisados.’

7:00 a.m.  (Retorno a casa)

Yo no necesito que me digan que a Diego, Martita y Juanito les hace falta alimentación y educación.

Y que mi casa no vale un millón.

Que la operación sale en Q. 20,000.00.

No necesito que me digan en que me van ayudar.

Yo ya lo pensé, lo soñé  y lo sé.

9:00 a.m. (El hogar y la decisión final) 

Y la vi y me vio y nos vimos.

Y supimos.

Y nos fuimos.

10:00 a.m. y semanas… (La ida)

Caminamos y sudamos

por el Desierto.

Recordamos y lloramos

por el Rio.

Y se la llevaron y me dejaron.

Y lo triste es que nunca llegaron.       

Tuqxajab’ q’eq

Keb’ kajb’al (Le q’ij maja kiloq)

Chi kinwalijik in rajawaxik ta’ chwe kajb’al.

Xaq xu kina’ le raxlab’ le nutuqxajab’ q’eq’ab’ che kanataj chwech.

In rajawaxik taj kin wil le ulew che kin na’o.

Xaq xu rajawaxik le nuq’ab’,

che usu’ik, tikonik, k’otinik xuquje’ uyakik.

Waqib’ kajb’al (K’ayb’al Chutin ruk’ K’ayb’al Nim)

In rajawaxik ta’ chwe che kanataxik che le rajil le uwach ulew che xqajik.

Xaq xu tane’ kinkamb’ik le nutanat pa le k’ayb’al.

In rajawaxik ta’ chwe che are’ kuril le nub’aq’och kosinaq,

che retanla’ che ujk’olik pa k’axk’ol.

Wuqub’ kajb’al (Tzalajem pa ja)

In rajawaxikta’ chwe che kab’ixik che ri a Tek, laj Marta’ xuquje’ laj Xwan che rajawaxik chake che ketzuqik xuquje’ le pixonem.

Che le wachoch che marajil ta’ jun millón.

Che le kunab’al kil Q. 20,000.00.

Rajawaxik ta’ chwech che kab’ix chweche kinkito’.

In xinchomaj, xinwichik’aj xuquje’ wetam chik.

B’elejeb’ kajb’al (Le ja xuquje’ ri chomanik k’isb’al)

Xinwilo, xinrilo, xaqil qib’.

Xaqetamaj.

Xujek.

Lajuj kajb’al - Q’ij rech wuq’ij… (Ilem)

Xujb’inik xuquje’ xujil pak’atanal

choch le zanib’ Ulew.

Xanataj chaqe xuquje’ xujoq’ik

choch le Plo.

Xk’amb’ikxin k’iya’y q’anoq.

Le b’isonik che man xeb’opanta’ wi’.    

Black Rubber Boots

2:00 a.m. (Darkness)

I don’t need a watch to wake up.

I only need the smell of my black rubber boots to remind me.  

I don’t need to see the earth to feel it.

I only need my hands,

to clean it, to sow it, to reap and harvest it.

6: 00 a.m. (Local Market vs. Global Market)

I don’t need to be reminded that the prices of vegetables have lowered.

I only need to take my bundle to the market.

I don’t need her to see into my tired eyes,

to know that we are ‘fucked.’

7:00 a.m.  (Going back home)

I don’t need to be told that Diego, Martita and Juanito need food and education.

That my house is not worth millions.

That the operation is going to cost 20,000.00 quetzales.

I don’t need your help. 

I already thought about it, I dreamt about it and I know it.

9:00 a.m. (The house and the final decision) 

I looked at her, she looked at me, we looked at each other.

And we knew.

And we left.

10:00 a.m. and weeks… (The departure)

We walked and we sweated

through the Desert.

We remembered and cried

through the River.

And they took her and they left me.

And the tragedy is that they never arrived.  

Amparo Monzón is a Maya K’iche’ woman and holds a M.A. in International Relations from the University of Westminster. She is passionate about learning and sharing experiences. 

For the previous blog in the series:  Lauren Heidbrink: Migration and Belonging: Narratives from a Highland Town/Migración y Pertenencia: Narrativas de un pueblo del altiplano/

For the next entry in the series: Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato: Deudas y Migración: Explorando a la realidad de Almolonga/ Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality

Migration and Belonging: Narratives from a Highland Town

by Lauren Heidbrink

(Spanish translation below)

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Photo credits: Lauren Heidbrink

Youth Circulations is honored to showcase the important contributions of Guatemalan scholars in a new multilingual series entitled “Migration and Belonging: Narratives from a Highland Town.” This 7-part series emerges from a longitudinal study on the deportation and social reintegration of youth in Guatemala and Southern Mexico. With generous funding from the National Science Foundation, an interdisciplinary team conducted ethnographic and survey research in Almolonga, a K’iche’ community in the Department of Quetzaltenango.

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Photo Credits: Lauren Heidbrink

Like many highland communities of Guatemala, Almolonga has been intensely impacted by migration and deportation over the past three decades. Known as the “breadbasket” of Central America, Almolonga is a peri-urban community that enjoys a thriving agricultural economy. Employment opportunities are abundant and include harvesting multiple seasons of crops, selling in local markets, and commerce activities to Mexico and El Salvador. In fact, Almolonga has experienced a population surge, in part due to internal migration to Almolonga by Guatemalans seeking employment. Known for a strong evangelical church, there is also notable institutional leadership. And yet in spite of these promising aspects, poverty remains significant, social inequality pronounced, alcoholism pervasive, and livable wages scarce. Heralded as an alternative to migration because of its employment opportunities, Almolonga continues to experience significant out migration to the U.S., primarily to bedroom communities of Portland, Oregon where there has been a relatively well-established Almolonguense community since the 1990s. As we learned in our research with households and community leaders in Almolonga, the impacts of migration and deportation are pervasive and enduring.

We offer a window into this complex landscape through “Migration and Belonging” which features blogs, poems, and reflections from an interdisciplinary research team conducting a household survey in Almolonga. Each piece is immediately informative about global youth, migration, health and well-being, belonging, and the effects of deportation across geographic space. And when taken together, this collection offers a rich, multifaceted account of a community impacted by colonialism, state violence, and the profound impacts—both historic and contemporary—of migration moving between intimate, community, and transnational levels.

“Migration and Belonging” likewise confronts the reader with questions about audience, voice, and translation. How does this series, at once heartfelt and artistic, reach an academic audience—or is it forever relegated to the blogosphere? What is gained and lost in translation? In our final blog of the collection, Celeste Sánchez, Giovanni Batz, and I reflect on these and other questions that arose during collaborations with our research team.

Please visit Youth Circulations (or subscribe) to receive the following weekly blogs in our series:

• Amparo Monzón: Botas Negras/Tuqxajab’ q’eq/Black Rubber Boots
• Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato: Deudas y Migración: Explorando a la realidad de Almolonga/ Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality
• Alejandro Chán: Almolonga: una interpretación a partir de la migración a Estados Unidos/ Almolonga: an interpretation of migration to the United States
• Catarina Chay Quiej: A la Intersección de Género, Relaciones Familiares y Migración/At the Intersection of Gender, Family Relationships and Migration
• Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero: El Papel de las Comadronas de Almolonga/The Role of Midwives in Almolonga
• Angélica Mejía: La Resiliencia: Generador de movilización y auto-crecimiento/ Resilience of Youth without Parental Care
• Celeste Sánchez, Giovanni Batz, Lauren Heidbrink, and Michele Statz: A Conversation on Translation/Una Conversación sobre Traducción

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(Left to right) Back row: Alejandro Chán, Amparo Monzón, Angélica Mejía, Giovanni Batz, Lauren Heidbrink, and Celeste Sánchez. Front row: Catarina Chay Quiej, Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero, Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato.

Lauren Heidbrink is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Human Development at California State University, Long Beach. She is author of Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2014). She currently the PI on a multi-year NSF Law and Social Sciences grant investigating the deportation and social reintegration of youth in Guatemala.

 

Migración y Pertenencia: Narrativas de un pueblo del altiplano

por Lauren Heidbrink

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Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Youth Circulations tiene el honor de mostrar las contribuciones importantes de los eruditos guatemaltecos en una nueva serie multilingüe titulada “Migración y Pertenencia: Narrativas de un pueblo altiplano.” Esta serie de siete partes surge de una investigación longitudinal sobre la deportación y la reintegración social de jóvenes en Guatemala y el sur de México. Con apoyo generoso de la National Science Foundation, un equipo interdisciplinario hizo una investigación etnográfica y una encuesta comunitaria en Almolonga, una comunidad K'iche' del Departamento de Quetzaltenango.

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Créditos fotográficos: Lauren Heidbrink

Como muchas comunidades del altiplano de Guatemala, Almolonga ha sido impactado intensamente por la migración y la deportación durante las últimas tres décadas. Conocida como el "granero" de Centroamérica, Almolonga es una comunidad periurbana que goza de una próspera economía agrícola. Las oportunidades de empleo son abundantes e incluyen cosechas múltiples, la venta en mercados locales, y comercio con México y El Salvador. De hecho, Almolonga ha experimentado una oleada de población, en parte atribuido a la migración interna por parte de guatemaltecos que buscan empleo en Almolonga. Conocido por una iglesia evangélica predominante, también hay un liderazgo institucional bien establecido. Sin embargo, a pesar de estos aspectos prometedores, la pobreza sigue siendo significativa, la desigualdad social pronunciada, el alcoholismo penetrante y los salarios dignos escasos. Proclamada como una alternativa a la migración por sus fuentes de empleo, la migración de Almolonga hacia los Estados Unidos continúa, principalmente a las comunidades dormitorio de Portland, Oregón, donde hay una comunidad Almolonguense bien establecida desde los años noventa. Como hemos aprendido en nuestra encuesta comunitaria y con líderes comunitarios en Almolonga, los impactos de la migración y la deportación son omnipresentes y duraderos.

