Moving From Moral Exclusion to Desire: An Ethnography of Immigrant Youth on November 9, 2016

• In Event: 81.027 - Participating in Action: Shifting Social Contexts and the Lives of Immigrant-Origin Students

Abstract

On November 9, 2016, a group of undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty met to discuss a project on immigrant-origin youth and civic engagement on campus. The undergraduate students (N=11) who all identified as immigrant and immigrant-origin were gathered as part of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) group to provide feedback on the direction of the project. This study is an ethnographic recounting and analysis of the conversation that took place with undergraduate students on the day after the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

Understanding the gravity of Trump’s election, the regularly scheduled PAR research meeting transformed into a conversation about each member’s reactions. As such, it became important to reflect on that conversation itself because it provided an opportunity to examine the ways in which young people were making sense of their lives in relation to this larger historical moment. For this reason, the PAR research group, which included immigrant-origin college students, reconvened on February 27, 2017 to revisit the November 9, 2016 transcript in order to reflect and analyze the discussion within the socio-political context.

Initially, the PAR members noticed emergent themes of fear, exclusion and a desire for action. With those themes in mind, research questions were further developed and clarified to help guide our analysis:

• Given the socio-political reality, how did PAR members as hyphenated selves make meaning of the election and the ways it might impact our lives?
• In what ways did we respond to moral exclusion?
• Hoow did this response to moral exclusion tap into our desires as hyphenated selves?

Through the analysis of the transcript, we noticed the ways in which members used storytelling to make sense of emotions and to describe the feeling of exclusion. For example, Eli, a 19-year-old, female Mexican undergraduate student who identified as a Dreamer, shared the following story:

It’s like I’m home alone and I’m four years old, you know? … I’m a DACA
students, so I came here when I was four-years-old. Um, I still like vividly
remember everything, so I could tell you what I was wearing, how I was feeling.
Um, it’s just (pauses) it’s hard.

The fear she felt the day after the election conjured up the feelings she felt the day she migrated to the States. This fear connected to the feeling of exclusion.

In the transcript, we noticed at the connections between fear and exclusion, such as when Ayesha, an 18-year-old, female, Syrian, undergraduate student said, “We underestimated how much hate you can harbor, how much, how much you’re okay with racism and sexism.” However, important to note was the ways in which the conversation shits from fear, anger, and exclusion to a desire for action, which is in line with Eve Tuck’s (2009) argument that despite the attacks against communities, people do not remain broken.

This study adds an important qualitative perspective that highlights the significant meaningful ways immigrant and immigrant-origin youth negotiate their hyphenated selves in response to moments of moral exclusion.

Authors

• Lydia A Saravia, DePaul University

• Nour Ghalyoun

• Eduardo Ruiz

• Sandra Rojas

• Clemencia Garnica Palao