Abstract
This brief article draws from research on the undocumented student experience and incorporates personal perspectives about the complexity behind the good immigrant-model, minority narrative on identity formation. From a de-colonial lens, this article aims to emphasize the impact of the DREAM(Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors)-er narrative on the immigrants right’s movement and urges a need to separate the narrative from the movement as a political action to continue to diversify immigration reform advocacy as more inclusive of various immigrant and undocumented sub-communities. Lastly, this article aims to challenge the sociopolitical construct of the undocumented term on identity and introduces the importance of person-centered language to externalize undocumented legal status from the individual to position it as a circumstance rather than an identity.
Highlights
The DREAMer Narrative versus Its Political and Social MovementThe DREAMer movement, unequivocally, was an efficacious organizing strategy in the undocumented student movement that led to the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) as well as state-based educational, financial aid policies across the U.S (Terenzini et al 1996)
This brief article draws from research on the undocumented student experience and incorporates personal perspectives about the complexity behind the good immigrant-model, minority narrative on identity formation
In analyzing the DREAmer narrative beyond student activism, this article aims to examine and protest against the DREAMer narrative as well as the socially constructed undocumented identity from a de-colonial approach because deconstructing these narratives is a political action against American ideals grounded in Eurocentric practices that originate from colonialism
Summary
The DREAMer movement, unequivocally, was an efficacious organizing strategy in the undocumented student movement that led to the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) as well as state-based educational, financial aid policies across the U.S (Terenzini et al 1996). DACA has been one of the most successful pro-immigrant policies because it has provided physical and psychological safety to many of its recipients, including positive educational and economical outcomes, the DREAMer stereotype has been embedded within the eligibility requirements of DACA (Gonzales et al 2018; Durbin 2019). It may behoove us to further study the developmental identity formation of young movement leaders from a liberation psychology and de-colonial lens outside of the trauma imposed by social constructs of illegality that may inform someone’s undocumented identity because there is no part in a human’s body, mind, or spirit that is inherently undocumented (Rodriguez 2017)
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