Ofrecemos una ventana a este complejo paisaje a través de "Migración y Pertenencia", que cuenta con blogs, poemas y reflexiones de un equipo interdisciplinario dirigiendo una encuesta de hogares en Almolonga. Cada contribución es inmediatamente informativa sobre la juventud global, migración, salud y bienestar, pertenencia y los efectos de la deportación a través del espacio geográfico. Esta colección ofrece un relato abundante y multifacético de una comunidad impactada por colonialismo, violencia estatal y los impactos profundos—tanto históricos como contemporáneos—de la migración que se mueve entre niveles íntimos, comunitarios y transnacionales.

"Migración y Pertenencia"también enfrenta el lector con preguntas sobre audiencia, voz, y traducción. ¿De qué manera esta serie, a la vez sentida y artística, llega a una audiencia académica—o está siempre relegada a la blogosfera? ¿Qué se gana y se pierde en la traducción? En nuestro blog final de la colección, Celeste Sánchez, Giovanni Batz, y yo reflexionamos sobre estas y otras preguntas que surgieron durante las colaboraciones con nuestro equipo de investigación.

Por favor visite Youth Circulations (o suscríbase) para recibir los siguientes blogs semanales en nuestra serie:

• Amparo Monzón: Botas Negras/Tuqxajab’ q’eq/Black Rubber Boots
• Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato: Deudas y Migración: Explorando a la realidad de Almolonga/ Debt and Migration: Exploring Almolonga’s reality
• Alejandro Chán: Almolonga: una interpretación a partir de la migración a Estados Unidos/ Almolonga: an interpretation of migration to the United States
• Catarina Chay Quiej: A la Intersección de Género, Relaciones Familiares y Migración/At the Intersection of Gender, Family Relationships and Migration
• Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero: El Papel de las Comadronas de Almolonga/The Role of Midwives in Almolonga
• Angélica Mejía: La Resiliencia: Generador de movilización y auto-crecimiento/ Resilience of Youth without Parental Care
• Celeste Sánchez, Giovanni Batz, Lauren Heidbrink, and Michele Statz: A Conversation on Translation/Una Conversación sobre Traducción

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(De izquierda a derecha) Fila posterior: Alejandro Chán, Amparo Monzón, Angélica Mejía, Giovanni Batz, Lauren Heidbrink, and Celeste Sánchez. Primera fila: Catarina Chay Quiej, Ramona Elizabeth Pérez Romero, Sandra Elizabeth Chuc Norato.

Lauren Heidbrink es antropóloga y Profesora Asistente de Desarrollo Humano en California State University, Long Beach. Es autora de Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State: Care and Contested Interests (University of Pennsylvania Press, May 2014). Actualmente es investigadora principal de una beca plurianual de NSF Law and Social Sciences que investiga la deportación y la reintegración social de los jóvenes en Guatemala.

For the next blog in the series: Amparo Monzón: Botas Negras/Tuqxajab’ q’eq/Black Rubber Boots

Reimagining Youth Mobility Through Architectural Design

Can architecture provide a counter-representation of youth mobility? Architectural designer and critic Stuart Shanks shows how space informs popular perceptions of global youth.

How space is utilized in photographs of young migrants has the potential to portray fully realized people--as well as the potential to diminish or deprive us their humanity. In these images, space becomes a character in its own right, even as it is presumed to be a habitat or a transitional feature.  Sometimes, space is presented in place of a young migrant, as in the work of Mary Beth Meehan and in many of the photos featured here on Youth Circulations.

Source: Mary Beth Meehan

Meant to underscore the invisibility that individuals who are undocumented presumably feel, Meehan portrays space as shadowy, even haunted. The effect is captivating, but it is insufficient. It also sustains a powerful silence—the silencing of young individuals’ voices, movements, expressions, and manipulations of space. There is no indication of life that is creative or resistant or even particularly active. Not only do these photos present a static image of young migrants—notably through youths’ marked absence—but they also reflect space in a way that diminishes the power-filled relationship between youth and the places they maneuver through and inhabit.  

The perception of youth of the world to the world—i.e., how global youth are represented—is increasingly through photographs easily accessed on your screen. The resulting disconnect, between the multidimensional physical world and the flat digital image, creates emotional rifts that are bridged by the photographer’s framing. Meehan's use of so many desolate and haunting shots thus creates a simultaneous sense of unease and familiarity. She uses space to depict how her subjects inhabit the fringes of the world, and she uses those fringe spaces to project her perception of reality onto us, the viewer. 

In Meehan’s images, the rooms are rarely placed head-on; instead, the frame highlights corners or off-centered dead ends. The viewer is never offered an easy exit out of these rooms. Passages are covered or obscured. Some are false exits, curtains hiding bare walls. 

Source: Mary Beth Meehan

The space we observe is always small, and yet the rooms are sparsely furnished. This combination—scarce furnishings in a small room—creates a strange dichotomy that is at once suffocating and uncomfortably expansive. The objects in these spaces are mismatched garage sale finds, unwanted. In this version of what occupies “undocumented space,” we might assume that the people who live here are as undervalued to the population at large as the possessions they own. 

In her photos Meehan demonstrates the pain, loss, and needs a migrant presumably feels, in a sense willing the viewer to get closer and to care. It is a balancing act that, if done right, is very impactful. 

Meehan’s techniques of placement can also be situated within a broader framework of architecture called wayfinding--the study of how people use and walk through space. Where do you look when entering a house? What room will you enter next?  Is the room entered on an axis or off? Do you open a door or move through an archway? How does the ceiling or floor height change the dynamics in a room? If answered correctly, the space works exactly how the architect envisions it,  never realizing these are decisions that have been made. 

Curving pedestrian ramp through building. Carpenter Center, Cambridge, MA. Photo by Le Corbusier, 1960-64.  

Arguably the most prominent American architect of the last century, Frank Lloyd Wright pushed himself into the American conscious in numerous ways. He re-envisioned how people live in their houses. He improved an American model of the suburb while creating lyrical sculpture that was as beautiful as it was functional. He reorganized and rethought what a modern museum entailed. Beyond his designs, many more people remember him for his cult of personality, for being larger than life. Indeed, at many points in his life, Wright's salesmanship and personal life seem to outshine his projects. 

Today, a number of architects are similarly idealized. Rem Koolhaas, Bjarke Ingles, Norman Foster, and Toyo Ito may not have the same cachet as Wright, but they wield great influence in architecture  and exhibit similar personal and professional largess. The only difference, it seems, is how--or if--they use architecture to re-imagine and influence culture at large. Wright and his contemporaries were masters of this, well before Wright became famous for being famous. Through most of the 20th century, these architects questioned how a space is used, what the space is used for, and how those answers have implications the world at large. 

Broadacre City, a concept for an American version of the suburb. Photograph of model by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1934-35. 

The modern architect of the 21st century no longer seeks to dialogue with cultural change as theory. Instead, such questions are an afterthought, only addressed when deciding how to sell a building to the client or to the public at large. Then, buzz words like “green,” “innovative” and “open” are tacked on to increase some bottom line. Architecture has become commodified as a means to an end. No longer is it a field of critical thinkers who explore how design can influence and change the future by critically questioning the present.
 
How, then, can architecture be both more introspective and publicly-engaged? Responding to Meehan’s work architecturally, and to the reality of youth mobility, may offer one possibility. Now, the questions are: Can architecture become a new tool for how youth can reclaim space for themselves? If so, how can architecture re-emerge to offer a counter-representation of youth mobility? How might architects use space to depict global youth as living, as opposed to envisioning space as simply "lived-in"?
 
In order for this to happen, architects need to instill in themselves an approach that most young people already employ: a deliberate, fluid, and keen awareness of ongoing shifts in transnational culture and technology. The architect’s response must be to create something now—something that can be edited and deleted, that can evolve and be mobile. Architecture can no longer be based on a perceived increase in returns from our established givens. Instead, it needs to exist for the sake of an actual increase on what people desire out of life. Only when space is imagined and designed with mobility in mind; with a recognition of individuals as creative and creating; and with attention to young people’s critical regard for the spaces through which they move and choose to stay will architecture better resonate with life, and vice versa. 

Collaboratively researching how city workers utilize space--from food trucks to daily commutes between local villages and the city center--this museum was conceptually designed as a cultural hub in Chandigarh, India but evolved into an educational center and a place to relax as more input was received from the local community. It likewise moved beyond business and tourism to take into account the natural environment and regional building practices. (2016, concept by Stuart Shanks)

Photos like Meehan’s draw people into a world that reveals an intimacy of transition and hardship—yet they tell us very little about the actual person who inhabits that world. Similarly, contemporary architecture has become a signature, and the space it physically creates the afterthought. Through architecture, young migrants should find a voice that, like the avant-garde of the last century, will resonate with a wider audience. Architecture offers the signifiers that morph and evolve into the formal public discourse of what is modern. By responding to how people live, architecture inherently questions the function of existing space; it interrogates everything from grand palaces to city streets to what it means to be one’s own race, gender, nationality, and sexual orientation. By questioning present architecture, youth voices will continue to question gray areas of what it means to inhabit private and public spaces, the legality of occupation and concerns over ownership. Instead of giving examples of this, I challenge the reader to critically see how space helps and hinders how youth and everyone for that matter use and move through space. How certain public spaces are specifically designed to discourage mobility, like skateboarding; how physical “security” barriers create a sense of foreboding and implicitly discourage interaction with and within the space; how spaces that have no discernible purpose in urban centers have been co-opted by those too often characterized as “marginalized” and transformed into perfect examples of city improvement and civic pride. With the fluidity to inhabit more than a single space, to create new answers, and to put forth multifaceted designs that reveal their functionality, relevance, and beauty over time, architecture is perfectly positioned to respond to and represent global youth. 

Stuart Shanks is an Architectural designer and writer currently based in Princeton, NJ. He received his Masters in Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has worked for numerous firms in the Midwest and east coast including Zimmerman Architecture Studio in Milwaukee, MoDE Architects in Chicago, and Komita Design in Philadelphia. His work bridges the gap between technical detailing and theoretical practice to give architecture a cultural relevance. His design work and writings are found at www.stuartshanks.com. 

