Towards a Continental and Intersectional Approach to Teaching Immigrant Struggles

The struggle for immigrant rights has been long and tumultuous. The Republican challenge to President Obama’s effort to implement executive action for up to five million undocumented immigrants is the latest in a series of... [ view full abstract ]

The struggle for immigrant rights has been long and tumultuous. The Republican challenge to President Obama’s effort to implement executive action for up to five million undocumented immigrants is the latest in a series of frustrations for immigrants and their allies. It is not just the Republicans, however, who are impeding social justice. The frustration is also with President Obama’s two terms of criminalizing and deporting millions of people, which speaks louder than his rhetoric and belated attempt at executive action. There is also frustration with the mainstream immigrant rights movement for adopting a narrow strategy that repeatedly pinned hopes on Democrats only to be disappointed.

Many are now calling for a more inclusive movement that contests xenophobia and the criminalization of immigrants. As part of an overall critique of oppression based on race, class, gender, and sexuality, this approach calls for an end to immigrant exploitation. Moreover, activists are connecting the dots between migration, capitalist globalization, and U.S. hemispheric and global dominance.

Building on our special recent issue of Diálogos, this panel accepts LSA’s invitation to deliberate Latina/o Studies by bringing together scholar-activists, teachers, and artivists involved in the struggle for critical immigrant rights. As the militarized U.S. immigration regime tightens its grips with little sign of relief, this panel recasts the issues surrounding immigration and calls for undisciplined and holistic praxis. Each panelist explores the ways that they have been involved in subverting immigration studies and reimagining immigrant movements. Ochoa begins by examining the need for recasting immigrant rights movement in an intersectional and continental frame work, emphasizing how this approach informs his teaching and community work. Gonzalez, an artivist and scholar, examines how her transnational songwriting project Entre Mujeres can be used as a form of conscientización in community struggles across borders. Garcia employs critical pedagogical approaches that draw on student immigrant identities in his high school art classes to demonstrate the power of creative resistance for transformative identity formation. Portillo Villeda and Varela discuss the continued marginalization of queer immigrant activists in the immigrant rights movements and their involvement in the formation of the May Day Queer Contingent in Los Angeles to center queer immigrant experiences in a holistic intersectional manner that confronts oppression. Martínez, underscores the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to immigration studies drawing on her work editing the special issue of Diálogos.

Panel:
Enrique C. Ochoa (California State University, Los Angeles)
"Towards a Continental and Intersectional Approach to Teaching Immigrant Struggles"

Martha E. Gonzalez (Scripps College)
“‘Sobreviviendo’: Immigration Stories and Testimonio in Song”

Suyapa G. Portillo Villeda (Pitzer College) and Carmen Varela, (California State University Northridge)
The ‘Good,’ the ‘Bad’ and the Queer Invisible”

Luis-Genaro Garcia (Julian Nava Preparatory High School (Los Angeles) and Claremont Graduate University)
“Empowering Students through Creative Resistance”

Elizabeth Martinez (DePaul University)
“Art and Poetry Design in the Struggle for Immigrant Rights”