(Re)Framing the Immigrant Narrative: Exploring Testimonios That Counter Essentialized Images of (Un)Documented Communities

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Narratives, Testimonios, and Counterdiscourses to Transform Immigrant Education

Abstract

The purpose of this research study is to examine how dominant US-Mexico border discourses surrounding (un)documented migration impact five immigrant participants’ lives currently living in North Carolina. These counter-narratives are presented in the form of participants’ testimonios and reveal various ways to re-present dominant immigrant border discourses that tend to essentialze, racilaialize, criminalize, and dehumanize with partial narratives, deficit language and rhetoric, as well as biased constructions couched in racist nativism. The overarching three themes of (mis)perceived identities, silenced struggles, and aspiring citizens emerged from the five participants’ testimonios. This research adds to existing scholarship by offering critical examinations of what we argue are less commonly presented first-person narratives of (un)documented migration in the U.S.

Authors

• Leslie Clement Gutierrez, Johnson C. Smith University

• Lan Quach Kolano, University of North Carolina - Charlotte