Source:  http://stuartshanks.com/bb.jpg

The Politics of Memory among Child Survivors of the Bosnian War Diaspora

By Ana Croegaert and Elmina Kulašić

The use of objects—including the body—to imbue meaning and communicate memory and identity is a longstanding area of anthropological scholarship (Verdery 1999, Appadurai 1986, Miller 2009). More recently, anthropologists have explored the use of objects in the inter-generational communication of trauma (Kidron 2009). In this post, we consider the relationship between memory and trauma through acts and objects explicitly aimed at memorializing traumatic events. We draw on our work with child survivors of the Yugoslav Secession war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in 1992-95 and reflect on what we call these survivors’ politicized “memory work.” We argue that an anthropology of child survivors’ experiences sheds light on this diaspora’s critical role in postwar democracy in BiH. While our discussion centers on the Bosnian diaspora, the dynamics we explore here may offer insights that expand awareness of challenges in other post-conflict sites, situations, and diasporas.

The war in Bosnia was among a series of wars over the struggle for power in post-Cold War Yugoslavia during which half of Bosnia’s 4.5 million population were displaced and tens of thousands of women were raped (Croatia 1991-5; Bosnia 1992-5; Kosovo 1999-2000). Civilian deaths accounted for forty percent of the over 100,000 war-dead; nearly seventy percent of Muslim Bosnians who were killed during the war were civilians (Center for Justice and Accountability). Of the million people who fled the country as refugees, nearly 170,000 made it to the United States, with Chicago serving as the largest relocation site for Bosnian refugees outside of Europe. St. Louis, Missouri is now home to the largest Bosnian war diaspora population. According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 169,000 refugees from former Yugoslavia were admitted between 1992-2012. The majority were Bosnian Muslims and Bosnians in mixed marriages who fled during the Bosnian War, along with some Muslim Kosovars. This number also includes those who sought asylum after Germany and Austria began forcibly repatriating Bosnians in 1999.

ENCOUNTERING A MEMORY-SCAPE

 ANA: When I began my research on how Bosnian refugee-immigrants managed their forced relocation to Chicago, I was struck by the efforts of those in the 1.5 generation—who were children during the war and migration—to make sense of the war and to remain connected to Bosnia.[i] I was also troubled by the role of teenage girls in memorializing the Serb-allied Bosnian military’s genocide[ii] of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men in the Srebrenica U.N.-declared “Safe Area” in July of 1995. Yet, I found it difficult to raise these concerns in the context of my fieldwork.[iii] Given the gender-dimensions of Islamophobia in the United States, public memorials often enlisted perceived “less-threatening” images and voices of young Bosnian women, rather than of young Bosnian men.[iv]

In July 2005, I attended one such event marking ten years since the genocide in Srebrenica in Chicago’s Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago.[v] The organizers set the stage and loud speakers to communicate with the lunchtime crowd. Some of us had been given green ribbons to tie around our arms to signify the victims as Muslim. Those of us gathered in the plaza were given a set of confusing directions—perhaps intended to reproduce the chaos during the actual massacre—to participate in a dramatic re-enactment of the ritualistic events leading up to the massacres. We were separated by gender, told to kneel and kiss the ground as an audio-recording of a barrage of gunfire blasted across loudspeakers. The elder Bosnian women whom I accompanied were shocked. One woman fainted. 

Ten-year memorial of Srebrenica massacres at Daley Plaza in Chicago, 2005. Photo credit: A. Croegaert

Following the restaging of the genocide, 18-year-old Selma took the stage and relayed her memories as a seven-year-old, of dodging gunfire while playing with friends and hiding for weeks in a cave-like shelter with her mother and brother. She ended her story with the image of a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

The memorial brought home for me the complex memory-scape that 1.5 generation youth traverse. They want to learn of their parents' experiences, while also navigating their own childhood memories. They want to be involved in supporting their parents, and people living in Bosnia. Yet they face numerous and competing narratives: Serb Bosnians who deny the genocide of Muslim Bosnians at Srebrenica, and at Prijedor; nationalistically centered groups like the one who staged this memorial; and their silent and depressed parents. Furthermore, the 1990s wartime massacres were layered upon the buried history of WWII-era massacres that were officially repressed during the Communist Era in the pursuit of the policy of national "Brotherhood and Unity".

Years later, Selma, then in her early twenties, told me that she was proud of her participation. Her father had encouraged her. And, she felt proactive. She contrasted her actions with her mother's constant depressive state and reluctance to discuss wartime events. 

Wartime memories and how to memorialize these events in order to prevent future atrocities preoccupied another youth I met during my research: Elmina, co-author of this blog. The following is an excerpt of our conversation about her involvement in organizing a photoshoot commemorating May 31, 1992. On this day, all non-Serb residents of her town were ordered to mark their homes and businesses with white flags and their bodies with white armbands. Twenty years later, those who were forced to mark themselves in this way appropriated the white armband as a symbol of the violence they survived, and of those who had not.

WHITE ARMBAND CAMPAIGN

ANA: Elmina, why did you want to participate in this memorial?

ELMINA: The White Armband campaign commemorates May 31, 1992 when after a forceful and illegal takeover of the municipal government in the Municipality of Prijedor, the Bosnian Serb authorities issued a decree on local radio ordering all non-Serbs to mark their homes with white flags or bedsheets and to wear white armbands when leaving their homes. It was a direct and tangible marker of the “Other.”

At the beginning of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, my hometown Kozarac in the municipality of Prijedor was attacked. I was seven years old at the time. The shelling lasted for over 24 hours. On May 25, 1992, all of the non-Serb residents, including my family and I were ordered to “surrender” and to march towards Mountain Kozara. The march was long and exhausting. I remember my father carrying my oldest disabled sister on his back the whole time.

Mount Kozara Forced March, 1992. Map credit: E. Kulasic via Google Earth, 2016.

It was a march that marked the horrors that awaited us. We slept at the mountain that night and early in the morning we were once again marched back to Kozarac. A high number of civilians were killed and many more wounded while the rest of us were directed towards nearby concentration camps that were established for the non-Serb population. My family and I were detained in the Trnopolje concentration camp.

I remember seeing white flags at some of the homes. At the time, I didn’t know what the white flags meant but I did hear whispers about it. The elderly were trying to protect us thinking that we would not hear them. I remember comments like: “They will not kill us; the white flags are visible.” After over a month of starvation, humiliation, killings, torture and constant fear, we were transferred from the Trnopolje concentration camp to refugee centers in Croatia and other countries that were taking in refugees at the time. The screams, stares and hunger left a number of invisible scars; scars that require a long time to heal and this is one of the reasons why commemorating and remembering is of utmost importance for survivors. It is one of the reasons why in 2012, twenty years later and the year I moved back to Bosnia, that the White Armband Campaign became so visible.

ANA: Why in 2012 and not before?

ELMINA: The answer is complex but also simple. Since the post-war agreement, Prijedor lies in the Serb Republic (RS) entity of Bosnia. The municipality is still governed by Serbs, many of whom continue to deny the massacres. In 2012, Bosnian Muslims who returned to memorialize the deaths of their family and friends were forbidden to publicly commemorate the events, to use the term “genocide,” or to visit the former concentration camps. The local authorities claimed that such a commemoration would tarnish the image of the city. After a number of meetings and rejected requests for a public commemoration, the returnees started an online campaign. Overnight, it became an international campaign in which people posted photos wearing a white armband to social media. The goal was to draw attention to the crimes committed in Prijedor and to commemorate the 20th anniversary.

Elmina at Old Jewish Cemetery, Sarajevo, 2012. Photo credit: R. Vrgova

At the time I was studying in Sarajevo and I wanted to be more directly engaged with the people from Prijedor and Kozarac. I talked about the white armband campaign with a Macedonian classmate and photographer, and together we developed the photo campaign to document the images of individuals wearing the white armband to bring awareness to the use of objects to identify the "Other." 

I thought about my photo. I wanted to connect my experience in Kozarac, my refugee journey from Croatia to the United States, and then my return to Bosnia twenty years later. I wanted to depict my pain and my resilience. One image that recurred to me was a story that I learned about in 8th grade. It was a story about the Holocaust. Connecting my photo to the Holocaust was a way to connect these two dark histories of Europe and to draw parallels between the atrocities. I wanted to draw attention to the labeling of “Others” and the means used to identify and to kill innocent neighbors and friends. It was the reason why I took my photo at the Jewish Cemetery in Sarajevo.

I was nervous, wondering which of my classmates would participate, as some were from other narod/national groups and other parts of former Yugoslavia. However, those of us who were children during the war had a need to raise our voices against injustice both historic and in the present day. A Serb classmate of mine said to me:

"Elmina, I did not know. I knew about the David's Star [that Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust] but I did not know about the White Armband in Prijedor. It never even crossed my mind that my generation was marked in such a way and that I would be participating in raising awareness about it to make sure that it does not happen again."

This was the precise message that we intended the photo campaign to send.  The participants included my classmates from the program who came from Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Russia, Georgia, France, UK, and the U.S. Since 2012, the White Armband Campaign is now an annual memorial event.

ERM class photo with white armbands, Sarajevo, 2012. Photo credit: ERMA, R. Vrgova

ANA: What sort of restrictions did you encounter when attempting to memorialize the war?

ELMINA: This photo exhibit was the first time that I have worked with individuals from the region who were my age and in the same educational program. My previous work included a number of exhibitions, documentaries, reports and projects; however, none was as interactive as the White Armband Campaign. One of the reasons is the fact that working on memorialization requires both patience and understanding, especially when working directly with survivors. I have found that working with survivors requires a lot of time to carefully and thoughtfully understand the specific locations, histories, and crimes. With the 1.5 generation, my generation, which seeks to document the crimes and memories in order to reckon with the past, it is challenging to remember one’s own story while trying to objectively commemorate the past. Nonetheless, it is also one of the reasons why the 1.5 generation is the key to a peaceful future- this generation remembers Bosnia before the war, they have survived the war and they are the ones who have felt the consequences of war and understand why peace must prevail.

The differences are also reflected in tensions within Bosnian society, where international donors and NGOs want to focus on reconciliation and where ethno-centric and nationalistic political parties evoke the war and fear to shore up their voting base. The call to “move on”, in a way, contributed to the overall situation in Prijedor where survivors and returnees were forbidden to commemorate the 20th anniversary. For this reason, the photo campaign was so powerful--the images of wearing the armband are tangible reminders that the past is not really in the past. That it is a shadow, a painful invisible scar, lingering over Bosnia reminding all of us that a local approach to raising awareness is a concrete model for reconciliation.

