♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪ Hey, hey, hey ♪ Hey, hey - Good evening, and welcome to Horizonte, a show that takes a look at current issues through a Hispanic lens.

I'm your host, Catherine Anaya.

How have undocumented youth activists changed the way we discuss immigrant rights in the United States?

An Arizona State University professor explores that question in a new book.

Rafael Martinez is an assistant professor of Southwest Borderlands in ASU's College of Integrative Sciences and Arts.

In his new book, "Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States," he writes about the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the US and their influence in the 21st century.

Joining me now is Professor Rafael Martinez.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me on.

- It's good to see you.

- It's good to see you again.

- So I read where you said that holding your book was a little like holding your daughter after she was first born.

Congratulations.

- Thank you, yes.

- It's very exciting.

So let's dive in.

Explain first of all the title "Illegalized."

What is, what does that mean for the reader?

- Yes, well, I wanted to use the title and the word, illegalized and illegality as a framework, to really spend a lot of time showcasing how the United States as a government spends a lot of time, energy, effort, resources, and US citizen funding to be able to document the undocumented population in the United States, and going to the efforts to be able to showcase the different ways in which undocumented immigrants live, but also changing the narrative of thinking about, like associating illegality with criminalization.

Undocumented youth wanted to spend the time showing how the US government uses illegality as a rhetorical framework to be able to justify violating human rights violations in places like detention centers along the borderlands and in many other communities.

So illegality was a good framework to be able to show both sides of the equation.

- Right, so let's talk about some of the ways that they went about drawing attention to the causes and the issues.

Your book looks at how after the year 2000, undocumented youth started to become the face of the immigrant rights movement in the US.

What, in your opinion, sparked that shift?

- Yes, well, traditionally, the immigrant rights movement was seen as a labor rights movement and focusing on policy change and advocating for policy change.

But undocumented youth, one, wanted to be able to discuss identity, right?

The idea that beyond immigration status, we gotta talk about our intersecting identities around race, gender, and sexuality, right?

What good does it do if you're incorporated into the US, but you're still being discriminated on other accounts?

The second part of that was basically wanting to change the way that activism itself happened, going from indirect, indirect forms of activism, working within the political system to be able to work in direct forms of activism, including civil disobedience and taking their activism.

And then the final one was basically going beyond the model minority, that you should be exceptional to be included in the United States as a citizen.

The idea was that, no, everybody contributes.

Everybody contributes to the economy, to the social fabric of this country.

You shouldn't have to be a professor, you shouldn't have to be an engineer, a doctor to be included in this country, and so they wanted to change that narrative of inclusivity across our diverse immigrant communities.

- So when you look at that shift, how would you describe the growth of the undocumented youth movement in the numbers and in the power in the 21st century?

- Yes, well, undocumented youth in the 2000s began getting access to higher education across different states and in higher numbers.

States began to pass policies that included in-state tuition for undocumented students, and so that sparked a shift in access to the political system, the educational system in the United States, and again, originally working with politicians to try to pass the Dream Act that would be a pathway to citizenship that never passed.

Nevertheless, that motivated people to funnel under this idea of inclusivity of immigrant populations.

And so that's how the movement grew, right, but as different factors, different sections of undocumented youth brought different awareness issues, I felt like that also gave access to people feeling included and being part of a larger movement.

- Well, and DACA is really a great example of the power of the movement, right?

- Yes, you know, one of the things I argue and show like activists do is that DACA became an executive action under President Barack Obama, but that was after years of effort in pushing the political system, right, where there wasn't a pathway to citizenship through the Dream Act, the pressure was to put on the executive office to say, "Hey, we need a pathway to citizenship.

We can't do that.

Well, through this action, you could give us access to employment and access to protection from deportation."

So DACA really shows a power of people coming together and pushing the political system to do more.

- That's one example.

Have these undocumented youth movements, in your opinion, in your research shown that there's an influence in voting patterns among Latinos in this country based on these movements?

- Yes, you know, the numbers keep coming up that mixed status families and mixed status households and neighborhoods and cities and so forth are very common in today's US society, much like we associate with like biracial families in the United States, right?

And so the idea that people in our communities know at least one person of their family member, of their city, of their neighborhood, of their school who might be undocumented, right, they recognize that, wow, undocumented populations can't necessarily vote, they can cast their vote in an effort for these people who don't have the voting power.

On the flip side of that, undocumented youth have also been organizing within the political movements to be able to showcase, hey, this is a platform around immigration, educating people around immigration, and allowing them to make better informed decisions about the complexities of immigration and the need for complex solutions around immigration policy.

- I love in this book how you weave in your own personal story.

You were an undocumented undergrad student going to school in Los Angeles to college, and you didn't even get your driver's license until you were 27.

When people read this book, I think one of the things I appreciate most about it is that you really strive to give a face to a lot of the issues that we're talking about, your own story included.

What do you want readers to feel or think after they read this book?

- I chose to put in my own story and the story of the activist front and center to be able to showcase that as immigrants, we are knowledge producers, right?

We are often seen as bystanders to immigration policy and other things around our community.

I wanted to showcase that we are knowledge producers, and my own story hopefully embodies that, that when you offer people a pathway to protection, in this case, DACA, which I'm a beneficiary of, but also if you open pathway to citizenship, you know, it allows not only individuals like myself, but also families to thrive and communities to thrive, and our spending power, our social fabric, our economic contributions, and our educational contributions and so forth, just enhance the social fabric of the United States.

And so I wanted to include my story to be able to show that I'm one of the folks that comes from this community, and then internally within my own community, also be able to show that there is hope, there is aspiration, and there's a lot of challenges and barriers, but if you have a story to tell, then there's people who want to listen.

And it's not just my story, but these activist story to be able to change the way that we think about immigration.

- Yes, and stories are so important, and I know they're important to you.

Tell me how the stories impact your latest endeavor at ASU.

- Yes, well, we're really excited.

This fall semester, my colleague, Dr. Vanessa Fonsec-Chavez and I, within the College of Integrative Science and Arts at ASU, to be launching the Latinx Oral History Lab.

And the idea is to tap into the tradition of storytelling within our Latino, Hispanic communities to be able to showcase that Latinx communities have been here since the beginning of the founding of this state, and that we have stories to show the contribution, the labor, the efforts of development and growth that go alongside the story of Arizona.

And so we're excited to be able to educate students, to showcase the research, and again, to really share these stories coming from the East Valley and beyond.

- We have a website that we can put up on the screen for folks to go to if they wanna learn more about it, but also if they wanna participate, correct?

- Yes, we encourage students at ASU, but also community members to check out some of the projects that we have going on.

If you are interested in getting involved and participating, we would love to hear from you, and we would like your vision and idea of how storytelling can produce impact in your own communities.

- I love it.

Professor, thank you so much for joining me again, and congratulations on the book, and your new project.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate you sharing it with us.

- Of course.

- Good to see you.

All right, that's our show for tonight.

For Horizonte and Arizona PBS, I'm Catherine Anaya.

Thanks so much for watching, have a great night.

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