Undocumented convivencias: Intergenerational resistance in times of crisis

• In Event: Innovative research methods in educating for peace and human rights

Proposal

This project engages undocumented middle school youth and DACAmented educators living, “surviving”, and resisting together in a time of political crisis and intensified state violence against undocumented communities in the United States. Rooted in Human Rights Education (HRE), UndocuCrit, Chicana/Feminist Methodologies, and Transformational Resistance, this project creates spaces of intergenerational solidarity, learning, and collective action. These spaces – referred to Encuentros Educativos and Encuentros de Resistencia – center undocumented young people as knowledge holders and co-researchers, working alongside DACAmented educators who serve as femtors and co-conspirators.

This work unfolds in a time of intensified political attacks and everyday violence against undocumented people, where the threat of detention, deportation, and being disappeared by the state shapes everyday life. In response, this project creates and sustains spaces of convivencia through a series of summer encuentros designed to build community, cultivate political consciousness, and center healing. These sessions include political education workshops (i.e., Know Your Rights), storytelling, artivism, platicas, and college pathway workshops that challenge institutional exclusion while nurturing hope and possibility.

This paper highlights how intergenerational encounters enact a form of Human Rights Education grounded in lived experience, collective care, and shared struggle. In a time where undocumented people are being silenced and in some cases kidnapped by the state, this work insists on the radical potential of community and the need for youth-centered research that holds space for joy, rage, and resistance. It also shows how undocumented and DACAmented people build and sustain relationships by accompanying one another in the face of criminalization and violence.

In dialogue with broader conversations about decolonial and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) methodologies, this project offers researchers and educational leaders a vision of what is possible when research and practice is grounded in community, intergenerational solidarity, and transformational resistance. It invites researchers and educators to engage with young people in co-creating spaces that move beyond knowledge production toward healing, liberation, and social transformation. Ultimately, this project affirms that even in times of crisis, undocumented convivencias offer a roadmap for intergenerational resistance and collective action.

Author

• Cristian Aguilar Valverde, University of San Francisco