REFLECTIONS       

Organized twenty years after the war, these two memorial events illustrate how memory is embodied, reworked and transmitted through materiality. These memorials demonstrate how the local is always embedded in the transnational—or what some refer to as “translocal”—when populations are forcibly displaced and globally dispersed, and external polities are involved in “state-building” (Fisher 1997).

While the Chicago 2005 memorial relied on Selma’s iconic young female survivor status to publicly mark the Srebrenica genocide, the 2012 social media armband campaign that Elmina participated in emphasized local, regional, and diasporan generational solidarity. By engaging social media to challenge the local municipal government’s denial of the Prijedor massacres, the White Armband Campaign opens up a series of questions about the role the 1.5 diaspora will play in the future of the Bosnian state: How might generational status shape survivors’ political stances toward the postwar state? How do youth diasporans define justice, and what degrees of significance do they assign to justice in relation to their daily lives? What objects are involved in communicating acts of injustice and how are the symbolic meanings of these objects reproduced—and changed—across time and space? We argue for a sustained awareness of and attention to young people’s varied experiences of forced migration and wartime violence, and to how they represent, depict, and reflect upon these experiences. Their perspectives and voices are central to how the Bosnian War is re-membered, and are integral to social wellbeing and stability in the postwar state.

White Armband Campaign participants. All photos credited to R. Vargova, 2012.

ABOUT THE AUTORS

Ana Croegaert is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Orleans. She explores political dimensions of migration and urban change, with particular attention to the intersections of race & ethnicity, gender, and class in shaping people’s senses of belonging. She is especially interested in people’s efforts to use story and visual culture to adapt space, and to alter their circumstances. Her publications can be found in American Anthropologist and North American Dialogue, among other journals and anthologies, and she is the project director of Gathering Grounds, an ongoing public anthropology project. She has a PhD in Anthropology from Northwestern University.

Elmina Kulašić, a recent returnee to Bosnia from Chicago (United States), works on genocide prevention, human rights, and democracy and public policy issues, with experience in the United States, and in Southeast Europe. Elmina holds two Master’s Degrees: an M.A. in Public Policy from the Central European University with a focus on ethnic lobbying of the European Union and the role of regional representation; and a second M.A. in Human Rights and Democracy from the University of Bologna and the University of Sarajevo with a focus on transitional justice education in the Balkan region, especially in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). She is the former Executive Director of the Advisory Council for BiH, Washington, D.C., and has interned at then-Senator (IL) Barack Obama’s district office, and Senator (IL) Richard Durbin’s district office.

Elmina has extensive public policy, education, and advocacy experience in the United States and in Europe, including: the Genocide Film Library, the 2008 Srebrenica Commemoration event on Capitol Hill, Prijedor: Lives from the Bosnian Genocide exhibit, 2012 Srebrenica commemoration event in Skopje, Macedonia, and the Višegrad Genocide Memories exhibit in Budapest. She is currently the Senior Advisor at the Victims and Witnesses of Genocide Association, Sarajevo, and founder of Bridges for the Future Association.

NOTES

[i] See Gonzales and Chavez 2012 for argument to explore the experiences of 1.5- generation as a distinct migrant cohort in the United States. See Croegaert (2015 and 2010) and Gathering Grounds book manuscript (n.d.) for discussion of Bosnian 1.5 generation in the United States.

[ii] We use the word “genocide” here in keeping with the International Criminal Court (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) findings in the case of Srebrenica, and because survivors use this term. At the same time, we recognize the limits of the term. “Genocide” developed during the age of the early twentieth century construction of “race” and is thus linked to processes of racialization (the social beliefs and practices involved in the reproduction and transformation of existing racial categories and identities). While the term has been central to establishing legal criteria for the prosecution of individuals for the massive, organized, condensed slaughter of a group of people—a significant milestone in helping to achieve some sense of justice for survivors at the international and local levels—“genocide” simultaneously reproduces the fiction of “race”. We do not enter into the problematics of this phenomenon here. However, we want to create awareness of how unreflexive use of the term may, ironically, reproduce the fiction of racialized biological and cultural differences on which the wartime project of “ethnic cleansing” centered. See R. Hayden 2008 in for critical discussion of the Srebrenica genocide, and D. Stone, ed. 2008 for historiography of genocide.

[iii] Men were more often killed outright, while women—Muslim women in particular—were targets of sexual violence. The United Nations estimates that as many as 60,000 women were victims of wartime rape (see D. Žarkov 2007 for critical discussion). Despite the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) holding the first ever trial charging rape as a war crime, there is scant public recognition of this gendered violence. While I documented multiple memorials to the thousands of men massacred during the wars, the only public recognition of wartime rape I witnessed was at an event held on Capitol Hill organized by my co-author Elmina on International Women's Day in 2009, and by Bosnian writer Aleksandar Hemon at a 2010 memorial in Chicago.

[iv] Bosniaks are Bosnian Muslims who trace their conversion to Islam to 15th c. Ottoman occupation and subsequent administration of Bosnia (Sorabji 1988). See Hromadžić (2012) for an in-depth discussion of Yugoslav-era racial/ethnic categories including narodi, narodnosti, etnicke grupe. 

[v] The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that genocide was committed in Srebrenica in July of 1995 Radislav Krstić was the first person to be convicted of genocide in Srebrenica at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Radovan Karadžić was convicted of genocide in Srebrenica.

Rethinking Home: A Powerful Look at Return Migration via Film →

Contributed by Tatyana Kleyn, The City College of New York and Director & Producer of Una Vida, Dos Países (One Life, Two Countries) 

Una Vida, Dos Países: Children and Youth (Back) in Mexico is a 30 minute documentary film with free educator resources that explores the experiences of US-born or raised students who have spent all or most of their lives in the US and returned with their family to Oaxaca, Mexico. The film is a rich teaching tool for conversations in schools about immigration and identity. To read a recent New York Times article featuring the film, please click here.

“We drove for four days through California, New Mexico and Arizona to get to the El Paso, Texas border [with Mexico]. There I spent my last moments in the US. I turned around and said, ‘I will be back, I don’t know when, but it’s a promise.’ I took my last breath on that side of the border and turned around, leaving not just friends and family, but a life I will never forget.”

— Melchor, 17 years old

Photo credits: Ben Donnellon

People from all over the world dream about migration to the United States for “a better life.”  Some receive permission from the US government to immigrate, in the form of a green card or visa.  Others cross into the country without papers when it is nearly impossible for them to attain the required permission.  Currently, there are more than 11 million people in the US who are unauthorized and are the topic of contentious immigration debates in our country.  Melchor (quoted above) and his family belonged to this subcategory of migrants during their 10 years in the US.  

While we hear a lot about immigrants coming to the US, less is known about what happens when they leave.  The discourse is often around deportations and the rising numbers of individuals the government forces to return to their country of origin.  However, other families who are in the US without papers find that circumstances related to living undocumented also force them to return.  This phenomenon reminds us that migration is not a linear process, but a cyclical one.

Photo credits: Ben Donnellon

Aside from deportations, there are a range of reasons families make the difficult decision to return.  These include reuniting with elderly family members they have not seen in years (or those their children have not even met); medical issues that require long-term healthcare that undocumented immigrants cannot access in most states in the US; discrimination via state policies that prohibit undocumented immigrants from accessing drivers licenses, college education, or financial aid; racism and xenophobia that many immigrants of color face on a regular basis; and the economic struggles of supporting a family while living in the shadows and being exploited of by the labor system.  

In order to share the stories of these returned families, and to focus on their US born and raised children, I was part of a team with Ben Donnellon, William Perez and Rafael Vásquez that created a short documentary to delve into these phenomena.   Una Vida, Dos Países: Children and Youth (Back) in Mexico explores how elementary and secondary students struggle with their identity, language learning and loss, and schooling.  The film shows some of the benefits of being “back,” such as meeting grandparents and enjoying delicious fresh Mexican food, but it also shares the challenges that returning youth face - fitting in, using Spanish for academic purposes, communicating with family who speak indigenous languages, and the economic struggles that make education an obstacle for them.  

The goals of the film are to raise awareness about this growing population of students, some of whom are dual US and Mexican citizens.  The film is also accompanied by a Spanish-English bilingual curriculum for secondary schools in the US, Mexico and beyond.  The lessons prepare the students to watch the film and to delve deeper into the areas of identity, language, economics and policies. 

A resource guide for educators in Mexico, whose students cross literal and figurative borders throughout their lives, also accompanies the documentary. These include the most obvious border, the artificial division between the US and Mexico, in addition to borders that are crossed from one state to another while living in the US.  Another border students cross daily is languages, such as English, Spanish, and, in the case of some of the families in the film, Zapotec (an indigenous language spoken in certain parts of Mexico).  These students also cross cultural borders as well as those across school systems.  For all these reasons I use Lynn Stephen’s (2007) term transborder to describe them. 

A group of transborder high school students, who call themselves “The New Dreamers,” meet to discuss the realities and challenges of being back in Mexico. Photo credits: Ben Donnellon

That these students are now (back) in Mexico does not mean that is where they will stay.  Those who are dual citizens of the US and Mexico, (if they were born in the US to at least one Mexican citizen parent), can freely travel between the two nations as long as their documentation is up to date.  Many who were undocumented in the US still see that country as their home, and many hope to return.  However, applying and receiving papers or re-crossing countries’ borders without authorization are tremendously costly and difficult for Mexicans.  But regardless of where they will be in the future - the US, Mexico or another nation - they bring with them a wealth of resources. including their multilingualism, cross-cultural capabilities and in-depth understanding of how national and transnational policies – or the absence of them – impacts people at the most human level.  

The film and accompanying resources can be accessed via: www.unavidathefilm.com. For additional updates on the film, screenings and the transborder students, join us on Facebook and Twitter. The film and resources were funded by the US-Mexico Foundation.

This blog was originally published on the American Immigration Council’s Education blog, Teach Immigration on March 28, 2016.  The American Immigration Council’s Education Department strives to promote a better understanding of immigrants and immigration by providing educational resources that inspire thoughtful dialogue, creative teaching and critical thinking. Please click here for more information.

