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“Since when have people been illegal?”: Latinx youth reflections in Nepantla

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Abstract

Using Gloria Anzaldúa’s idea of nepantla alongside critical theories of race and citizenship, this article highlights how Latinx undocumented youth and youth of mixed status families navigate, resist, and at times endorse the various and competing discourses around immigration, citizenship, and illegality. The author uses pláticas as a methodological and pedagogical tool with youth who live in a migrant housing complex to examine how they enter sociopolitical conversations centered on their lived realities. Drawing on the youths’ reflections, the author emphasizes a need to centralize and create spaces for the voices of youth within discussions and action around immigration and citizenship, because they are continuously subjected to and forced to navigate dominant narratives and discourses that surface about them, their families, and (im)migrant communities.

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Notes

  1. Students in this group hold various citizenship (or lack thereof) statuses.

  2. The students use a variety of terms to identify themselves, ethnically and racially, largely dependent on context, while I use the term Latinx when referring to the entire group. The term Latinx is an intentional way of discursively disrupting gendered binaries, specifically in the Spanish language (e.g., Latino/a).

  3. During the time of data collection for the study, many families in the CM housing community were leaving because of strict policy enforcement.

  4. Although “immigrant” and “migrant” are not interchangeable terms, the students I work with come from families who can be considered through both terms.

  5. During Donald Trump’s campaign, he referred to Mexicans as rapists and drug dealers. One of his promises to his supporters upon taking office was (and is) to deport any Mexican immigrants who have criminal offenses, regardless of their severity.

  6. Medina’s case was one followed by many other DACA recipients detained and/or deported, such as Juan Manuel Montes and Daniela Vargas.

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  1. University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Mónica González Ybarra

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  1. Mónica González Ybarra
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González Ybarra, M. “Since when have people been illegal?”: Latinx youth reflections in Nepantla. Lat Stud 16, 503–523 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-018-0148-5

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