Drawing Deportation : : Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children / / Silvia Rodriguez Vega.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Rodriguez Vega, Silvia,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource :; 18 b/w illustrations38 color illustrations

Illustrates how the children of immigrants use art to grapple with issues of citizenship, state violence, and belonging Young immigrant children often do not have the words to express how their lives are shaped by issues of immigration, legal status, and state-sanctioned violence. Yet they are able to communicate its effects on them using art. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children as young as six years old in Arizona and California— and featuring an analysis of three hundred drawings, theater performances, and family interviews—Silvia Rodriguez Vega provides accounts of children’s challenges with deportation and family separation during the Obama and Trump administrations. While much of the literature on immigrant children depicts them as passive, when viewed through this lens they appear as agents of their own stories. The volume provides key insights into how immigrant children in both states presented creative, out-of-the-box, powerful solutions to the dilemmas that anti-immigrant rhetoric and harsh immigration laws present. Through art, they demonstrated a righteous indignation against societal violence, dehumanization, and death as a tool for navigating a racist, anti-immigrant society. When children are the agents of their own stories, they can reimagine destructive situations in ways that adults sometimes cannot, offering us alternatives and hope for a better future. At once devastating and revelatory, Drawing Deportation provides a roadmap for how art can provide a safe and necessary space for vulnerable populations to assert their humanity in a world that would rather divest them of it.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: From Caged Childhoods to Caged Children -- 1 Policies: The Constricted Lives of Immigrant Children -- 2 Fear “We Are Trapped, Like in a Cage” -- 3 Response: Children in Arizona -- 4 Resistance: Children in California -- 5 Resilience: Art-Healing Praxis and Possibilities for Restoration -- Conclusion: Art as an Offering -- Acknowledgments -- Appendix: Overview of Methodology -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author