Knowing Silence: How children understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives.

Educators who underestimate children’s knowledge about citizenship and immigration status can marginalize or misunderstand these students and their families. In Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School, author Ariana Mangual Figueroa models new ways scholars might collaborate with educators, children, and families—and makes audible the experiences of immigrant-origin students in their own terms, ultimately offering teachers and researchers a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom. Here, the author is joined in conversation with collaborators Dra. Aurora Chang, Claudia Rolando, and Lumari Sosa Garzón.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa is author of Knowing Silence and associate professor of urban education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a co-principal investigator at the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY IIE).

Dra. Aurora Chang is associate professor of higher education at Loyola University and incoming Director of Faculty Development and Career Advancement at George Mason University. Chang is founder of Academic Life Simplified.

Claudia Rolando is a graduate of Brooklyn College and an educator in New York.

Lumari Sosa Garzón is a Mexican student in the Macaulay Honors program with a TheDream.US scholarship at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. Lumari is a co-author of the Afterword appearing in Knowing Silence.

Episode references:

-Published research of Michael Fix and Wendy Zimmerman (“All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform,” International Migration Review)

-The Struggles of Identity, Education, and Agency in the Lives of Undocumented Students (Dra. Aurora Chang)

-The Undocumented Americans (Karla Cornejo Villavicencio)

-The New York State Youth Leadership Council

-Lives in Limbo (Roberto G. Gonzales)

-concept of Community Cultural Wealth / Dr. Tara Yosso

-Plyler v. Doe, Supreme Court decision, 1982

-The New School’s Parsons Scholars Program

Recommended reference:

-Areli is a Dreamer / Areli Morales

Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School is available from University of Minnesota Press.

"No words can express all that I think and feel about this beautiful, brilliant book. Narrated innovatively and with the utmost of care, with rich analyses of language data and thought-provoking insights drawn from a longitudinal and intimate ethnographic research relationship, Knowing Silence will surely make you think, wonder, laugh, cry—and see and hear young people who are growing up in contexts of immigration in new ways."
—Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, UCLA

"Using child-centered methodologies, Ariana Mangual Figueroa unveils the critical yet often invisible aspects of students' lives and highlights unintended chilling effects of school practices. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this is an important and compelling contribution to the field."
—Carola Suárez-Orozco, Harvard Graduate School of Education

What is University of Minnesota Press?

Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.

Claudia Rolando: 00:09

Just having that sense of community and feeling safe as an educator, I think that's very important regardless of where you're from. And it starts with sharing my story.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 00:21

A lot of my teachers were just English speakers and they lived in the suburbs and they had the more common childhood

Dra. Aurora Chang: 00:40

person. And the truth of the matter is it is widely diverse and that narrative serves a purpose.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 00:49

The book argues for an approach to listening to children because their narratives matter. Hello, and thank you for being here. My name is Ariana Mangual Figueroa. I'm an associate professor at the CUNY City University of New York Graduate Center in two PhD programs in urban education and in LELAC, which is Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures. I'm also a co principal investigator at the CUNY initiative on immigration and education, and I'm now also the author of Knowing Silence, how children talk about immigration status at school.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 01:27

I'm a Puerto Rican woman, professor, teacher, mother, born and raised in New York City with a conscientia, an awareness, personal and political, that Puerto Rico is a colony of The United States, that our citizenship is born out of that and remains second class, and that having an imagination of independence from that colonial status is both complex and important. Prior to becoming a professor, I was a New York City Public School Teacher, and I obtained my PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. My experiences growing up in New York City as a child, as a teacher, my experiences traveling throughout the country as a researcher and and scholar have really led to this pan Latinx conscientia, once again, an awareness of the ways in which immigration status shape the everyday lives of Latinx people living in The United States today. And so it is this awareness, this interest, this curiosity as to how immigration status shapes the lives of children that led me to write this book, Knowing Silence. And it is this interest, this conversation that brings me together today with three interlocutors who I admire deeply.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 02:34

Lumari, a student at the heart of this project, Claudia, an elementary school teacher and mentor to the students in this project, and Aurora, an educational researcher whose theorization of citizenship status and whose concept of hyper documentation has been very important to my work and to this book. Welcome.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 02:54

Thank you so much, Ariana. My name is doctor Aurora Chang, and I'm a once undocumented Guatemalan immigrant turned, as Ariana said, hyper documented professor. I'm also the founder of Academic Life Simplified, where I help academics write with power, compassion, and authenticity. I'm a graduate of UC Berkeley, Stanford, and the University of Texas at Austin. And, there I earned my doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction and cultural studies.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 03:23

And I've been an educator in, you know, different contexts for the past twenty five years. Before assuming my role as a CEO of Academic Life Simplified, I was the director of faculty development at George Mason University, and I was also an associate professor at Loyola University and a bunch of other jobs, that span from Wyoming to Wisconsin to Austin to New York and Berkeley. And my, research centers on the intersection of education, identity, and agency, within traditionally marginalized communities. And one of the strands of my research is on the educational experiences of those who are undocumented, particularly Latinx students. And I am thrilled to be here.

