Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors in Government Shelters

• In Event: Testimonios de Aprendizaje in Aztlán, Gran México: Located-Transnational Decolonial Options of Critical Curricular-Pedagogical Praxis

Abstract

Objectives

This presentation is focused on the lived experiences that unaccompanied immigrant minors entering the United States face in their journey and while they are placed in government shelters. The research questions are: What were my educational experiences while teaching in the shelter? What did I learn about students? The researcher’s own experiences as an immigrant in borderland spaces inform the research. Please note, oppressive non-disclosure agreements make it impossible to directly collect any data on students.

Perspectives and theoretical framework

This paper is located within the framework of testimonio (Delgado Bernal et al. 2012) that has pedagogical and political aims. Following (Organizer et al.), testimonio follows a difficult route of interlocution and representation of historically oppressed subjectivities that include both the minors’ path and my attempts to represent their lives to the community itself and beyond. Following Delgago Bernal’s (2012) understandings, “Testimonio...involves the participants in a critical reflection of their personal experiences within particular socio-political realities” (Delgado Bernal et al. 2012, p. 364).

Methods techniques modes of inquiry

Testimonio is also used as the method of inquiry since testimonio represents both “process...product...and a way of teaching and learning” (Delgado Bernal, 2012, p.364). The braiding (Anzaldúa, 2015) of the life stories of minors with my own leads us to a discovery of our background as we visualize our future within a socio-political reality that is foreign to us.

Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

I encourage my students to enter a process of creation through art and literature once the class exposition is over. It is during these moments that our stories are braided as “testimonio ...serves as a bridge to connect the lived experience as a ‘data’ collecting tool and as the analytical process” (Delgado Bernal, 2012, p. 365). Informal interviews, artwork, conversations, and my own reflective writing serve as bases for data collection which are analyzed via discussions with students about their experiences along with my reflections.

Findings

I share students and my braided stories intertwined with my reflections. Students’ stories consist of missing loved ones, being family representatives in search of a “better life,” yet finding monsters of oppression. Our braided stories provide lived representations of how systems of power manipulate education.

Scholarly Significance

This population of students is highly vulnerable, and even though this narrative is only supported by my own experiences, I dream of a different story in the future, one in which the minor is taken into account as the most respectable of people.

References

Delgado Bernal, et al. (2012). Chicana/Latina testimonios: Mapping the methodological, pedagogical, and political. Equity & Excellence in Education, 45(3), 363-372.

González, M. S., Plata, O., García, E., Torres, M., & Urrieta, L., Jr. (2003). Testimonios de inmigrantes: Students educating future teachers. Journal of Latinos and Education, 2, 233–243.
Organizer et al.

Author

• Viviana D. Carvajal, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley