Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá: An analysis into the contemporary undocumented experience in the U.S.

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Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá

An analysis into the contemporary undocumented experience in the U.S.

Maria Fernanda Rechkemmer (12308161)

Master of Arts in Comparative Literature

University of Amsterdam

June 14, 2019

Supervisor: Dr. Mikki Stelder

19,297 words

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“Every year my students read Night by Elie Wiesel. Following completion of the book, I assign them the tasks of writing their own memoir. Maria came to America when she was five years old, wrote that she had to cross a river before she ever knew what it meant to swim, ran through knee-high grass as if the field were made of landmines, hid under the belly of trucks amid concrete and fertilizer so as not to leave a scent for the dogs. She did not know why she was running, but she knew that her mother cried every night for her father, she knew she was beginning to forget her daddy’s face, she knew that he worked eighteen hours a day just to provide them with food they could barely find at home, she knew

that he loved them & wanted to remember what it felt like to hold his daughter in his arms. But Maria was five. She doesn’t remember life in Mexico. She remembers Kindergarten & sleepovers & middle school graduations. She is more American than any slice of apple pie but that is not what we tell her. We punish Maria for following directions, for being a child simply listening to her parents. We tell her parents that they are wrong for wanting a better life for their family. we tell her that a 4.0 isn’t good enough.

We tell Maria that college wasn’t meant for girls like her. Too much brown skin.

Too much accent. Where’d you come from? You don’t have a number you don’t exist.

There is apathy under the eyelids of this country & we cannot see what’s right in front of us. It’s hard

to convince someone to do well in school when the law tells them that it won’t matter—when you’re a number before you’re a face. How convenient that we forget our own history.

A country of immigrants who were once told we didn’t belong. An assemblage of faces simply waiting for our country to see us.”

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1. Introduction

In December of 2018, Carlos Aguilar published the first foundational academic article that clearly and primarily focused on undocumented immigrant experiences in the United States. As an undocumented scholar himself, Aguilar, despite the existing body of literature on undocumented immigrants at the time, saw a need for new theories about undocumented experiences researched and authored by scholars who are undocumented themselves. The article introduced Aguilar’s developing theory entitled Undocumented Critical Theory. Through the lens of Undocumented Critical Theory (hereafter known as “UndocuCrit”), Aguilar exhorts undocumented scholars to contribute to UndocuCrit by applying it to their own or other undocumented experiences in order to challenge the immigrant binary rhetoric (1).

This article arrives at a time when personal narratives written by young undocumented immigrants are a growing body of literature in the United States. The recent rise of immigrant activist movements and new policies granting protections to this group of undocumented youth allow many to feel protected enough to share their experiences. They are artists, poets, journalists, and activists who have come of age in the United States. They feel at home and some feel like U.S.-Americans, yet they hold an undocumented immigration status. Their experiences are unlike other immigrant narratives because they are stories of a group of young people whose experiential narratives do not fit in the immigrant binary: that of documented versus undocumented, of immigrant versus “American.”

The recent publications of such undocumented narratives tell stories that show how this generation is different than previous undocumented immigrant generations. The largest influx of undocumented immigrants started in the 1990s, largely from central America (Engler 13). Many immigrants arrived unlawfully with their children and families (Engler 14). The parents and

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adults from this time represent the older undocumented generation, creating the undocumented “norms” and the modern hegemonic perception of undocumented immigrants. The new generation, however, lives in a world where many are “outed” undocumented youth, meaning their immigration status is public knowledge. They are more integrated within American society than their parents, due to their education and careers. Yet, they are legally vulnerable to deportation, arrest, and violence.

Today, with sharing their diverse undocumented narratives, they seem to indicate a change in the undocumented experience. These first-person personal narratives are essential given they hold an intimate perspective in how undocumented youth experience marginalization; where they can participate in society yet always have a legal vulnerability looming over their lives. The United States in particular is one of the only western countries that allows for an ambiguous and broken legal immigration system (Johnson 271). The cracks in the system allow for undocumented immigrants to live their entire lives in a vulnerable position (272). In other words, this thesis is specific to the United States since it holds a unique immigration system that has cultivated a legal space where undocumented children can come into adulthood and maintain an undocumented status.