Claudia Rolando: 04:09

Hi, everyone. My name is Claudia Rolando, and I am an undocumented teacher currently under DACA. I'm an educator. I graduated from Brooklyn College, and I'm currently teaching third grade. Yeah.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 04:24

Hello, everyone. My name is Lymari Sosa Garzone. I am an undocumented student in New York. I'm a junior at the Macaulay honors program based in Brooklyn College, and I'm also part of the National Scholarship of the Dream US. And I'm very excited to be here as a student, and I have been able to work with many of us here.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 04:46

It's an honor to have all of you here today. Thank you for sharing of yourself and introducing yourself to our listeners. I wanted to define a few key terms that are at the core of this book, knowing silence, and at the core of, in a way, implied in the introductions that you've shared with us today. And then we'll go on to to some storytelling and some conversation about some of the core themes of the book. So mixed status families are really at the heart of this ethnography.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 05:13

And I use demographers Michael Fix and Wendy Zimmerman's two thousand one definition of a mixed status family. That is one kind of immigrant family that, quote, may be made up of any combination of legal immigrants, undocumented immigrants, and naturalized citizens. Their composition also changes frequently as undocumented family members legalize their status and legal immigrants naturalized, end quote. So at the core of this book are families within which have a tremendous amount of diversity. From the perspective of schools, we tend to think of families as fairly homogeneous.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 05:46

They they speak the same home language or they have the same country of origin. But in fact, mixed status families illuminate for us the diversity that exists within Latinx families living in The United States and immigrant families, beyond Latinx as well. And so within these families, there can be members who are undocumented, members who are in a process of obtaining or losing, an immigration status, related to The United States. And there may be ones who are born in this country and who are US born citizens. Now within mixed status families, children are at the heart of this project.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 06:18

And so I focus on children in middle childhood, the period from six to 12 years of age, which has been by some scholars referred to as the forgotten years of development, because most research is focused on early childhood development or adolescent growth. And it's the population of children that it's important for us to understand because they are in first, second, third grade, and they are children who are making sense of the realities of citizenship status for themselves and for their families that they are in our our public schools. According to 2021 estimates from the American Immigration Council, more than 16,700,000 people live in mixed status households that include at least one undocumented member. Approximately 6,000,000 of the people in those households are younger than 18 years of age, so are children. Now we know that in the same way that mixed status family members' immigration status may be influx, these numbers are also influx.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 07:14

And so it's quite possible that these numbers are much larger today. Most of the children who grew up in mixed status families are US born citizens, and the oldest siblings tend to be undocumented minors who have come to The United States with their parents, caregivers, or sent with someone, a trusted adult. And so this book focuses on six students from Mexico, from El Salvador, and from The Dominican Republic whose experiences shine a light on a much broader phenomenon taking place in The United States today. Now I wanna take us into, an ethnographic vignette, if if we could call it that, a vignette from Knowing Silence. And it's a vignette that really exemplifies three core themes of the book.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 07:57

So the three core themes are, one, that children know about the significance of citizenship status in their mixed status families. Children are not innocent or unaware of these realities. They know about them and they inform the ways that they act at school and at home. The second core theme is that immigration policy shapes the educational experiences of kids and adults. So they're not distinct spheres of policy.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 08:21

They intersect every day in the lives of children and families in in public schools. And the third core theme of the book is that children tell us what they know about immigration status, both in what they say and in what they write and also through what they don't say and what they choose not to write. And so the title of the book, Knowing Silence, is suggestive of this ethnographic finding. Right? That children know about citizenship's significance, and they know so much about what it means that they know when and when not to disclose.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 08:54

And they know when and when not to disguise the realities that they and their families live with. So come with me into a fifth grade classroom in Brooklyn, New York. This is one of the examples at the heart of the book. And on this day, the children in in fifth grade and in its immigrant neighborhood, largely Latinx, diasporic neighborhood school. In this school, on this day in 2,014, the children were asked to define the word diversity.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 09:21

So the teacher gave them post it paper, different colored markers, and the children were asked to create a word web. For those of us in education, we can imagine right away it means a circle at the center of the page with the word in it with radiating lines and other circles. And the children were asked to put diversity in the center and then add other words that came to mind as they were thinking about the word diversity. One child at the heart of this study held the marker. Different ideas came up, skin color, language, culture.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 09:53

In a few turns into this exchange, I had an audio recorder in in the small group, and so I was capturing the conversation that was unfolding. Few turns into the conversation. The same child is writing down the words, and a peer of hers says border because some people cross the border and some people didn't. And at this moment, the child with the marker, who I knew because as an ethnographer, I knew that this child was undocumented. No one else in the classroom knew.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 10:20

The teacher didn't know. That child said, chill. I'm not writing nothing. I'm not putting anything. I'm not writing anything down and refused to enter into the record of that word web border because some people crossed and some people didn't.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 10:35

And so as an ethnographer, I could go back to that exchange over and over and listen to it and something that went so quickly passed so quickly by in classroom interaction, I was able to return to. And what I realized is that that child in that moment and that child in many other moments in their schooling had to make these real time decisions. What am I gonna write down? What am I not gonna write down? What conversations am I willing to get into?

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 11:01

Which ones do I shy away from? It mattered that this child didn't say, and it mattered that this child said she wouldn't write because the topic coming up in school, she knew was too risky to broach. I wonder what you all could think through with me about this this ethnographic, Vinya. What's the significance of this child choosing to be a very active participant in school in some ways? Write down culture and language and be a grade a student and honor student, but then also know when not to write, and when not to say.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 11:36

So I'll pause. I well, it's an offering, this ethnographic thing. Yeah. What what do we make of that child's behavior, decision making, and once again, consciousness awareness in that moment?

Claudia Rolando: 11:48

Now while you were sharing that story, I kinda got, like, tears in my eyes because I kinda it remind me of me and my childhood. I feel like it's a lot more so with fear, fear of judgment, fear of, like, being less than everyone else in a sense. Even as a child, like, you know, you're different, and you don't wanna put yourself out there as being less than everyone else. And those are, like, my words because that's that's kinda how I felt. You know, growing up in an immigrant household, my my parents always was like, never share this because people are gonna think of you a certain way.

Claudia Rolando: 12:24

It was a thing not to say, not to share to the public. Either they're gonna call immigration on you. They're gonna take you away. It was just more so like fear, and it was never something to share ever. And as a person that crossed the border for days and was taken away from my parents and put up for adoption and gone through the whole thing.

