Overview

Serving Refugee Children shows the struggles and traumatic experiences that unaccompanied and undocumented children undergo they seek safety in the United States and instead find imprisonment, separation from their families, and immigration enforcement raids. Current legislation and bureaucracy limit publication of first-person narratives from unaccompanied and undocumented children, but service providers and grassroots activists authoring the pieces in this collection bear witness to the children’s brave human spirits in their search for safety in the United States. Through the power of storytelling, Serving Refugee Children exposes the many hardships unaccompanied and undocumented children endure, including current detention center conditions. No child should have to live the persecution suffered by children featured in these stories, nor should they have to embark upon perilous journeys across Latin America or be subjected to the difficult immigration court process unaided. Researchers and readers who believe that the emotional bonding of storytelling can humanize discussions and lead to immigration policies that foster a culture of engagement and interconnectedness will be interested in this volume.

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9781433179488

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Reviews

“For reasons both ethical and bureaucratic, child migrants rarely tell their own stories. Yet the world needs to hear them if we are to find a way to end their suffering. In this valuable collection of reflections by activists and scholars, the reader begins to hear children’s voices, to understand the lives of their caregivers, and to gain the possibility to stand with them in solidarity.”—Donna R. Gabaccia, Professor Emerita, University of Toronto “Serving Refugee Children is timely and it’s essential. The historical context provided by the introduction is a fact often neglected when trying to understand the desperate act of leaving everything behind in search of—not a better life but often, simply—a a life. The narratives of service providers that have come out of their experience caring for detained youth are an invaluable historical record and everlasting testimony. They reveal the human cost of policies fashioned by ideologues blinded by their own prejudices. The simple act of listening to the stories of these children dignifies their saga and is, in itself, an act of social justice.”—Luis Argueta, Director of the Documentary Series abUSEd: The Postville Raid, ABRAZOS, and The U Turn

For reasons both ethical and bureaucratic, child migrants rarely tell their own stories. Yet the world needs to hear them if we are to find a way to end their suffering. In this valuable collection of reflections by activists and scholars, the reader begins to hear children's voices, to understand the lives of their caregivers, and to gain the possibility to stand with them in solidarity. -Donna R. Gabaccia, Professor Emerita, University of Toronto Serving Refugee Children is timely and it's essential. The historical context provided by the introduction is a fact often neglected when trying to understand the desperate act of leaving everything behind in search of-not a better life but often, simply-a a life. The narratives of service providers that have come out of their experience caring for detained youth are an invaluable historical record and everlasting testimony. They reveal the human cost of policies fashioned by ideologues blinded by their own prejudices. The simple act of listening to the stories of these children dignifies their saga and is, in itself, an act of social justice. -Luis Argueta, Director of the Documentary Series abUSEd: The Postville Raid, ABRAZOS, and The U Turn

Author Information

Montse Feu (Ph.D., University of Houston) is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Sam Houston State University. She is the author of Correspondencia personal y política de un anarcosindicalista exiliado: Jesús González Malo (1943-1965) (2016) and Fighting Fascist Spain (2020). She is the co-editor of Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States (2019). Amanda Venta (Ph.D., University of Houston) is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on how relationships between children and caregivers affect mental health with more than 100 publications and funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

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