Considering Aguilar’s UndocuCrit as a serious theoretical approach at a time when undocumented narratives detail a change in the undocumented experience leads me to ask: How

does the contemporary undocumented experience as found in the personal narratives authored by undocumented youth in the U.S. depict a new sense of experiential marginalization? This

question arises not only from the growing amount of public undocumented narratives, but also from the serious need to take undocumented narratives as academic objects as Aguilar suggests. I will explore this question in the publicized narratives of four undocumented young people in the

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following thesis. Specifically, I will focus on the “young” undocumented people, or those who were brought to the U.S. as children, who rooted themselves in U.S.-American society, and came into adulthood with a complicated notion of where their experience belongs. I will look at the narratives in three case studies as follows.

Jose Antonio Vargas is the first major name who “outed” himself as undocumented in a New York Times Op-ed. Originally from the Philippines, Vargas was oblivious of his undocumented status until he turned sixteen and tried to get his driver license. It is at this moment where he learned of his legal vulnerability. As a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist who worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post, Vargas became a public name in the movement for immigration reform. He set a precedence where other undocumented immigrants were able to publicly share their status and their personal stories. His memoir recalls how he, as a child still in school, used the tactics of passing as American while being undocumented.

YouTube beauty vloggers Daisy Marquez and Mawizza are young, undocumented individuals. Marquez is a verified YouTuber, whose videos are professionally made. The video I focus on is titled “Story Time: I’m Undocumented” and was published in 2017. Mawizza, also a YouTuber, makes her own videos. Her video that is titled “My Life As an Undocumented Student! #Dreamer #DACAmented,” was published in 2015. Both channels are beauty related, although each vlogger created one video specifically on their undocumented experiences and how DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals)1

has impacted this experience. DACA complicates the traditional binary notion of documented and undocumented by allowing undocumented youth to lawfully enter part of the documented world.

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My last case study focuses on the works of Sonia Guiñansaca. A Harlem native queer artist, originally from Ecuador, Guiñansaca has created spoken word poetry on their undocumented, queer experiences. I will look at their use of linguistic mixing—how they inextricably use English and Spanish words. Additionally, their activism carries over in their work. I will expand on undocumented activism and the defiance of staying shown in Guiñansaca’s poetry.

Notably, each case study belongs to a different medium: a book, YouTube videos, and spoken word poetry. I will use a transmedia lens as I approach each narrative. Transmedia storytelling is simply a “story told across media platforms” (Scolari 587). The different medias are representative of the diverse accounts of the undocumented experience. The transmedia approach is vital to the integrity of each narrative. Each of the listed mediums constitute different consumers and aid the construction of the narrative that is being told (586). The words in Vargas’s memoir and the visual effects of YouTube videos each add a different element in the respective undocumented narrative. Their narratives and their mediums complicate the notions of belonging, identity, and an immigrant binary.

At the conclusion of Aguilar’s paper, he writes:

“I urge DACAdemics and undocumented scholars to engage with and contribute to UndocuCrit… this is your community; we are as strong as the sum of our people. This is a plea to you—a call to action as capable, academically [active], and ethically engaged individuals. Your active membership and disclosure promises a safe community of [scholars], advocates of social justice and characters committed of moral change and integrity. Accept [UndocuCrit] as an

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invitation to continue defining who we are, unafraid, and certain that together we will prevail.” (7)

Given undocumented narratives are only beginning to be taken seriously by the academic community, I believe it vital to take Aguilar’s call to action sincerely. As a former undocumented immigrant, brought to the U.S. as a child and believing it to be my home, I will analyze these narratives through my perspective as part of the future archive of UndocuCrit.

1.1 Undocumented Identity

In this thesis, I will approach the objects described above through a literary and discourse analysis. Within existing academic discourse, however, undocumented experiences and narratives are largely analyzed through a sociological and ethnographic lens. Carola Suárez-Orozco first recognized the 1990s wave of incoming documented and undocumented immigrants in Children of Immigration, the largest longitudinal study on undocumented children at the time. From this study, sociology professor Roberto Gonzales is now the most prominent contributor in the study of undocumented communities. He is one of the earliest scholars who studied the lives of undocumented individuals starting in 2002, one year after the failed attempt to pass the DREAM2_act.

Gonzales focuses on educational and federal policies and how they affect undocumented communities. His work situates itself on how undocumented youth, students as well as working professionals, must come to terms with their condition of illegality (Gonzales 12). In his book,

2_{The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act was first proposed in 2001 as a} process for a pathway to legal status for undocumented youth who were brought into the U.S. as children.