Claudia Rolando: 12:45

I feel like me knowing that as a child kind of made me even more of a of a fear to kinda, like, share it with others. But as an adult, my mindset kinda changed. I feel like it's important to kinda, like, shine on being different and how impactful you could be to these students as an adult. Like, it's okay to share, and nothing is going to happen to you. So I think, the child part of me or of that child is the fear and scared of, like, what ifs.

Claudia Rolando: 13:16

And then as the adults, knowing the fact that that kind of, like, drifts and changes of the ifs are okay, it's safer. And, also, the time period, I feel like it's different. You know, when I was younger, the fear was was stronger, I guess, in a sense. And I feel like as the time period went on and, you know, I did become having DACA and I did have like, all these laws came out, it was a little bit more safer to kinda say and speak up a little bit. But I do hear this child, and I and I totally understand of not wanting to put that shine on him of being different.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 13:53

I I kinda wanted to add on of the emotions. I feel like it's not only fear, but it's also a sense of privacy as, like, a child and not necessarily being undocumented or undocumented. There's a lot of things of your own self that you don't know if it's okay to share because everyone is relating to it, if everyone has done it. And mainly in this scenario where, like, we're speaking about diversity and to everyone, it's different, I can say something about my myself, my culture that I think everyone can relate to. But once it's something that I'm not so sure, it's more of, like, they might ask me questions.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 14:34

Maybe I know something they don't, and just them asking me questions would make me feel uncomfortable and put me in a situation where now not only am I not comfortable because I just spoke about something or I just wrote something, but now I have other, like, students or my classmates asking me these questions. And a lot of undocumented students feel uncomfortable sharing.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 14:59

Yeah. Thank you, Claudia and Lumari for your, like, testimonials there. I I guess I I would be curious to hear from you all, like or or maybe get some clarification to Ariana around when you heard this comment. Was it kind of like a a soft comment? Was it something that other people heard or just you?

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 15:20

Thank you. Thank you, Aurora. I love that question because, one of the things I didn't talk about yet was the methodology for this work. Right? And I'm a person who loves children and listens to children.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 15:32

And one of the ways in which I listen to them is by recording what they say. And so in the case of this project, and it's, you know, expanded upon at length in the book, one of the methodologies was to ask the focal children as it were to wear iPod touches, which had voice memo apps, which allowed for long stretches of naturally occurring talk as we call it in in in the field. Right? And so what it permitted me was the opportunity to go back to things that in a normal classroom interaction of 25 to 30 children are fleeting, are completely ephemeral, that come and go in a matter of seconds and that often go unnoticed. I will say that by listening to the recording, no one else skipped a beat.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 16:16

Right? The child said under their breath very low, chill, chill. I'm not putting that. I'm not writing nothing. I'm not gonna write that.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 16:23

And the other children went on talking for free associating. It went from border to independence, which I thought was interesting, then circled back to other topics. The child themselves, the one with the marker after saying they weren't going to write anything, came back around and introduced a completely different subject, games, and tried to redirect the conversation away from the question of immigration. So I'd love to know what you think now that I've given a little more context about that.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 16:50

Yeah. You know, I mean, it makes a huge difference. Right? Because I was gonna ask all of you, like, what as teachers, what would you do if if you had heard that comment or if it was said, like, in in a louder voice or or whatnot? Because I think those are such pivotal moments, right, in the classroom that can go south or can really be a really great teaching moment.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 17:14

So yeah. I mean and personally, you know, I don't relate as much because and also, you know, I mean, I'm 50 years old. The only reason we ended up becoming documented was because of the 1986 immigration reform and control act. And so luck and privilege, right, because we didn't cross the border. We took a plane from Guatemala and came on a visa and just let it expire.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 17:37

And so I also think it speaks to the diversity of experiences in The US mindset. There's an image that comes up when you think of an undocumented person. And the truth of the matter is it is widely diverse, and that narrative serves a purpose. So, yeah, but I am curious, Claudia, you said that you're an educator yourself and Maria as a student. Have you maybe had instances where you've had to navigate that kind of a situation with a student or yourself, or you've been either, like, called out or felt sort of some kind of way because of your status?

Claudia Rolando: 18:14

I mean, as an educator in my classroom, we start the year with culture and diversity, and I always share my story. I think it's very important, for my students to know their teacher on a personal level. And I don't share, like, details, like, you know, hardship details, but I just I'm very, honest, and I tell them who I am and how I came into this country. We read children's books based on immigration and diversity throughout the whole, maybe, three months of the school year. I think it's more sense of having a teacher build that culture within their classroom of being comfortable, and it starts with sharing my story.

Claudia Rolando: 18:55

You have to open up that foundation of being comfortable within your classroom and having that community sense in your classroom for students to start sharing their own thoughts and feelings and ideas. So I think that's very important, and I think that's one thing I do within my classroom. I want my students to have that foundation set for them. Because as the months go by, I did have, a few students that share, oh, well, I learned my parents or my grandparents were immigrants, and I didn't know this. Or, oh, I started asking questions.

Claudia Rolando: 19:25

I went back home, and I and I shared my story to my family to my families about you, and I learned so and so. So they they start learning about themselves and their culture and their ethnicity. And I had a lot of parents always, like, email me after, like, my god, thank you so much for bringing these conversations into your classroom. Like, for example, I have one student, and I've never had my child wanting to speak Spanish. And ever since she's now in your classroom, now she wants to speak Spanish, and she wants to go on Duolingo and, like, learn Spanish and learn more about her culture.

Claudia Rolando: 19:57

And she's so open to these conversations, and she feels more of a comfortable space coming into your classroom and having these, you know, strong topics being brought up and having that conversation. So I think as an educator, it's it's very important to set that foundation within your classroom. If I had that as a student, I would have completely been a different student. I would have completely had a a different sense of community, you know, as a student. I would have never been so much, like, in a nutshell, so to say, and feel like I I can't tell anybody about who I am or you know?