Child Protection or Security Agendas? NGOs address the Syrian Refugee Crisis in Lebanon

by Estella Carpi and Chiara Diana

     In the wake of the massive influx of refugees from Syria to Lebanon (2011-2014), some international NGOs have intervened in specific regions of Lebanon to prevent Lebanese and Syrian youth from “radicalizing” themselves and joining armed groups. In the presence of security and political risks, these NGOs play a sizable role in territories that often become destinations for refugees and migrants. We recognize their work as an effort to “neutralize” social spaces by stifling any factor causing local instability. 
     In this framework, youth quickly come to be addressed as objects of concern but rarely as subjects of decision-making and aware action. Our study seeks to unpack international NGOs’ discourses about children’s vulnerability and protection, which are generally formulated according to universalized conceptions of childhood. This research is aimed at understanding the space between global security agendas, child protection, and humanitarian action. Finally, our study shows the controversial character of humanitarian agencies that alternate between depoliticizing younger generations and complying with the social order established by local power holders.

Armed young boy in the Syrian War

Syria’s conflict is impacting neighboring countries in myriad ways. Since the conflict started in 2011 as a result of several anti-government street protests and the consequent heavy shelling of the opposition areas, more than one million Syrians fleeing violence and political persecution arrived in Lebanon. Among these Syrians are those who are registered with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and in search of social and legal protection.

Refugee influxes are generally considered to pose diverse challenges, ranging from the political to the socio-economic. Here, we choose to focus on the humanitarian programs meant to prevent North Lebanon-based children from joining armed groups currently combating in Syria. An example of these is Disarmament–Demobilization–Reintegration programs (DDRs) directed by international NGOs at 15-18 year-old youth. These programs target childhood in a bid to avert suitable conditions for armament.

Through ethnographic research, semi-structured interviews with two large international NGOs, and in-depth interviews with local residents (both Syrians and Lebanese) in North Lebanon, our study primarily focuses on the Akkar region and the city of Tripoli.

Child protection map of north Lebanon

The research we are presently conducting unpacks international NGOs’ discourses about children’s vulnerability and protection, discourses formulated according to universalized conceptions of childhood. It also demonstrates the controversial character of humanitarian agencies that alternate between depoliticizing young generations and complying with the social order established by local power holders.

 Informal refugee camp next to the Syrian border. 'Akkar (North Lebanon), 2013. Photo taken by Estella Carpi.

A number of international NGOs[1] attempt to dissuade children who resettled in Lebanon from joining combating factions - especially the several armed Syrian opposition brigades—while prompting their families to send them to school and lead a “decent life.” Some of these NGOs provide vocational training to 14 and 15 year-old teenagers who dropped out of school in an attempt to discourage them from joining armed factions. “If the youth have education and professional skills, they won’t fear for their income and they won’t feel hopeless. That’s how they end up warring or even becoming suicide bombers,” an NGO worker affirmed during an interview.

Similarly, another international NGO offers common school programs to Syrians and Lebanese children and youth, as the education and overall future of both communities are jeopardized. Indeed, young men from both nationalities are in fact recruited in takfiri (Salafi ideology) armed groups combating in Syria. As “beneficiaries,” both Syrian and Lebanese children do not need to be “infantilized,” that is to say, emptied of their political afflatus. In any situation of conflict and violence, they are always defensible since they are presumed to never have individual viewpoints. While here we are not promoting practices which would simply place blame on children and youth, we rather seek to highlight that the youth are the easiest vessels of humanitarian sympathy and generosity (Rieff 2002: 26), and this belief often leads to the humanitarian misconceptions of childhood that we will illustrate below.

Informal refugee camp next to the Syrian border. 'Akkar (North Lebanon), 2013. Photo taken by Estella Carpi.

Although the Syrian government criminalized the recruitment of children by armed forces and non-institutional groups in 2013, such legal protection measures continue to be disregarded by all warring sides. As mentioned above, employment is considered the most effective dissuasive factor to avoid war recruitment. As a 2015 livelihoods assessment indicates (Save the Children and UNICEF 2015), families are struggling to meet their basic needs and feel they have no other alternative than putting their children to work, marrying off their daughters, and allowing their children to join armed groups. Moreover, official work permits are unlikely to be obtained nowadays for the Syrians who have relocated to neighboring nations. Without work permits, those working illegally risk imprisonment, fines, return to refugee camps, or even deportation to Syria. In addition, some children live in areas without functioning schools, as they have mostly been bombed by the Asad military aviation. Joining an armed group remains one of their few available options (HRW 2014: 2).

Nevertheless, it seems to be quite difficult to gather reliable and detailed information about recruitment efforts inside Syria and in the neighboring countries. Indeed, war recruitment is a strategy that is inherent neither to Jihadist groups nor to Lebanon. For instance, in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, a child labor assessment found that 30% of children interviewed had been approached for recruitment (UNICEF 2014). Therefore, in the whole region affected by the Syrian crisis, joining presents benefits to children. Children who join armed groups can in fact receive monthly salaries of up to US$400. Others participate without pay in order to join family members or friends, or because they have suffered on a personal level at the hands of one of the warring parties and desire to exact revenge.

There is also very limited information about the willingness of children and young boys to join and serve armed groups in Syria today. However, generally, it has been noted that many children and adolescents are abducted and conscripted at an early stage. They latter turn into loyal fighters (Depuy and Peters 2010: 67). Likewise, young people recruited by government forces, or informal groups of government-affiliated thugs–Asad’s shabbiha in Syria—are often told that they are protecting their families and homes against “terrorists” who oppose the government. In this sense, indoctrination in governmental armed groups becomes a continuation and expansion of state propaganda.

Children militarily recruited by the “Islamic State”

Reflecting media biases, international NGOs likewise maintain a number of misconceptions about the children they aim to serve. In fact, Syrian refugee children are homogeneously represented as vulnerable. They are quickly classified as innocent victims and impartial, with little opinion about the current conflict. More specifically, according to the analysis we have conducted so far, the misconceptions of the international NGOs are threefold. The first misconception resides in the definition of childhood and child vulnerability, influencing how need and aid are imagined. Indeed, the translation of “vulnerability” variously refers to local conceptions and ways of being addressed in Lebanon. “Vulnerable people” in Lebanon are often referred to with the expression “mustad’afun,” which literally means “the weakened.” This particularly stresses the political agentivity behind the low status and miserable condition of the individual. In other words, individuals are not weak per se, but they have been weakened by historical processes, usually started by political foes.

The second misconception of the international NGO apparatus lies in the standardization of age-focused individual rights and social categories as a result of a universalization of western cultural standards. Indeed, childhood is not approached as a relative process that varies according to culture and context, but rather as a fixed age range.

Thirdly, the NGOs addressing children tend to view regional sectarianism and violence as innate characteristics of Lebanon and Syria and as the very cause of conflict, thereby ignoring the territorial political issues and their connections to the whole region. Nevertheless, the lack of a constructive sense of citizenship and engaged civic participation are certainly not to be blamed on the international NGOs’ action per se, but rather on the longstanding state abandonment and state hostility in the northern Lebanese region, in addition to the widespread use of violence as an instrument to pursue political goals and elitist privileges.

NGO language and implementation strategies thus largely influence and reify the category of “children in need,” who, in the Lebanese context, are merely associated with war and displacement. In brief, youth quickly come to be addressed in terms of objects of concern and rarely subjects of decision-making and aware action.

Syrian primary school for refugee children, Tripoli (North Lebanon). Photo taken by Estella Carpi, 2013.

As our current analysis indicates, the international NGOs that operate in North Lebanon believe they can act in a social void, one in which armament and recruitment are regarded and addressed as motivated simply by the ongoing conflict in Syria and hardly ever correlated to longstanding social rifts and unresolved political issues–sometimes not associable with community frictions–which concern the local residents to greater extent.

From a local perspective, the children who join the activities promoted by these NGOs are not viewed in the same way as those exposed to higher risk of being recruited or voluntarily recruiting. According to the in-depth interviews that we conducted thus far with Tripoli’s residents connected to armed groups in Syria, the families whose children join the international NGOs’ activities are generally affluent or plugged in international networks. This local perception is noteworthy, as it illustrates how non-beneficiaries view addressed vulnerability as an empowered condition, as the privileged social status of some social groups. The parents collaborating with these NGOs are therefore believed as unwilling to send their children to fight, not being themselves prone to political violence. 

On the one hand, our interlocutors have so far expressed perplexity about the external–essentially “western”–way of conducting studies on this issue. In an interview conducted in Tripoli, two Lebanese, ‘Abdallah and Walid, recounted, “international NGOs lack direct access to local communities, and end up addressing families that are not much prone to let their children fight in Syria and that have not been politically oppressed. How can they imagine having tangible results?”
On the other hand, the local interviewees who were neither addressed nor approached by international NGOs highlighted how their children were not “manipulated” to undertake violence for the parental cause, but rather they reasserted that childhood is integral part of the parental effort to implement local and regional social justice. The recruitment of young boys in armed groups, across Lebanon as elsewhere, is a product of much complex social factors which are not simply associable with “evil adult recruiters” or structural features. While international law wants to see adults as conveyers of an inherently and unchangeably “violent culture,” it aprioristically tackles children as unaware perpetrators and objects of manipulation (Rosen 2010: 50), therefore detachable from the local predominant culture and society in which they grow up. To the same extent, these international NGOs tend to believe that the institutional and cultural environments they are able to provide structurally enable children to start a better life, or at least protect them against armed violence on a sustainable basis.

While international humanitarianism is unlikely to see any act of the child as an expression of local culture and therefore “blameless,” the violence of adults is deemed as inherent to the cultural pattern at hand. This marks the epistemological contradiction which underlies the NGO efforts to foster an unconditioned primary depoliticization of children in North Lebanon. At the antipodes of a conception of childhood as politically engaged and aware beyond their exposition to war recruitment, international human rights protectors are overlooking a much more needed protection for children exposed to state and non-state terrorist attacks in schools and public spaces. This clearly points to a close correlation between child recruitment prevention and the generalized concerns of international security apparatuses. Our study will provide insights on how such global politics concerns are addressable through the ongoing NGOization of Lebanon.

