Political Protest and Undocumented Immigrant Youth: (Re-) framing Testimonio

233 Pages·2018·4.056 MB·English

by  Stefanie Quakernack

Political Protest and Undocumented
Immigrant Youth
What does it mean to be a young undocumented immigrant? Current public
debate on undocumented immigration provokes discussion worldwide, and
it is estimated that there are more than 11.1 million undocumented immi-
grants in the United States, yet what it really means to be an undocumented
immigrant appears less explicitly delineated in the debate.
This interdisciplinary volume applies theories from Media, Cultural, and
Literary Studies to investigate how undocumented immigrant youth in the
United States have claimed a public voice by publishing their video nar-
ratives on YouTube. Case studies show how political protest significantly
shapes these videos as activists narrate and perform their ‘dispossession’,
redefining their understanding of the mechanisms of immigration in the
Americas, and of home, belonging, and identity. The impact of the videos
is explored as the activists connect them to Congressional bills and present
their activities as a continuation of the legacy of the civil rights movements
of the 1960s and 1970s.
This book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students
involved in debates on migration, communication, new media, culture, pro-
test movements, and political lobbying.
Stefanie Quakernack is a postdoctoral researcher and project manager at
Ruhr-University Bochum. Her fields of research are immigration, educa-
tion, and language. Up until 2017, Stefanie Quakernack was a lecturer and
doctoral research fellow in the American Studies department at Bielefeld
University, where she studied fields of U.S. immigration at the intersections
of Media, Political, Literary, and Cultural Studies. Much of the research
presented in this book originates in the field research that she carried out in
Chicago, Illinois in spring 2014.
InterAmerican Research: Contact, Communication, Conflict
Series Editors: Olaf Kaltmeier, Josef Raab, Wilfried Raussert, and
Sebastian Thies
The Americas are shaped by a multitude of dynamics that have extensive,
conflictive, and, at times, contradictory consequences for society, culture,
politics, and the environment. These processes are embedded within a his-
tory of interdependence and mutual observation between North and South,
which originates in the conquest and simultaneous ‘invention’ of America
by European colonial powers.
The series will challenge the ways we think about the Americas, in par-
ticular, and the concept of area studies, in general. Put simply, the series
perceives the Americas as transversally related, chronotopically entangled,
and multiply interconnected. In its critical positioning at the crossroads of
area studies and cultural studies, the series aims to push further the post-
colonial, post-national, and cross-border turns in recent studies of the
Americas toward a model of horizontal dialogue between cultures, areas,
and disciplines.
The series pursues the goal to ‘think the Americas different’ and to explore
these phenomena from transregional as well as interdisciplinary perspectives.
Entangled Heritages
Postcolonial Perspectives on the Uses of the Past in Latin America
Edited by Olaf Kaltmeier, and Mario Rufer
Mobile and Entangled America(s)
Edited by Maryemma Graham and Wilfried Raussert
Practices of Resistance
Narratives, Politics, and Aesthetics across the Caribbean and its Diasporas
Edited by Wiebke Beushausen, Miriam Brandel, Joseph Farquharson,
Marius Littschwager, Annika McPherson and Julia Roth
Political Protest and Undocumented Immigrant Youth
(Re) Framing Testimonio
Stefanie Quakernack
For more information about this series, please visit https://www. routledge.
com/InterAmerican-Research-Contact-Communication-Conflict/book-
series/ASHSER-1426.
Political Protest and
Undocumented Immigrant Youth
(Re) Framing Testimonio
Stefanie Quakernack
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2018 Stefanie Quakernack
The right of Stefanie Quakernack to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Quakernack, Stefanie, author.
Title: Political protest and undocumented immigrant youth:
(re-)framing testimonio / Stefanie Quakernack.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2018. |
Series: InterAmerican research: contact, communication, conflict |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018001255 | ISBN 9780815378525 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781351232234 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Illegal aliens—Political activity—United States. |
Immigrant youth—Political activity—United States. | Children
of illegal aliens—Political activity—United States. | YouTube
(Electronic resource)—Social aspects—United States.
Classification: LCC JV6477 .Q34 2018 | DDC 305.235086/9120973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001255
ISBN: 978-0-8153-7852-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-23223-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Figure 0.1 (Dis-)possessing America – Scene During Protest by Stefanie Quakernack

