No abstract

This article explores collective efforts by undocumented youth activists to use storytelling to reframe the debates around immigration reform and discursively position themselves as the rightful leaders of a movement that had been dominated by adult citizen-advocates. Drawing on 19 months of fieldwork, 37 in-depth interviews, and hundreds of pages of movement documents, I show how youth activists in the United States worked together to develop stories that: (1) drew into question the legitimacy of adult citizen-advocates to speak on issues of immigration and (2) cast undocumented immigrant youth as the proper authorities on these matters. I argue that through collective storytelling and character work, the activists were able to subvert adult citizen authority and construct themselves as powerful, new collective actors in the contemporary immigrant rights movement. I conclude by discussing some of the practical implications and limitations of using narrative reframing strategies to advance the social change agendas of marginalized movement factions.

The experience of migrating and attempting to integrate into a host society is personally and interactionally daunting. This article suggests ways social psychological perspectives may deepen our understanding of the interactional processes that shape experiences of migration and assimilation. We argue that existing migration literature highlights assimilation outcomes while undertheorizing the social psychological processes that constitute assimilation. In this article, we begin by showing how social psychological perspectives on migration relate to traditional sociological studies of assimilation by reviewing research on stereotyping and prejudice. Next, we review studies utilizing social identity theory and symbolic interactionism to explore how immigrants cast off stigma and give positive meaning to themselves. We conclude by suggesting how incorporating social psychological perspectives into research on migration and assimilation gives us important insights into the dynamic, interactive social processes that give meaning to those experiences.

This article examines the backstage process by which undocumented youth activists developed and implemented an emotionally evocative storytelling strategy in their efforts to bring about social change. Using participant observation and in-depth interviews with members of the DREAM Act Movement, I show how they carefully cultivated and refined their storytelling performances through interaction. I also show how hegemonic gender expectations-and the stigma of victimization-complicated their efforts. Because they believed the best stories showed audiences what it felt like to be undocumented, this explicitly expressive tactic caused problems for men who had to overcome cultural expectations that they control their emotions and for women who worried about being perceived as weak if they showed too much vulnerability. I argue that their solution-the creation of a gendered division of emotional labor-ultimately reinforced the gender order. By revealing how the process of storytelling can simultaneously challenge and exacerbate inequalities, my research expands our knowledge of the potentials and limitations of narrative approaches to social change.

Hispanic women are an understudied entrepreneurial population with considerable potential for economic impact. Our study uses fieldwork and semistructured interviews with entrepreneurs and community informants to understand the experiences of Latina business owners in North Carolina. We focus specifically on their entry into the formal economy as majority owners of for-profit ventures. Social location of owners is discussed to appreciate how the intersectional position of Hispanic women in the market economy shapes their entrepreneurial trajectories. Building on prior research on the “embedded market” and “gendered capital,” our study confirms that entrepreneurial succession and employment opportunities and constraints are strong motivators for Hispanic women to start businesses. However, we also identify a new catalyst for business entry that we call “social ventures and passions,” a finding that challenges the conventional assumption that immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurs open businesses primarily as an economic survival strategy or as an appeal to cultural norms (i.e., ethnic labor market approaches).