Claudia Rolando: 20:31

Everybody thought that I was even my friends that I've been friends for years, they didn't find out that I was an immigrant until, like, I was almost closer to college. And they're like, what? You never told me this? And I was like, no. Because I was always scared.

Claudia Rolando: 20:42

Right? I I never had that sense of being safe, so to speak. As an educator, I think that's very important to have that regardless of where you're from, whether it's immigration or not. But just having that sense of community and be feeling safe is important, and I wanna give them that platform. They can have somewhere to go.

Claudia Rolando: 21:01

If it's not home or it's not with someone else, they could share it within their classroom.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 21:07

It's really very heartwarming to know that now there's more educators like yourself. And I also know other teachers that are also from immigrant parents or they are also immigrants. They cross borders, and they share their stories in classrooms. Honestly, I would have loved that as a child. But in my beginning years as, like, pre k, kindergarten, first grade, right before, even knowing that there's schools that actually do provide both languages, A lot of my teachers were just English speakers, and the only thing, like, they would share and, as I grow up, I understand they would share, like, they lived in the suburbs, and they had their, like, I guess, the more common childhood.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 21:49

And I was never able to relate or have that safe space to talk about my childhood. And then everyone else was like, yeah. I had this or I had a backyard, and I had all of these other things, which to me, I never had these things, and I never felt like I really connected with anyone. And I think growing up, that really stamped in my head that I'm not like everyone else. I am different from everyone else, and it made me feel really alone when I was younger.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 22:18

And growing up more into being part of a elementary school that did speak Spanish, and I enjoyed being able to speak my home language because I am able to speak both of them, but I feel more comfortable in speaking Spanish and being able to just say what I wanna say in the language that I wanna say it. Having all these teachers speak about, like, we're all different. They're sharing either their experience or we're reading a book and they share Mira. It's like this person came from this other country, and I felt more comfortable growing up from there. And I started seeing, like, well, there is more people that are adults like me.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 22:56

They are teachers. They figured out how to, like, live with this, and, like, it kind of brought me more of a positive direction growing up. But even doing interviews for, like, scholarships, doing interviews for all these other things, it does still come up to the point where, like, it makes me feel alone in a way. A lot of things, like, in my resume, there's something that can maybe resonate as, like, I'm an undocumented student, and I have interviewers asking me. They're like, oh, so you were part of this program, so you're an undocumented student yourself.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 23:28

And they they don't say it straight to you. They don't say, oh, you're undocumented, but they kind of reference it. And they either try to ask you in some way, and they're like, but how are you doing this? Or how are you able to manage this? And it makes you doubt yourself.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 23:45

So it's very heartwarming to know that now there's a lot more educators trying to bring this, like, safe space.

Claudia Rolando: 23:52

I also wanted to add, as an educator in the school that I'm in, it's not as diverse. I think it's also important to bring these topics to students that are not that are white, right, and and privileged students so they can learn that these people are out in the world. They exist. And, you know, I felt like growing up, I had non Spanish friends, and they always, like, felt like they were better than me. Right?

Claudia Rolando: 24:18

Because they were, like, white privileged, and they have, like, the white picket fence. And I lived, I mean, more in, like, a two bedroom apartment with a larger family. It wasn't the same lifestyle. So I feel like bringing these conversations, and having other students understand the concepts of different types of families and culture, I feel it's very important. Me growing up being a a Mexican undocumented person and having, like, a white friend, for example, was very challenging.

Claudia Rolando: 24:47

Like, I always felt not part of their world, so to speak. Now as an educator, I'm bringing up all these cultures and diversity and and different types of living situations or foods. And just bringing this into life, I feel like they're, like, so curious and they're so more respectful respectful to other people, you know, in

Dra. Aurora Chang: 25:06

the world. And I'm like, you know, you

Claudia Rolando: 25:06

are the future, and it makes me feel like I'm guiding them to the right direction of giving them a light of, like, okay. Well, we're all here, and we're all trying to be better, and we're all the same.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 25:18

I just wanted to add on that. That would actually be so great if everyone did because it takes the weight off, personally, me of having to educate my friends or having to educate anybody that doesn't know and having them ask me all these questions and reminding me that I can't do this or I have to go through all this process to just do something that you could just apply for. You can just sign up your name and you can do it. And I have to go through all these, like, loopholes. And they start giving you this emotion of like, oh, but, like, I'm so sorry you're not able to do this.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 25:54

And it's just like, I don't want the empathy or I I don't need that. It's like, I'm not defenseless. I'm alright with telling you I am undocumented, but I don't want to be seen as I'm defenseless, or I don't acknowledge the things, or I don't know what in what position I am myself and having to educate them and tell them and repeat everything again. It's very tiring, and it's very frustrating. A lot of people don't know, and I don't know.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 26:22

It could be either, like, they weren't educated about it and also, like, not wanting to be able to learn about it. I agree.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 26:30

I wanna return to a few keywords that I've heard throughout this conversation that are also words that appear in the book and that I think are a testament to the these last few words, the strength, the not being defenseless. We could link up to the undocumented and unafraid movement, which I think is so much a part of that shift, Claudia, that you described over time, of there really being a social movement for immigrant justice and immigrant rights in this country. Part of that strength, part of that unafraidness, that not defenselessness, is also a reckoning with these sort of three ideas that I wanna braid together from from what I've been hearing. This uncertainty, La Mari, that you raised for us earlier, this sense of privacy because of, an uncertainty about being judged for one's self worth, right, that Claudia you mentioned. And also the importance of narratives.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 27:25

