Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children. By Silvia RodriguezVega (ed.) NYU Press, 2023 Paperback 9 781 479 810 451, 240 pp, $30.00

Abstract

Children of immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the US child population. The complex and nuanced manner in which immigrant children's lives are shaped by issues of legal status, citizenship, state-sanctioned violence and belonging should be of great interest to educators, policymakers and researchers in the US and across the world. However, little attention is given in literature to impact of specific immigration policies on young people's development and socialisation. Perhaps that's because it's a time expensive task and one that requires a deep understanding of child-centred research. Into this gap steps Silvia Rodriguez Vega with her new book, Drawing Deportation. Built on 10 years of work with immigrant children in Arizona and California, she analysed 300 drawings, theatre performances and family interviews to engage with accounts of children's challenges with deportation and family separation during the Obama and Trump administrations. Through children's drawings and stories Rodriguez Vega exposes the destructive consequences of legal violence, structural racism and lack of safety in these young people's lives. Even though they may have been born in the US or may have US citizenship, they still feel endangered if they have one undocumented parent whose status dictates the way family can live their lives. A young participant in the study, Sergio ‘states that in Arizona, just looking Mexican is enough reason to be arrested and detained or deported via racial profiling’ (p. 75). On holidays and special occasions, immigrant families often stay home because they can be easily pulled over for a routine check at alcohol checkpoints, which can then lead to interrogation about status and potential deportation. The artwork shows that children are highly aware of this risk. The book includes multiple examples of what sociologist Nira Yuval-Davis (2011) called ‘everyday bordering and politics of belonging’. The ‘technologies of everyday bordering’ are in place to supposedly ‘make people feel safe by keeping those who do not belong out’ (Yuval-Davis et al., 2018, p. 230). Drawing by a participant in the study, Sandra from Arizona (figure 3.4 in the book) shows an acute representation of the border by a young person. A short dialogue between the two characters is depicted in two word-bubbles. As ‘an authority’ character points to the border, the smaller character says, “But I'm a citizen”; the authority replies, “you look Mexican.” Sandra underlined the words “citizen” and “look” in red. ‘Linking these words communicates the difference between being a citizen and looking like one’ explains Rodriguez Vega (p. 80). In my view, the drawing also shows the omnipotence of de- and re-bordering that involve displacement, relocation of borders and border controls, influence these young people's everyday lives by challenging their sense of belonging, disabling their feeling of safety and raising their sense of precarity. Further, Rodriguez Vega argues that children understand and internalise violence, racism, hate and death and may mirror back what they experience in their lives. In the environment marked by destruction and dehumanisation, violence becomes cyclical and children can become powerful messengers and reproducers of hate. But she counters this possibility by showing children as agents of their own stories who reimagine destructive situations in ways that adults sometimes cannot, offering us alternatives and hope for a better future. In her work, she is clearly inspired by notable educators such as Paulo Freire, to demonstrate how art can be a healing praxis ‘for children to calm their fears and explore positive solutions’ (p. 117). Her book results in an explicit message to transform schooling and teacher's training in super-diverse societies such as the US or the UK where more non-traditional, art-based methods of teaching, civic education, social-justice-oriented learning and culturally relevant curricula are needed. My final point from across the Atlantic is to observe growing research that conveys experiences of migrant children and youth in contexts of the Global South and North, which is increasingly published by international journals in the field demonstrating that these young people's views are becoming recognised as relevant to mainstream academic developments. Connecting to the large volume of scholarship that exists in the interdisciplinary area of migrant childhood and youth studies beyond the United States would have made Rodriguez Vega's contribution more universal and recognisable as it is a fascinating, timely and beautifully written book that speaks beyond its context.