Joyful Immigrant Family Storytelling During Politically Perilous Times

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Abstract

Objectives
This paper shares findings from a yearlong community-engaged storytelling project with immigrant parents and their children. In the final weeks before the 2025 U.S. presidential inauguration, immigrant families prepared for the worst, based on President-elect Trump’s ongoing vows to implement “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” (Colvin, 2023). As the future for immigrant families remained uncertain even in “sanctuary” states like California, the narratives around immigrant life focused on hopeless narratives of struggle (Authors, 2024).

And yet, despite these dire contexts, immigrant families thrive. Amidst a climate of fear, immigrant families sustain joy not in spite of dire policy consequences but rather as ongoing, embodied practice. This paper shares how immigrant family identities manifested joy through multimodal storytelling in perilous times.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
This paper builds on sociocultural literacies scholarship that centers immigrant and transnational identities (Bernal, 2001; Delgado-Gaitan, 2005; Villenas, 2005). Further, the emphasis on immigrant family artmaking practices also guides this work (e.g. Flores 2018; 2022). Finally, recognizing family storytelling as occurring with a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), this project extends understanding of identity and expertise within transnational informal learning environments.

Methods
This qualitative case study (Dyson & Genishi, 2005; Yin, 2013) was conducted entirely online. Monthly, the community of families would convene online to share and reflect on the multimodal artifacts they created. These meetings concluded with a design prompt to take up for the following month.

Methodologically, this project is situated within Chicana feminist platica methodology (e.g. Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016; Hannegan-Martinez, 2023). This approach centers participants’ lived experiences as forms of expertise. The ongoing conversation—platica—of each meeting guides how joy is named, measured, and shared in this group.

Data Sources
In addition to the recordings of community meetings, data for this project included the multimodal artifacts parents and children made together as well as individual interviews conducted with each family twice throughout the yearlong project. All data was inductively coded alongside a cadre of youth and parent community members.

Results
These community-created testimonies of hope (testimonios de esperanza) that acted as opportunities to explore political and structural contexts of joy. Participants’ artifacts centered communal expertise and joy tied to familial pride, cultural identity, and expressed hope for future generations.

Notable, families centered “struggle” as a kind of superpower. This work, as demonstrated in poems, photo-based family trees, and family-created collages revealed ongoing narratives of solidarity that emerged through community-based artmaking. Participants’ proleptic vision of cultural identity interweaves multimodal storytelling of joy across varied timescales.

Scientific or Scholarly Significance of the Study or Work
In contrast to dominant, deficit narratives of immigrant experiences, findings from this study illuminate an alternative, speculative narrative of immigrant ingenuity. These findings illustrate sustained community joy through collected, family-made artifacts. The field of education does not yet utilize specific forms of joyful creation by marginalized families; the possibilities for leveraging these as assets for pedagogical application in various settings pose clear guidance for future research and design.

Authors

• Antero Garcia, Stanford University

• Alix Dick, La Cuenta