Aurora, you mentioned testimonial or testimonial narrative, right, that is a speaker's individual narrative that links up to a broader political reality and and sense of of of movement building at a social level. And so I wanna say a few things and then again offer up, an opportunity for you all to respond. But, you know, one of the things that, comes up in the book and that Aurora's work has really been fundamental to my work then in this area has been this notion of self worth as linked to papers. And the notion, if I may, of of hyper documentation that Aurora has has really advanced for us in the field and thinking about how in the absence of immigration status, so papers that come from the government that really are about demarcating who belongs in the country and the society and who has ownership of the nationality as it were. In the absence of that kind of paper, then what Aurora has found in her work has been that there is a desire then to accumulate educational papers that can then shore up a person, an individual, a family's sense of self worth, the accumulation of of diplomas, of other kinds of documents that compensate for the nation states withholding of a kind of immigration paper.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 28:40

Right? So there's that, right? If we pause to consider that, and then that phenomenon is taking place for families, for children, for caregivers and parents in the face of political uncertainty. So then if we turn to think about DACA, which you raised for us, Claudia, the deferred action for childhood arrivals program that Barack Obama signed in into practice in 02/2012 in the absence of a broader immigration reform that would have granted citizenship to undocumented individuals. We have the DACA program, but it has also been under a state of tremendous uncertainty itself as a policy since Donald Trump became president.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 29:14

Right? And so for young people like Lumari, who I've known since they were 10 years old, imagine a fifth grader. Right? That same fifth grader in that classroom, one of the peers in that word web activity who grew up aware of the existence of DACA and spent their childhood thinking, well, when I turned 15, right, because 15 was the golden age at which one could become eligible for DACA and that young people would I do in this project would say, when I turn 15, I'll be able to apply for DACA, and I'll be able to change my status and have access to new degrees of integration socially, economically, educationally. Well, when they turned 15, Donald Trump was president.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 29:53

And so from 15 to now 20, 20 one years of age, they have been wondering how now they will be able to access the kind of economic educational, opportunity that they had spent the last ten years, hoping to obtain. Those desires then for belonging in multiple domains of life, have remained very uncertain and and have circled back to that question of self worth and to, that question of of welcome and of belonging here in this country. And then finally, to to circle back to Aurora's point about narratives serving a purpose. And so the book, Knowing Silence, argues for an approach to listening to children because their narratives matter. Right?

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 30:39

And because we as educators, professors, researchers, policymakers, more broadly, we grown ups in the field of education ought to listen in to what children have to say and ought to listen closely enough to also perceive what they don't say, but that these nerve narratives serve a purpose so that we can work in solidarity with young people in mixed status homes and also so that we can be critical of narratives that serve us poorly. So for example, the narrative that has attached to DACA has been part of different moments in which undocumented people have been given access to rights in this country. We can look at DACA as an example. We can look at Plyler versus Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court case that gives all children the right to public schooling in this country regardless of their or their caregivers' immigration status. At each point, those increased opportunities or those policies or those decisions have been argued on the basis of deservingness, and they have reproduced a different kind of narrative.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 31:41

Right? A narrative in which some immigrants are deserving of these privileges, namely students, namely children, primarily not those who come alone without families, men who labor. Right? We can look at, Carla Villavicencio's book, The Undocumented Americans, for a really, you know, appointed critique. We can look at the New York State Youth Leadership Council for a really astute sense of leadership in terms of what terms they use to describe themselves and documented not dreamers.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 32:11

Right? Because they don't want to reproduce a narrative in which just a few can aspire or just a few can be granted access. I wonder as we as we circle back then to thinking about strength, to think about, being undocumented and unafraid, to not being defenseless, how do we reconcile or how do you think with me, think together with us about this connection between these ongoing dilemmas of self worth, the messages that are transmitted, received in the society about who belongs, who doesn't, the policy and political uncertainty that then impacts a sense of confidence, of belonging, of possibility, and then this question of narratives and the kind of narratives that you tell about yourselves, about those you love and care about in your everyday life.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 32:57

Well, the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned DACA and turning 15 and automatically was, like, a month before I turned 15, they were like, DACA closed. No more applications. Everybody that was already in it, that's it. And it was really devastating mainly for my my parents. Even though I knew that I was building up for that moment, it wasn't so much in my head because I knew automatically.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 33:27

I'm like, elementary school. I'm gonna go to middle school. I'm gonna go to high school. And always as, like, a child, I was like, I don't know how I'm gonna make it to go to college, but I'm gonna go to college somehow, someway. When everything came to be, like, the news DACA is not a thing anymore for me, it was very heartbreaking.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 33:47

It was very, like my support system was really the one that kind of pulled me back up and telling me my mom was like, but you did this. You've been an honor roll for this. So she was like, it's okay. Like, whatever is to come, you're gonna be part of that group. And whenever they give some type of documentation or they give some type of program, they usually always choose students or they choose anyone that could and excel in this, like, country in some way, somehow have a career of some sort.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 34:16

So she would always tell me, keep going. Keep doing what you're doing. Like, focus in school. Don't focus on, like, outside of, like, news and stuff. It's a lot of self worth and being able to say, like, what's it really for?

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 34:31

I'm working all this, like, way. I'm doing all of these steps. I'm coming across a lot of things that it's hard for me. It's hard for me to study or it's hard for me to pass this class and all of these things, but I'm like, I have to push myself harder because I can't be like all the other students. I can't afford to just be like, well, it's just high school or it's just middle school.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 34:51

It's okay. I always have to stand out from everyone else and stand out in a way that I also wasn't standing out. I had to stand out academically, but I couldn't put myself to stand out as an undocumented student because I still didn't know if that space was a safe space. I'm in in the uncertainty, even now, trying to pursue my career, trying to choose classes, and them telling me, well, you need to be fingerprinted for this, and I can't get fingerprinted. So I'm like, well, I can't tell this to my professor as of right now, but I will probably have to go act somewhere else or I have to go investigate somewhere else.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 35:29

And it just brings a lot of loops that I have to keep jumping through to do the same thing as everyone else.

