ABSTRACT

This chapter expands recent work on the ‘hyperdocumentation’ of undocumented students to capture the ways in which undocumented and afraid student activists enact agency through “silent” activism. In particular, the explicit and hidden curricular logics that inform the ways in which undocumented activists view and accumulate social and educational capital is explored, interrogated, and connected to the ways these students (dis)engage with the political process. The authors push back against the notion that unapologetic, unafraid, and public activism is the primary or sole way in which social activism manifests itself within the undocumented student movement, and very particularly among students with undocumented status. Indeed, such fierce, out, and public activists likely represent only a small albeit invaluable fraction of the kind of activism that many undocumented and afraid students engage with daily. The chapter focuses on two undocumented and afraid activist cases who do not fit the trope of the unapologetic and unafraid undocumented activists—they are closeted, fearful, and agentic. Through their written reflections and dialogue with one another, authors analyze their narratives and discourse to get at the ways in which they define, envision, and engender a kind of undocumented and afraid activism that is seemingly silent but impactful nonetheless.