Works Cited

Depuy, K. E., Peters, K. (2010) War and Children. A Reference Handbook, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, in the Contemporary Military, Strategic, and Security Issues.

Human Rights Watch (2014) Maybe We Live, and Maybe We Die. Retrieved from: https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/06/22/maybe-we-live-and-maybe-we-die/recruitment-and-use-children-armed-groups-syria

Rieff, D. (2002) A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. With an Afterword on Iraq, New York City, NY: Simon & Schuster Publishers.

Rosen, D. M. (2010) “Social Change and the Legal Construction of Child Soldier Recruitment in the Special Court for Sierra Leone”, in Childhood in Africa, an Interdisciplinary Journal, Issue 1, Vol. 2, p. 48-57.

Save the Children and UNICEF (July 2, 2015) Small Hands, Heavy Burden. How the Syria Conflict is Driving More Children into the Workforce. Retrieved from: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/RS102356_CHILD%20LABOUR%20%285%29_low.pdf.

UNICEF (2014) Assessment of the Situation of Child Labor among Syrian Refugee Children in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Estella Carpi is presently a Research Fellow at Lebanon Support (Beirut) and a Research Consultant for the New York University (Abu Dhabi). She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sydney (Australia), with a research project on the social response to humanitarian assistance in Beirut’s southern suburbs and in the Akkar villages (Lebanon). In the past she also worked as a researcher at Trends Research & Advisory - Abu Dhabi, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) – Cairo, and the International Development Research Center (IDRC) – Cairo, mostly focusing on social development, welfare, NGOs, and humanitarian emergencies in the Middle East. She has lectured extensively in the Social Sciences in Italy, Lebanon, and Australia. After studying Arabic in Milan and Damascus (2002-2007), she wrote her MPhil dissertation in Linguistic Anthropology on the everyday speech in contemporary Lebanon (2008). To access all her publications: https://nyuad.academia.edu/ESTELLACARPI.

Chiara Diana is a Research Associate for the French Center for Economic, Juridical, Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ, Egypt). In 2015, she received her PhD in History from the Institute for Research and Studies on Arab and Muslim World (IREMAM) and the Aix-Marseille University (France). Her thesis research is a socio-history of social and political construction of childhood in Egypt during the Mubarak era (1981-2011). In the past, she taught at the Aix-Marseille University and the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris). Her current research interests include childhood and youth in Arab countries, activism and political socialization of young generations in revolutionary, post-revolutionary and conflict contexts. Her latest work is entitled “Children’s Citizenship: Revolution and the Seeds of an Alternative Future in Egypt” in Herrera Linda (ed.) and Sakr Rehab, Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East. New York: Routledge (2014). To access her publications: https://univ-amu.academia.edu/ChiaraDiana.

[1]The NGOs included in the present study will remain anonymous in order to protect the identity of their beneficiaries and their specific territories of intervention.

“The Stress Along the Way”: Medicalization and Transit Migration

by Kristin Yarris and Heide Castañeda

This month, Youth Circulations features a series of conversations between two migration scholars, Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida) and Kristin Yarris (University of Oregon). In this series, Drs. Castañeda and Yarris creatively and critically examine representations of the circulation of Central American and Mexican migrants through what they describe as "a zone of transit" in Western Mexico. Their research is funded by The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and is a collaboration with Dr. Juan Manuel Mendoza of the Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa.

Kristin Yarris: 

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Several participants in our project on Transit Migration through Mexico’s Pacific Route recently attended a workshop offered by two organizers with Doctors without Borders-Mexico (Médicos sin Fronteras, or MSF). While MSF doesn’t have a field site where we work, they do partner with migrant shelters--particularly those in the south and north of Mexico-- where they attend to the physical and mental health needs of migrants traveling through Mexico to “El Norte,” or the USA. In our field site, during this workshop, MSF was seeking to train local NGO staff and others working to protect the health and safety of migrants in transit, teaching people to recognize the signs of mental distress, and discussing appropriate responses.

Unlike the rhetoric dominating U.S. media during the current political cycle, which portrays migrants as criminals, “rapists” and drug traffickers, anthropological fieldwork shows that Central Americans traveling north through Mexico are highly vulnerable. These are people fleeing extreme conditions of poverty, violence and failed states and traveling with few possessions other than the clothes they are wearing and the few pesos they manage to carry in their pockets (Vogt 2013). MSF’s humanitarian assistance thus becomes essential and life-saving for migrants in transit through Mexico-- especially along the tracks of freight trains used as transportation, where migrants suffer traumas including falls, limb loss, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and extortion.

The images here are from a brochure distributed during the MSF workshop described above, which was held in August, 2015. What I find provocative in these images is the way the pamphlet transforms the violence and extremity of transit into a medicalized version of suffering: “estrés” (stress). My concern is that medicalizing transit violence and its mental health effects as “stress" risks shifting our gaze away from the sociopolitical dimensions of migrant suffering. Further, medicalization individualizes both psychosocial distress and the responsibility to respond to it. “Stress”, in particular, whether in U.S. or Mexican popular discourse, also implies an orientation to the individual sufferer, who must “manage stress”, as part of our responsibilities as neoliberal subjects.

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These critiques of the medicalization of suffering are not new. Indeed, medical anthropologists have exposed how the individuation of harm reduction responses may save lives but do little to alleviate social suffering (Garcia 2010) and may exacerbate conditions of extremity (Jenkins 2015).  When I look across the images in MSF’s brochure– of migrants jumping across moving train cars, lying on the side of train tracks, or sharing a cigarette while ostensibly waiting to jump onto a moving train – and compare these images of danger and risk to the professionalized stress language contained in the bullet-points of text – “What is Stress? A physiological response we have when we perceive life’s demands as overly-difficult” – I perceive a troubling disconnect between medical discourse and migrant reality. And yet, I am able to critique this brochure from an academic distance, as I’m not currently in the field but instead sitting comfortably behind my laptop screen, analyzing images. So, I’m left with an unsettled feeling, both troubled by medicalization but also mindful of the crucial role MSF and similar humanitarian NGOs play in providing “primeros auxilios psicológicos” (“psychological first aid”) to migrants in transit, which can indeed be essential to migrants’ survival through a perilous journey.  

Heide Castañeda:

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As Kristin points out, the images and text in the MSF pamphlet medicalize the violence and extremity inherent in the migrant journey, transforming it into a form of suffering called “estrés” (stress).  This occurs not only in the Mexican context; we have seen similar discourses about the mental health consequences of migratory transit in relation to Syrian refugees entering Europe. For the non-migrant viewer of the images, the individualization of this psychosocial distress onto migrant bodies works to remove any political imperative or ethical responsibility to respond. 

What strikes me also is that pathologizing the suffering that accompanies transiting from one place to another assumes that there is something abnormal about migration, or that it is somehow a new phenomenon. In fact, mobility has been a recurring feature of human populations across time and space, yet migration is still often discussed as if it were unusual. Time and again we encounter political and public debates that rely on an understanding of migration as abnormal. That migration is strange becomes “common sense.”

 At the same time, we of course recognize that this particular migration through Mexico – often but not always by Central Americans fleeing economic and political insecurity and underdevelopment – is particularly extreme. Not only are people migrating after having already suffered violences in their place of origin, but also travel along these routes is especially risky amidst harsh environmental conditions, dangerous modes of transportation, and interpersonal aggressions. In this case, MSF steps in where states fail and “do their best” despite the many critiques of short-sighted and depoliticized humanitarian aid. Indeed, MSF is among the few organizations that, despite observing neutrality and impartiality in the name of universal medical ethics, has also explicitly chosen to take a political stand for victims as part of their humanitarian efforts. 

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Many of the images here show the dangers of travel (by train or by flimsy raft). One interesting photo shows two men sharing a smoke – is this supposed to indicate tobacco or marijuana use, to cope with estrés?  Perhaps, but I also see in the image camaraderie, solidarity, and the opportunity to share about one’s experiences. Maybe I am too optimistic, but this underscores that a migratory journey is not always a negative thing, nor really a “thing” at all. It is instead a social process. 

Kristin Yarris:

I agree that we need to be cautious about the tendency to medicalize migration-related stress or pathologize migration itself. As Heide rightly points out, migration is a social process and has always been one. Yet, I am also mindful of the very real violence of the journey that undocumented Central Americans make through Mexico on their way (usually) to the U.S., what Janis Jenkins (2015) might call a condition of extremity. Where the Mexican and U.S. states fail to protect migrants, NGOs like MSF respond by providing medical services and care at various points along transit routes through Mexico. This work is vital, often life-saving, and I value and respect our MSF colleagues in the field. Still, the tone and message of the brochure is unsettling to me, both for the brochure's ambiguity and for the ambivalence I feel about medicalizing migrant stress.

One area of ambiguity regards the target audience of the brochure - who is meant to receive these messages and what action(s) are the messages meant to provoke? At first glance, the pamphlet seems directed towards migrants themselves, given the tone, language, and how-to type instructions. On one hand, it is difficult to imagine migrants sitting down and reading such a brochure, given the instability and insecurity of their journeys. However, we have indeed encountered Central American migrants as far north as Sinaloa clutching onto the maps and printed guides that NGOs distribute in the South of Mexico, in shelters in Chiapas and Oaxaca. During interviews with migrants in a shelter in Sinaloa, I have witnessed travel-tired men and women pulling folded pieces of glossy paper from their jeans pockets; their edges worn and tattered from weeks of transit, the brochures and maps still serve as helpful guides for migrants making crucial decisions about their next northward steps. I am made to wonder if the benefit of this type of brochure lies well beyond the content of the message it contains. In other words, I am coming to see how such brochures become material instantiations of humanitarian aid, small tokens of social support – reminding migrants that, despite the dangers and marginalities of transit, they matter, they are cared for, and their lives have value. 

Works Cited

Garcia, A., 2010. The pastoral clinic: Addiction and dispossession along the Rio Grande. University of California Press.

Jenkins, J.H., 2015. Extraordinary conditions: Culture and experience in mental illness. University of California Press.