Claudia Rolando: 35:37

I'll share the DACA part of me too. I also I still have all those feelings even as a DACA recipient. Growing up, like, I didn't understand until, like, I reached high school when all my friends were, like, applying for colleges. And during that time, DACA didn't exist. And that's when I had an understanding, like, wait a minute.

Claudia Rolando: 35:58

I can't I can't apply. That was it for me. Like, my parents said, no. You can't go to college, like, because you're an immigrant. Like, that was just the mindset that was given to me.

Claudia Rolando: 36:06

And I was like, wait. I can't go to college? And I didn't understand it until, like, I'm like, no. There's no way that I cannot go to college because all my friends were, like, interested in becoming doctors and interested in becoming nurses. And I'm like, wait.

Claudia Rolando: 36:19

I can't be, like, nobody. Like, I have to be somebody. That was my standard. Like, I need to be somebody important, somebody in life. So I'm like, I'm gonna do it.

Claudia Rolando: 36:28

Even though I did get the support from my parents, like, okay. You could do whatever you want, but it wasn't as extreme like, okay. College is important. Like, for them, it was more so like, you're here, you're gonna work, and that's it. But for me, that wasn't it for me.

Claudia Rolando: 36:41

I wanted something more. I wasn't in college right away. I worked for two years really hard because I knew I couldn't, afford college. It was so expensive, and I was paying outside tuition. Even though I was here in this country before I was one years old, I was paying double the tuition.

Claudia Rolando: 36:57

Instead of a thousand for a class, I was paying $23,000 for a class. I was considered as an out of state student. So I took one class or two classes at a time depending on what I could afford, and that's how I went through. And I wasn't even sure if by the time I graduate, if I was gonna be able to work in whatever I decided to become because I'm like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to. I don't have a Social Security.

Claudia Rolando: 37:22

I can't fingerprint myself either. Right? Like, even when I when I was like, okay. Let me just do a two year program. I couldn't do anything because everything was, like, New York State, and I had to, like, get fingerprinted.

Claudia Rolando: 37:32

And I'm like, okay. Well, I guess I'm just gonna stay here and take classes until I find my path. And that's when I found my path. I was like, okay. I'm gonna be a teacher, but then I'm like, alright.

Claudia Rolando: 37:42

God knows if I'm gonna be able to teach or be in the classroom. And then by the time, I think, like, a month or two before I graduated, DACA came into place, and I was like, oh my god. I'm gonna be able to teach? It was a good thing, but then at the same time, you know, living in with uncertainty, I'm like, I'm I'm in my classrooms. I have my moments that sometimes I sit in my classroom.

Claudia Rolando: 38:03

Like, wow. I'm actually here. This is my classroom. I'm actually a teacher. Sometimes I can't even believe it.

Claudia Rolando: 38:09

But then I still live with a cloud with a black cloud. Like, you never know when you're gonna get ripped from it because it's not set in stone. I now live like, okay. I live in the moment. I'm teaching now, and I'm doing everything I can, you know, as an educator and what I believe in to give the next generation the pathway in the light of what's going on in the world.

Claudia Rolando: 38:30

But I don't know if I'm gonna get ripped from it. Right? So I'm just, like, taking it all in for the moment and just seeing what comes. And then, also, like, as a mother now for my son, and that's also a scary point. I don't know what's what's gonna be the future.

Claudia Rolando: 38:45

Am I gonna be ripped away from my son? Like, no. He's not gonna come with me. And so all these unknown questions, I still live with, and it's always gonna stay with me until something happens. Just having the DACA just feels temporary, and I just have to, like, live with it and embrace what I have now because you don't know if it's gonna be gone tomorrow.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 39:07

You all are reminding me of a couple of things. One is, as you both were talking, I was thinking about Roberto Gonzalez's book, Lives in Limbo. I think it's called Undocumented and Coming of Age. But he talks about this feeling of just like a perpetual limbo. I also thought about something else, which is, Terra Yoso's concept of community cultural wealth, where she talks about, like, what we normally see as wealth, like capital, is sort of aligned with, like, whiteness or citizens or class, and she counters that and says, actually, Latinx folks have there's six types.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 39:49

The only reason I remember is because I gave a presentation not to see yesterday. It was, resistant capital, navigational capital, linguistic capital, familial capital, social capital, and aspirational capital. And one of the things I heard you all say was the aspirational capital, which is this idea of, like, it's like you're in limbo, and yet you still have such high expectations and hope and aspirations and dreams. And I'm wondering how you all manage the day to day. When I studied with undocumented students, you know, they talked a lot about their mental health.

Dra. Aurora Chang: 40:26

And And so I'm just wondering, what are some things that you all do to keep yourself together, grounded, hopeful, sometimes just surviving? But, yeah, I'm curious to hear, like, what do you all do on a daily basis to navigate this space?

