During this week’s Cafe Series, PhD student and GRF Esmeralda Arrizón-Palomera came to speak to us about her work on studying undocumented immigrants, and particularly the youth and children of those immigrants. First, Esmeralda spoke about the difficult conditions of living as an undocumented youth, and compared it to the feeling of being stuck. Even though those undocumented youth may be able to move on with their lives, get an education and better opportunities, they will have that undocumented condition that follows them whenever they try to do something with a social security number, such as get a driver’s license or apply for financial aid. These are privileges that many US-born citizens don’t really acknowledge as luxuries.

However, what was the most interesting part of the talk for me was hearing about how Esmeralda frame recent events with undocumented youths as a civil rights movement. She spoke about the immigrants right march, La Gran Marcha in the mid 2000’s when nearly 1.5 million people came together to mobilize a coalition against anti-immigrant legislation. In addition, the DREAM Act helped to reframe the notion of immigrants as criminals and build a narrative for undocumented youth in which their existence is ‘legalized’.Unfortunately the DREAM act polarizes and places blame on the parents of the undocumented youth. But hopefully these movements are just stepping stones to help to spread awareness that people don’t just come to America for any reason and perpetuate the stigma of crime, but due to dire circumstances out of their hands in their original country that forced them to leave. I found Esmeralda’s work to be empowering and informative, and I do hope that eventually undocumented youth are able to take back and reconstruct their own narrative.