ABSTRACT
As advocates for children’s rights and immigrant rights, we wanted to document the impact national and local immigration enforcement policies are having on children living in Arizona. What does it mean to be “Mexican slash American” in the borderlands? Arizona has a long history of anti-immigrant policies that violate human rights, including orchestrated tactics to generate a public spectacle and symbolic war against “illegal immigration.” An outcome of this hostile environment has been a displaced community, traumatized under the incessant threat of deportation. We strongly believe that policies designed to dehumanize children and families must be resisted. We see research as another important tool to interrupt and disrupt simplified discourses about immigration. As community organizers, advocates, educators and researchers we believe children have a right to participate in research and narrate their own stories and experiences. Immigrant children are made to feel invisible as they navigate their lives straddling linguistic and cultural borders. This chapter attempts to contextualize, foreground, and make visible the silenced voices, perspectives, and experiences of immigrant children residing in the borderlands.