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 40:40

As of right now, like, one of my classes, I wasn't able to do the field work that every other student is supposed to do with, like, children in an after school program. And I'm working in, like, the office, and I'm helping with, like, the marketing part, and I'm helping with more of the organization part because I can't get fingerprinted. So what I set my mind to is, like, well, I can't put I did field work with students in my resume, but I could put I have experience doing marketing. I have experienced, managing program or managing and organizing events for this program. I could put, like, all these other things that I could keep adding up.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 41:19

I tell myself, okay. Maybe it's not a set thing that I have, but it's a small thing, and it'll keep tying up. That's what I've been telling myself since, like, high school and and high school as well, which it was so much easier to be part of so many programs in high school. I was part of the scholars program, which I was able to take classes in the new school, which is an art school, and I really fell in love with the art. And being able to participate in all of these, like, events, I was able to go to exhibits, and I was opened to a lot more people, a lot more conversations, a lot more opportunities because now I know I can go to galleries.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 41:57

I enjoy going to galleries. I enjoy making things at home. I do charcoal painting. So a lot of these things in my head were like, yeah. I'm going to school, but I'm also doing all these other small stuff.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 42:10

I'm not doing nothing. I have to keep doing other stuff. I have to keep putting myself to do things that I can do and just keep adding it up. And that's how I keep myself more stable, I guess, and, like, mentally stable when it comes to my academics. And then more of my personal life, it's more of, like, my support system.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 42:32

My parents are very close to me. My sister, we're always, like, having dinner together, and we have these conversations. And we always talk about like, my parents are always like, well, it's okay. You know? You are studying.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 42:44

You're going well. Just keep going. Words of encouragement do help as well as personal hobbies. I recently started getting into, like, new series of reading books, and I do art by myself as well as, like, keeping open my connections in way of, like, I speak with Miss Ariana all the time, and I speak with my friends, or I speak with, like, other people that I have uncertainty. Like, I'm part of the Macaulay honor scholarship.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 43:11

There's some people I feel comfortable speaking with, and sometimes I'm like, well, I'm not so comfortable speaking with this person, but I know I can access other person. And I try to be like, well, can I do this? Having to keep asking or having to keep talking, and, hopefully, something will come up into the conversation. And I'll be like, oh, how can I be part of that? It's community service that I get to do a lot of the things, and I do enjoy it.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 43:35

And it's also very hard to be like, well, I can't apply to regular internships and get paid for it. I'm at least getting the experience. I'm trying not to, like, stay in one place. Because if I stayed in one place, then it would be a completely different story.

Claudia Rolando: 43:50

I guess for me, before I was an educator and before I was a I was a mom, I did go into, like, a dark place. You know, I was depressed, you know, especially because I didn't have sources outside knowing other people that were in the same predicament as me. I didn't have people to to talk to or share my experiences with. So that was really hard, but it was more so like that. Like, I am an artist, so I used to always be drawing or reading or, just keeping myself busy and just being hopeful.

Claudia Rolando: 44:23

I I don't think I ever let go of that being hopeful. It's gonna happen eventually. And then now as an educator, I think my classroom is my safe haven. I'm like, okay. I'm here.

Claudia Rolando: 44:34

I'm gonna do everything that I have in me to do what I'm supposed to be doing for the future. My students and my classroom is is what keeps me going. And then my son, more so now for him to grow up and understand, like, the struggles. And he was born here, and he's gonna have a lot more opportunities, and he's gonna be a lot more privileged than I was. But I don't want him to lose that sense of who he is and who where his parents came from.

Claudia Rolando: 45:00

So I'm always bringing back things from my own culture and bringing him up knowing and speaking Spanish and doing everything that I did as a child.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 45:09

Now one of the goals of the book, Knowing Silence, is to help adults in the field of education break their own professional silences around the very real lived experiences we're talking about today. The book argues, right, that because of the important and inclusive policies that have taken hold in education over the years, particularly since 1982, the Plyler Supreme Court decision that has then become educational policy that protects students' rights to schools, elementary, middle, and high school. As Damari reminded us, because of policies like DACA, it's possible to not talk about as educators, not talk about students' immigration status. In fact, not only is it possible, it's actually often required that teachers never inquire about their students' immigration status for important reasons. Now what it means, I think, in terms of our professional dispositions, behaviors, norms, is that the ways that we protect students' rights to schooling is by erasing, invisibilizing their immigration status.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 46:15

It's a don't ask, don't tell policy essentially. Right? So educators are required not to ask precisely out of questions of privacy, precisely out of questions of of not putting anyone at risk. But by not asking, it can lead us to assume that these issues don't exist then. Right?

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 46:31

Either that children are too young to know or that what happens outside of school stays outside of school and doesn't impact children's experiences in the classroom. Everything that you all are talking about points to the contrary. Right? That an immigrant in this country carries that immigrant identity with them and in a diverse way, as Aurora pointed out to us, diversity in how immigrants came, diversity in different immigration statuses. It should also be said diversity beyond Latinx communities that this question of immigration status schooling impacts racialized ethnic national origin communities from very different places across the world.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 47:09

But nonetheless, the point being that as educators, then we can assume that children don't know about the realities of immigration status and actually that we can feel bound never to ask in order to protect students' rights. The impact that I see this have on graduate students in CUNY, at the Graduate Center where I'm a professor, in the lives of the young people in this project, who I'm still in very good touch with today, is that students themselves, families, parents themselves have to then take the risk to disclose their own immigration status in order to advocate for new opportunities. But if we go back to the statistics that we started the conversation with, that more than 16,700,000 people live in mixed status households as of 2021 with at least one undocumented member, that approximately 6,000,000 of the people in mixed status households are younger than 18 years of age, then shouldn't we always assume that we have an undocumented student in our class? Or shouldn't we always assume that we need to tailor our conversations about accessing an internship, about applying for financial aid, about the books we bring into our classroom libraries? Shouldn't we always be thinking about how to have pathways for young people that are inclusive, right, without waiting for them to have to take the risk, come to the office hours, tell their stories.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 48:26

And in light of our beautifully and complicatedly ongoing migration of people across the world and into The United States and and back out into home countries and new countries of residence, shouldn't we always be prepared to receive and to welcome and to have these conversations? And so I think the answer is yes. And the book certainly argues that part of what we need to do is gain practice in these conversations. These are hard conversations to have and certainly for any educators who are not directly impacted, they're very hard conversations. It requires imagining uno tracer, another self.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 49:02

It requires learning a history that one may not have lived personally, and and it requires a sense of love and commitment to listening and and learning from one another. So I wonder what you all think about this question about what and how teachers can go about breaking their professional silences, educators and researchers, policymakers, breaking our own professional silences, going beyond the don't ask, don't tell policies that we uphold in in public schools to think in new ways about how to serve our students all and our students immigrant and our students from mixed status families without putting the onus on those students to take risks to access equitable educational opportunities. So what what do we need to do? How could we get more fluent in this kind of practice so that we go beyond the silences, that exist today and so that we break our professional silences, very much in the spirit of the book and its goals for our colleagues and ourselves?