Contents
List of Figures and Tables xi
Preface xii
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction: digital narratives of undocumented
immigrant youth 1
1. On being ‘unauthorized’ 1
2. Waking the ‘sleeping giant’: the Immigrant Rights
Movement in 2006 4
3. Mediatizing politics: testimonial storytelling online 5
4. (Digital) testimonio – a literature of combat 7
5. Research questions and outline of study 10
References 13
2 The movement, politics, and media logic in YouTube narratives
of undocumented youth 16
1. Politics of the Immigrant Rights Movement since 2006 16
1.1. Social movement, contention, and public sphere(s) 16
1.2. Historical legacy and politics of the Movement 19
1.3. The public face: leadership in the Movement 25
2. Online repertoires of contention: political uses of
the Internet in the Immigrant Youth Justice League 29
3. Storytelling format on YouTube: media logic as grounds
for selection 34
References 40
3 Reframing testimonio: mediatizing political storytelling
on YouTube 44
1. Testimonio: narrating resistance 44
2. Reframing testimonio: the mediatization of storytelling
and the digital testimonio on YouTube 46
viii Contents
2.1. Digital testimonio vs. storytelling 46
2.2. Media logic and testimonio: negotiating ‘public spaces’
on YouTube 47
2.3. Medium-conscious narratology: multi-, intermediality,
and multimodality 49
2.4. Multimodal ‘design’ of digital testimonios of
undocumented youth 51
References 55
4 Stories of the dispossessed 59
1. Introduction 59
2. Framing experience of dispossession: the core story
in digital testimonios 60
3. A claim to Butler and Athanasiou’s “dispossession” 61
3.1. “Dispossession” 61
3.2. Dispossession of citizenship rights: exclusion vs. belonging 64
4. Core stories of dispossession in digital testimonios of
undocumented youth 67
4.1. Core story: digital testimonio of Stephanie Solis,
“Lost & Found (Story of a DREAM Act Student)”.
Published: 12 May 2009 67
4.2. Core story: digital testimonio of Mohammad Abdollahi,
“My name is Mohammad and I am undocumented”.
Published: 19 March 2010 69
4.3. Core story: digital testimonio of Carlos Roa, “The story of
an undocumented student”. Published: 21 July 2010 71
4.4. Core story: digital testimonio of David Ramirez, “David
Ramirez, Immigrant Youth Justice League”. Published: 5
April 2011 72
4.5. Core story: digital testimonio of Angelica Velazquillo,
“An undocumented immigrant, Angelica, tells her story”.
Published: 2 March 2012 73
4.6. Core story: digital testimonio of Mitzy Calderón, “I am
no longer hiding! I am no longer afraid!”. Published: 13
November 2012 74
4.7. Core story: digital testimonio of Ivette Roman, “Maryland’s
undocumented immigrant students”. Published:
5 January 2013 76
4.8. Core story: digital testimonio of Luis Maldonado, “A
brief look into the life of an undocumented American”.
Published: 20 September 2013 77
5. The performative in dispossession: dispossessed bodies in
the digital sphere 79
References 82
Contents ix
5 Visual dispossession(s) and the dynamics of the performative:
moving image 85
1. Introduction: face-to-face testimonio – on screen! 85
2. Visualizing dispossession 89
2.1. Gestures for resistance 89
2.2. Marking the dispossessed: abstract pointing 99
3. Facial expressions: personal affect and resistance to
dispossession 103
3.1. Narrative time and personal affect 103
3.2. Irony and resistance 110
4. Occupying space 112
4.1. Bodily movement and posture 113
4.2. The everyday struggle: from the private to the
public setting 117
4.3. Performing props: symbolic objects in moving images 125
5. T he other narrator: framing narrative through montage
and zooming 129
References 135
6 Activism in soundscape: voice, noises, and music in
digital narratives 139
1. I ntroduction: orality, sound, and the performance of
resistance in digital testimonios 139
2. Connecting traditions: collective ritual in digital
testimonios 142
3. A voice for all? 147
3.1. The appropriation of voice: naming 147
3.2. ‘Undocu-queer’ performances 151
4. Paraverbal features: identities in change 156
4.1. Speech tempo, loudness, and pitch 156
4.2. Dramatic silences 157
4.3. Acoustic space 160
5. T he sound of music: extra-diegetic instrumental music 161
References 166
7 Intermedial spaces: written language, static image, and props 170
1. Introduction: commonalities 170
2. Captions 171
2.1. Written interpellations: digital testimonio as interview 171
2.2. Meta-functions in captions and links 172
2.3. The other narrator: ideational functions and framing 175
3. R earranging space: written language on props and
static images 177