Suspended Stories: Bordercare, Healing-Centered Research, and the Children of Nepantla

• In Event: Isis’ Justice: Re-membering Incarcerated Youth and the Urgency of Abolition

Abstract

Objectives:

This talk is an offering and a calling. Drawing from my experiences as an artist, researcher, organizer, and volunteer interpreter in detention centers, border shelters and mutual-aid communities, I invite the audience to a care-full listening of an autoethnographic journey using poetry and vignettes about said experiences. I call attention to the impact of the carceral experiences of immigrant children and youth in and post immigration detention centers. Uplifting community decolonial feminist practices, healing-centered and insurgent research, and ethical commitments at the core of my work with migrant communities, I ask, “what does care look like at the border,” “how does love migrate under siege,” and “how do children re-imagine the world after detention?” Through this offering, I call-in, with love and urgency, our academic community to reconsider the roles and response-abilities of researchers in this time of dehumanizing crisis, to ask each other, to whom are we accountable and how does our work move toward action?

Data and Methodology:

Between 2018 and 2023 I have worked with immigrant communities in and outside of detention in a variety of capacities and settings within the United States. I draw from these experiences a selection of stories and personal poetry that have emerged as a result of formal and informal conversations with children in and post immigration detention.

Framework, Substantiated Conclusions, and Scholarly Significance:

Because of the sensitive nature of the work I do with displaced immigrant people, and my ethical commitments to justice-oriented and healing-centered research, I move with thoughtful intention in framing this work with care, love and refusal (Grande, 2018). I use my own body to carry stories across borders (Dutta, 2018). I sink into the embodied experience of doing research with communities under siege, which keeps me connected to and whole in this work: body, spirit, and mind. Rather than assuming separation and detachment through the research process, I acknowledge the interconnectedness of people, space, and time. As I share stories shared with me, or recall witnessed moments, I too am part of a larger story. Re-membering is an act of resistance against the parsing of people and lands under the long arm of the colonial project. To re-member, we move in solidarity to preserve and protect historical memory against erasure. I utilize autohistoria-teoria (Anzladúa, 1987) and testimonio (Lincoln & Gonzalez y Gonzalez, 2008) through the lenses of decolonial, indigenous, and community feminisms (Cabnal, 2010; Zaragocin & Caretta, 2021) to navigate ethical storysharing, collective healing and knowledge-making toward justice for immigrant children.

Author

• Andrea N. Juarez-Mendoza, Graduate Center - CUNY