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 50:01

I think we have to stay away from categorizing that there's two type of children, children that are not immigrants so they have no no idea about it and children that don't. Even if they know or they don't know or if they have family members that are immigrants coming into the country or just came or they themselves came, say, well, everybody has to know. Maybe it doesn't affect their life, but they know, their cousin, their aunts, all of these people that they interact with in a daily basis. I think that a lot of teachers don't have to ask to help. It could be a from a book.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 50:38

It could be a shared experience. It could be from any way starting, I think, is not the hardest part. I think it's more keep it going and making sure that everyone is understanding these topics. Everyone is asking these questions. Because maybe a student that is undocumented won't ask these questions, but because children are children.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 50:59

Children are curious. Children will ask questions and be like, what does this mean or how does that work? And not necessarily not only children, teenagers and everything. I feel like now we've come to an a time where we all wanna know about everything. We all wanna know how we can help.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 51:17

We all wanna be aware. At least most of us do wanna be more aware, wanna be educated with all these other topics and also wanna be advocates for our friends, for our family members. So just starting and not making sure that, you know, you don't have to ask to help. You don't have to put anyone outside or make them stand out. You just have to kinda bring it out there and start showing all these different strategies.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 51:42

This is information. Do with it as you please. It's for everyone. It's not categorizing anybody, not putting anyone in any sort of group. Just saying, well, these are things that we can all do to help or we can all learn from.

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 51:57

And this would also help students like me having to teach other students like me things that they don't know and having to take as well that weight off personally my shoulders of having to educate everyone else. In that scenario, everyone would know by then. And it would be like, oh, but, like, I heard this from someone. Have you tried this? Or have you done this?

Lumari Sosa Garzón: 52:18

Or it's just so much more helpful in conversations.

Claudia Rolando: 52:23

I think, like, as a teacher, like, you know, setting that, like I've said before, that safe space inside the classroom and just being undocumented, like, bringing my story into play. But I also feel like a lot of teachers don't know where to start. It's not firsthand experience, so they feel uncomfortable, or they're not Hispanic or not Latinx. And they're, you know, white teachers. They, like, don't wanna touch it because they're not, like, I'm not sure.

Claudia Rolando: 52:48

Like, and instead of saying I'm not sure or I don't know where to start, maybe seek out to those that do know. Like, I was very open, like, with my community and my school that I'm undocumented. Maybe not everyone knows, but we have small meetings. And, you know, in the beginning of the school year, they ask questions, like, in small groups, like, who are you? How do you identify?

Claudia Rolando: 53:10

And that's how certain people in small groups started learning, like, who I was, and I became more open. And I feel like it's important as an educator for other educators to know, like, you have this person within your community that you could reach out to in case you have anyone within your classroom that you're not sure how to bring up conversations. Like, not asking directly, but bringing in books, resources. You know, working with adults is a little bit more trickier than with children, and I feel like, you just have to be very open. And that's something very hard for me since I was always shut off of who I was.

Claudia Rolando: 53:46

Don't share, don't tell kind of thing. As an educator, I learned how important it is, and sharing to other people in the world as educators is important. And maybe, like, bringing up a curriculum or having smaller group settings like the way they do, like, in staff meetings, right, but in a bigger sense. I think if it was brought up, like, Claudia, do you wanna share who you are? I think everyone would be like, oh, wow.

Claudia Rolando: 54:09

I didn't know Claudia is an undocumented teacher. Wow. She could have been a great resource for this student. So I feel like me not doing that, it kinda takes away from the kids that needed the support. And that's where I feel always like, oh, no.

Claudia Rolando: 54:23

Maybe I should share or you know and I try to have different conversations with people throughout the building so then I could kinda tell them my story, and they're like, oh, wow. I didn't know. Well, this is how, you know, you could communicate with this person, and that's how I got in touch with a lot of people that were sharing the same experiences with me. If I don't share it, I feel like it's not heard. I don't know.

Claudia Rolando: 54:42

How can I share that light on the fact that this is who I am, and I could definitely be, like, a resource for other teachers to navigate these conversations into their classrooms?

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 54:54

Well, it is my my hope that this book, Knowing Silence, how children talk about immigration status in school can serve as an example of listening to children, of recognizing their strength and the strength of the population of children growing up in mixed status families today, and that it helps to take the responsibility off of any one person from disclosing, of any one person from bearing the responsibility for educating others about their very real lived experiences that children, adolescents, adults live within this country when they live without documentation, without US citizenship, or in mixed status families. And as the book travels, I hope that the voices of the six children, the teachers who are part been part of this project over years, that the voices of the children and of the teachers travel as well. And that through that traveling of voices, others of us can break our professional silences and work together in solidarity with immigrant students, with students from mixed status families, and share the responsibility of educating ourselves and one another so so that we can continue to work towards justice for immigrants in The United States and educational opportunities for the children who are growing up in this country with the richness of the many countries of origin, languages, immigration status that they bring to our classrooms and schools throughout the country.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa: 56:19

So I thank you so much for sharing of yourselves, of your experiences, of your work, of your careers with us today. Aurora, Claudia, and Lumari. Over the length of this book, you have been central to to the project, and, I hope that we will continue to be able to have these conversations and many more and that the conversations grow within the field of education more broadly.