Vogt, W.A., 2013. Crossing Mexico: Structural violence and the commodification of undocumented Central American migrants. American Ethnologist, 40(4), pp.764-780.

Kristin Yarris is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on global health, global mental health, migration, kinship and care.

Heide Castañeda is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Her research lies at the intersection of cultural and medical anthropology and focuses on migrant health, constructions of citizenship, and how policy and legal institutions shape everyday experiences of immigrant communities. Current projects focus on: mixed-status families along the US/Mexico border; transit migration in Sinaloa, Mexico; effects of healthcare policies on immigrant communities; and immigrant youth movements in Texas and Florida. 

Visualizing Risk and Potential: Migrants in Zones of Transit

This month, Youth Circulations features a series of conversations between two migration scholars, Heide Castañeda (University of South Florida) and Kristin Yarris (University of Oregon). Drs. Castañeda and Yarris creatively and critically examine representations of the circulation of Central American and Mexican migrants through what they describe as a zone of transit in Western Mexico. Their research is funded by The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and is a collaboration with Dr. Juan Manuel Mendoza, of the Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa.

by Heide Castañeda, PhD and Kristin Yarris, PhD

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Heide Castañeda:

The image selected here portrays a woman and a young child on a ladder attached to a train. The boy seems to pause as he looks up towards her, while the camera captures the woman’s leg movement as, the caption reveals, she climbs onto a train. Without this detail, the viewer might assume they are disembarking. The viewer is drawn to the pair through the framing of the shot, with the length of the train extending into the distance in one direction and the ladder in another. The two people are foregrounded against the bare, geometric metal lines. The photographer also hints that this is a freight rather than a passenger train:  there are no windows from which passengers gaze; the metal frame is dirty, scuffed, and utilitarian; and on the lower left, a set of numbers with a meaning indecipherable to anyone but railroad employees. These numbers do not reference the human cargo depicted in the photograph. The landscape through which the train runs is unremarkable, neither welcoming nor foreboding – some trees, a sign, a utility line. The setting could be anywhere. While the pair is traveling – they are on a train, after all – they do not carry anything beyond the woman’s small purse. Their clothing is clean, casual, and everyday. 

An image, however, does not hold meaning a priori outside its relation to the viewer, who must fill in the missing information to make sense of it. Often, this is done using social conventions: Is the woman the child’s mother? She must be, the viewer might reason, since she appears to be the age of a parent, female, and clearly accompanying a young boy. The viewer might assume that a mother would not leave her child behind, nor let him travel alone, and thus the two journey together. The boy looks up at her, as if to say, I trust you, I will follow you. 

At other times, the viewer makes meaning though circulating public and media discourses: Are these two individuals fleeing northward to the U.S. from Central America?  The viewer might guess their origins based on their appearance, though the two-dimensional image masks other clues like the language they are speaking. A viewer might surmise that because they are hopping onto a train, that their origin was one of the so-called “Northern Triangle” countries of Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala.  Because of the flurry of news reports and public debates in the U.S. regarding a humanitarian “crisis,” border securitization, and refugee policy beginning in the summer of 2014, the viewer has likely heard or seen reports about women and children’s desperate and dangerous travels northward, often atop trains. Perhaps the viewer has encountered explanations about the circumstances from which they are fleeing. The circulation of visual representations, such as the one offered here, also have a broader social impact as part of such news reports, invoking and evoking an emotional response in the viewer.

Kristin Yarris: 

I appreciate Heide’s attention to detail in this photograph, particularly the way she calls the viewer’s eye to the relationship between the boy and the woman and likewise invites us to consider how social and political discourse surrounding the Central American migration “crisis” filters our response to this image. My response to this photograph occurs on several levels. First, I consider the photographer her or himself.  What is the role of the U.S. media, of photographers and journalists working for outlets such as the New York Times, in providing not only coverage of the movement of people across borders, but also an explanation as to why people migrate? In the historical moment we find ourselves in the U.S. today, when xenophobia and social exclusion seem to shade our responses to displaced persons; the potential role of the media in contextualizing the motives for migration, and in humanizing migrants themselves, seems more crucial and essential than ever.

I recall recently viewing a YouTube video making the rounds of social networking sites. Produced by Mexican human rights activists, the video was a comedic critique of journalists rushing to cover the “story” of Central American migration through Mexico. The clip compellingly satires journalists who sell images and narratives to media outlets and who draw attention to themselves as much as to the human suffering they are presumably attempting to portray. This video critique shapes my response to this image. I wonder: How many similar images circulate; how familiar has this image become, and will this familiarity result in a loss of empathy for migrant suffering? These questions push me to ponder my own role, as a researcher and U.S.-based academic, in portraying and analyzing Central American migration through Mexico. I am cognizant of how my own research reflects and may reinforce negative attention or response to migrants’ plight, and that it is my responsibility to work against this. At the same time, in the classroom, I have seen how my sharing of stories similar to the one told in this image effectively sensitizes students’ comprehension of the risks of migration, the desperation of migrants, and the responsibility to respond in humanitarian ways. 

On another level, my response to this photo is to probe further our assumptions about the relationship between the woman and the boy. What if they are not mother and son? What if they are, like many migrants we meet in zones of transit in Mexico, “fictive kin,” people making kinship or relatedness through the trials and tribulations of transit itself (Ibsen and Klobus 1972, Carsten 2004), violence and the threat of violence pushing co-nationals or even strangers to claim relatedness in attempts at self-protection and preservation of life of self and other? Should our response to migrants, our inclusion or exclusion of them in our social body, depend upon whether they are “real” kin or “really” deserving or “truly” portraying the reasons for their flight?

“Images have equal or greater potential to pacify as they do to persuade.”

Photographic images can be powerful in shaping human understanding. As we saw with the photograph of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy killed at sea while seeking refuge in Europe, some images come to have iconic power, shaping a movement in public opinion and garnering a political response. And yet, I remain somewhat cynical about the potential power of the visual image or video, largely given its ubiquity in contemporary online culture. Images have equal or greater potential to pacify as they do to persuade. 

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My thoughts shift to the risks of photographs. One of our interlocutors in Sinaloa is a local woman who voluntarily prepares and provides meals for dozens of migrants each day, carrying them in her personal car to the side of the railway where she and the other volunteers she organizes hand out hot food in plastic cups to migrants riding the trains. This woman has been explicit with us that we are not to take any photos of her and her work, for she wishes to remain anonymous, an informal humanitarian, off the radar of NGO networks and international researchers.  In part, her concerns are for her safety, as she has been threatened by neighbors for “bringing criminals” into the community and by migration authorities for “abetting unauthorized migration.” In some ways, the risks she faces make her humanitarian work all the more impressive. And yet, as she resists documenting her efforts, I simultaneously recognize the power of images as tools for teaching and deepening understanding and humanitarian response, particularly important – as Heide points out – in contexts of political polarization like that in which we find ourselves in the U.S.

Heide Castañeda: 

I agree wholeheartedly that we must be open to alternative explanations about the relationship between the woman and the child. In our own joint fieldwork on transit migration in the state of Sinaloa, Kristin and I have encountered such “fictive” – but no less precious – kinship relationships among people who journey together. These include aunts or cousins who may present themselves as a child’s mother to ensure protection, or people who were strangers only days before decide it would be safer and logistically more feasible to travel as “husband and wife.” We know that family reunification with parents and spouses already living in the U.S. is a strong driver for migration from Central America, and have heard reports of parents saving up to pay between $6,000 and $8,000 to have their children brought to them. Sometimes they travel in custody of other family members – an aunt, grandmother, sister-in-law, or cousin – or trusted acquaintances such as a neighbor or family friend. When money changes hands, this further complicates popular and legal notions of human smuggling: Here, we find intimate relationships to an extent commodified as smuggler/guides are often family members or hometown acquaintances. Yet even when payment is not involved, we must be careful not to assume – especially in the context of migration – that care practices occur only within the nuclear family.  Still, if apprehended while entering the U.S., children will be separated from anyone who is not a parent or legal guardian and placed in the care and custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. 

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The broader issue Kristin raises is that many Americans simply are not familiar enough with the circumstances that lead people migrate. This naturally shapes their responses and potential calls to action. The push factors driving Central American migration to the U.S. include economic and political insecurity, violence, and underdevelopment. The failure of our politicians to achieve meaningful immigration reform has exacerbated this situation, since family-based petitions for legal status remain out of reach for most Central Americans already living in the U.S., leaving parents and their children few choices other than risking the dangers of migration. 

This is why photography is a powerful medium: It permits not only the documentation of the risks and desperations associated with migration, but in offering a human portrait of the journey, can provoke a sense of obligation to respond in meaningful ways. As the Department of Homeland Security currently enacts a series of raids targeting hundreds of Central American families, this issue must not be a convenient pawn in the political games of an election year. The circumstances spurring migration have not changed. People must be treated as refugees seeking protection and given meaningful access to due process provisions that exist under U.S. and international refugee law. 

Works Cited

Carsten, Janet. 2004. After Kinship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Charles A. Ibsen and Patricia Klobus 1972. Fictive Kin Term Use and Social Relationships: Alternative Interpretations Author(s): Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Nov., 1972), pp. 615-620 National Council on Family Relations

Heide Castañeda is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. Her research lies at the intersection of cultural and medical anthropology and focuses on migrant health, constructions of citizenship, and how policy and legal institutions shape everyday experiences of immigrant communities. Current projects focus on: mixed-status families along the US/Mexico border; transit migration in Sinaloa, Mexico; effects of healthcare policies on immigrant communities; and immigrant youth movements in Texas and Florida. 

Kristin Yarris is Assistant Professor of International Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on global health, global mental health, migration, kinship and care.

A Primer for Governors: Legal and humanitarian repercussions of shutting borders to Syrian refugees

by: Anita Maddali, Esq.

Director of Clinics and Associate Professor of Law, Northern Illinois University

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In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, 34 U.S. governors have issued statements indicating that their states will not accept Syrian refugees.  Some intend to put a hold on allowing the government to resettle Syrian refugees within their states until the federal government’s screening process is vetted.  These same governors are asking the Senate Majority Leader and the House Speaker to include a provision in the spending bill to prohibit the admission of Syrian refugees.  

The Paris attacks have also created a platform for presidential candidates to make claims in which they align themselves on the side of safety, national security and a Christian ideology. Jeb Bush recently announced that he would only grant refugee status to Syrian Christians.  Mike Huckabee insisted that Paul Ryan should “lead and reject the importation of those fleeing the Middle East” or “step down” if he fails to do so. Reflecting earlier eras of xenophobia and gatekeeping in the U.S., these statements not only misrepresent actual domestic refugee processes, but they additionally ignore the United States’ obligations and commitment to accept refugees under domestic and international law. They likewise perpetuate an inaccurate and violent image of refugees themselves: According to the Migration Policy Institute, of the 784,000 refugees resettled in the United States since 2001, only 3 have been accused of terrorism-related activities, two of whom were not planning attacks in the States and a third whose plans were described as “barely credible.”  

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Turning away refugees ignores the human face of suffering. More than half of the four million Syrian refugees who have been forced to flee Syria because of violence and terror within their country are women and children. These are people who desire and desperately need safety, security and peace for themselves and their loved ones. The very purpose of refugee law is to provide these things. Should we follow these governors’ actions and turn Syrian refugees away, then we as a nation are ignoring our obligations under both international and domestic law. We are responding to universal human needs with hate and fear rather than compassion.

To understand domestic and international law relating to refugees, some history is required. In 1948, the United States passed Displaced Persons Legislation (1). Under this legislation, the U.S. was to accept only 100,000 persons over a two-year period. Significantly, these individuals had to be registered as displaced on December 22, 1945—effectively excluding those displaced persons, primarily Jews, who entered camps for displaced persons in 1946 and 1947 (Divine 1972: 120 cited in Rodriguez and Legomsky 2015: 906). President Truman and others declared the legislation insufficient, stating that it reflected a restrictionist and anti-Semetic response. In 1950 Congress amended the Act, thereby permitting the admission of more than 400,000 refugees, including those who had been displaced prior to January 1, 1949 (Rodriguez and Legomsky 2015).

In 1950 the United Nations established the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to assist with the resettlement of the one million refugees displaced by the war.  A year later, the United Nations adopted the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which included the international definition of a refugee (2).  The U.S. did not sign the 1951 Convention, but became a party to it when it acceded to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (3). The 1967 Protocol removed the geographic and time restrictions from the 1951 Convention, which had limited the definition of a refugee to those individuals who were fleeing persecution as a result of WWII.

Despite the United States’ accidence to the 1967 protocol, it did not have an adequate domestic mechanism for accepting refugees. When Congress passed the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, it created a system of preferences, including a seventh preference category for the admission of those who faced persecution and were fleeing either a “communist-dominated country” or a country “within the general area of the Middle East,” as well as anyone “uprooted by catastrophic natural calamity” (Goodwin-Gil and McAdam 2007: 426-427). The annual ceiling for admission under this category was 17,400, a number particularly inadequate to address the growing number of refugees fleeing war and genocide of the 1960s and 70s. Because of the insufficient allowances of the seventh category, the Attorney General frequently used his authority to parole groups of refugees into the United States, even though parole is really a device intended for providing temporary relief (Goodwin-Gil and McAdam 2007).

In 1980 Congress enacted the Refugee Act (4). The Act  is significant for three critical reasons. First, it modeled the refugee definition after that provided in the 1951 Convention (amended by the 1967 Protocol). Refugee status thus requires persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” (5). Second, under the Act the President, after engaging in “appropriate consultation” with Congress, determines the annual admission of refugees. In other words, there are no numerical restrictions. Congress also authorizes the President to allocate additional slots for an “unforeseen emergency refugee situation” occurring after the annual allocation is determined (6). Third, the Act created the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), within the Department of Health and Human Services.  ORR is responsible for administrating programs funded by the federal government throughout the U.S. to resettle refugees (7).

The Immigration Act directs the United States Refugee Admissions Program to designate areas of “special humanitarian concern to the United States in accordance with a determination made by the President after appropriate consultation” (8).  The current priority system is as follows:

• Priority 1 – Individual cases referred to the program by virtue of their circumstances and apparent need for resettlement;
• Priority 2 – Groups of cases designated as having access to the program by virtue of their circumstances and apparent need for resettlement;
• Priority 3 – Individual cases from designated nationalities granted access for purposes of reunification with family members already in the United States.

Today, there are approximately 19.5 million refugees worldwide, with over 14 million under the mandate of the UNHCR. Fifty-one percent of the world’s refugees are children.  In 2014, an average of 42,500 persons were forced to leave their home per day. The term “refugee” encompasses only those who are outside their country of nationality and does not include those who are internally displaced within their country (although the President of the United States can specify special circumstances in which a person could qualify for refugee status if still in her country of origin). For instance, of the 14 million refugees under UNHCR’s mandate, over four million are from Syria.  However, there are 7.6 million Syrians internally displaced within Syria who are not designated as refugees.

UNHCR is required to find “durable solutions” for refugees under its mandate. These include: 

Source: Syrian child asleep at the Hungary border.

1. Repatriation – working with the person’s country of origin to ensure a safe return – an option that has been increasingly unavailable. In 2014, approximately 126,800 refugees repatriated, which is the lowest number since 1983; 
2. Integration – integrating the individual into the host country; 
3. Resettlement – an option for those who cannot return home.  Approximately 28 nations, including the United States, provide resettlement under UNHCR’s third durable solution option. Importantly, less than one percent of the 14 million refugees are permanently resettled, and the U.S. typically accepts approximately half of those referred for resettlement.

The process of preparing a case for resettlement is long and extensive, and it frequently hinders quick resettlement in emergency situations. Most often, it is the UNHCR who refers a case for resettlement, but it can also be a U.S. embassy or an NGO.  There are nine Resettlement Support Centers (RSC) that are funded by the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and exist throughout the world to receive and process these cases. RSCs collect biographic and other information necessary for the in-person interviews that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) conducts with applicants. Cases are screened by the FBI and put through databases run by the Defense Department and other federal agencies. A person is checked for any grounds of inadmissibility, which would prohibit his or her admission.  It is approximately 18-24 months before an individual case is approved for resettlement within the United States.

Under his authority, President Obama allocated admission of 70,000 refugees for fiscal year 2015. This has been the allocated number for the past few years, but it’s important to note that in the past the number was much higher.  For instance, in fiscal year 1995 112,000 refugee admissions were authorized, and in 1991, the number was 132,000 (Rodriguez and Legomsky 2015: 912).  After the Vietnam War, 402,000 Vietnamese refugees were admitted.  At the same time, the number the President authorizes does not necessarily result in that number of refugees being admitted.  For example, 70,000 admissions were authorized for fiscal year 2002, but, as a response to 9/11 only 18,652 were admitted.  In 2003, 50,000 were authorized for admission, but only 25,329 were admitted.  Rodriguez and Legomsky 2015: 913.

Of the 70,000 refugees admitted into the United States during the 2014 fiscal year, only 249 were from Syria.  Since September 2015, the U.S. has accepted 1,854 Syrian refugees. In accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act, President Obama announced that he would increase the 2015 allocation by 10,000, an amount that would derive from the 18,000 referrals submitted by the UNHCR.  More than half of these referrals are children.

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The restrictionist response to the Syrian refugee crisis is strikingly similar to the U.S.’ response toward Jewish refugees during World War II. In July 1938, 67% of Americans opposed admitting refugees.  In January 1939, Americans were polled and asked whether the government should permit bringing in 10,000 children – mostly Jewish – to the United States. Sixty-one percent said no.  In the spring of 1939, the Nazis allowed the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying European Jewish refugees, to leave Hamburg for Cuba. Nazis arranged to have corrupt Cuban officials deny their entry, even though they were granted visas. After being turned away from Cuba, the United States denied the ship’s entry as with President Roosevelt’s announcement that the U.S. was unable to accept more refugees because of immigration quotas. The ship eventually landed in Holland, and Great Britain, Holland, Belgium and France accepted the refugees. Ultimately, however, over 600 of the 937 passengers on that ship were eventually killed by the Nazis. In retelling this story, Professor Bill Ong Hing (2000: 590-591), notes “When the United States refused the S. Louis permission to land, many Americans were embarrassed; when the country discovered after the war what happened to the refugees, there was shame.”

Today, ISIS has forced millions of people to flee their homelands to escape its terror. Just as many of the Jewish refugees perished, so too might many of the refugees America now seeks to reject.  This has many humanitarian consequences, but it also has security ones, as well – a fact ignored by political pronouncements favoring the refusal of refugees.  “The alternative now to an open-door policy is to leave the Syrian refugees and their children festering in Middle Eastern camps, creating the radical armies of the future.” This does not make me feel safer. In fact, it makes me feel shame. 

I am reminded of the words of Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye who calls us to transform human suffering, not into more fear and oppression, but into kindness:

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“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.”

I call on all U.S. governors and their constituents to learn from history, to resist fear, and to transform the suffering of Syrian refugees into a life of hope in America. 

Citations

1. Act of June 25, 1948, Ch. 647, 62 Stat. 1009.

2. 189 U.N.T.S. 137.

3. 606 U.N.T.S. 267, 19 U.S.T. 6223, T.I.A.S. No. 6577.

4. Pub.L. 96-212, 94 Stat. 102 (March 17, 1980).

5. INA Section 101(a)(42).

6. INA Section 207.

7. See also INA Section 411.

8. INA Section 207(a)(3).

Works Cited

Divine, R. A. (1972). American immigration policy, 1924-1952 (Vol. 66). Perseus Books.

Guy S. Goodwin-Gill & Jane McAdam (2007). The Refugee in International Law (3d ed.): 426-27.

Hing, Bill Ong. "No Place for Angels: In Reaction to Kevin Johnson." University of Illinois Law Review (2000): 559.

Rodriguez and Legomsky. 2015. Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy, (6th ed).

Anita Ortiz Maddali is the Director of Clinics and Associate Professor of Law at the Northern Illinois University College of Law.  She writes about and teaches immigration law.  Prior to coming to NIU, she represented women and children who were fleeing violence and seeking asylum in the United States. She is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law.