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Lives in limbo: Undocumented and coming of age in America (2015), Gonzales finds two major

concepts that I will use: the “transition into illegality” and the “condition of liminality” (11). Gonzales asks the central question: “is residing within a community sufficient grounds for asserting membership, or does one first need to be recognized as a member?” (5). The transition to adulthood, according to Gonzales, is accompanied by the transition to illegality. In this stage of life, undocumented youth are unable to access the same job and educational spaces as documented youth, closing off plenty of opportunities and a heightened chance for deportation (12). Although they have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives, “they must negotiate membership in the national community as art of a group that is culturally integrated but legally excluded” (6).

The condition of liminality frames the lives of undocumented young people. An undocumented status becomes a significant part of the everyday experiences as undocumented youth enters adulthood (95). Liminality is then, according to Gonzales, referring to “the ambiguous space individuals occupy as they move from one key point of their lives to the next… it is a ‘betwixt and between’ stage” (100). Anthropologist Victor Turner’s work heavily shaped the notion of liminality that Gonzales draws on, specifically regarding the notion as an intermediate state of being in social structure, or an “in-between” (Turner 365). The condition of liminality is thus how Gonzales captures the ambiguity of an undocumented status. Ultimately, Gonzales states that undocumented lives are in a state of “legal limbo,” or a liminal space created by a sense of illegality, an important topic to this research.

Carlos Aguilar, author of UndocuCrit, is an undocumented scholar and student of Roberto Gonzales. Following the traditions of Critical Race Theories, primarily those of Latina/o and Tribal critical race theories, “Undocumented Critical Theory” was the first step in quenching

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the need for theoretical approaches toward undocumented experiences. Latino/a Critical Race (LatCrit) Theory, largely written by Dolores Delgado-Bernal a Chicana feminism scholar, opened the field into the reality of how some of the experiences, histories, cultures and languages of Latinx students were being ignored or omitted in educational settings. LatCrit expands on how those experiences are seen as counternarratives, or stories told by marginalized perspectives, offer a way to better understand other experiences not seen in the mainstream (Delgado-Bernal 113). Tribal Critical Race theory is borne out of the need to “address the complicated relationship between American Indians and the United States federal government” in order to make sense of their “liminality as both racial and legal/political groups and individuals” (Brayboy 427). These two critical race theories focus on highlighting the voices of such liminal communities within academia.

Following in the tradition of focusing on liminal groups, UndocuCrit introduces four tenets of the undocumented experience: (1) fear as endemic among immigrant communities; (2) different experiences of liminality translate into different experiences of reality; (3) parental

sacrificios (sacrifices) as a form of capital; and (4) acompañamiento (accompaniment) as the

embodiment of mentorship3

(Aguilar 2). These four tenets are meant to be the start of a better “theoretical framework, a recipe that augments and provides for a better understanding and appreciation of undocumented communities” (2). Like most Critical Race Theories, UndocuCrit heavily relies on first-hand undocumented immigrant perspectives, preferably by both author and object, so as to maintain the integrity of the experiences. Moreover, UndocuCrit opens the grounds for looking into literature and art from undocumented artists through a critical lens. For

3_{It should be made clear that although some of these elements are written in Spanish, and the author himself is} Latino, that not all undocumented narratives are exclusively from Latinx voices as many would think. In this thesis, I integrate voices from Latinx and non-Latinx undocumented experiences.

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this thesis in particular, the second tenet will be central to the question of creating a liminal, undocumented reality.

1.2 Third Spaces

My research question centers on the creation of undocumented spaces opened by the new generation of undocumented youth. The U.S. policies in place and the public voices that represent the undocumented community influence how this undocumented generation experiences the condition of illegality. Most importantly, the concept of an undocumented experience that is central to my argument is founded in an anti-binary field as mentioned in UndocuCrit. I will focus on the third spaces created in the personal narratives. For this, the works of Jose Esteban Muñoz and Gloria Anzaldúa are necessary.

Muñoz’s ideological lens of “disidentification” is crucial when exploring undocumented narratives. He defines disidentification as “a performative mode of tactical recognition that various minoritarian subjects employ in an effort to resist the oppressive and normalizing discourse of dominant ideology” (98). For Muñoz, there is the majoritarian, or the dominant, hegemonic discourse and the minoritarian, or the marginalized, non-hegemonic discourse. Disidentification is therefore how the minoritarian, negotiate identity with the majoritarian “in order not to be punished for the one they hone” (Muñoz 3). This is seen through the performative act of passing as the majoritarian culture.

Disidentification is mostly descriptive of the survival tactics the minoritarian subject practices (4). In this case, the undocumented young person negotiates aspects of the normative world they will acquire in order to survive. According to Muñoz, however, there is a point of collision during the negotiation moments. It is during this collision “when hybrid, racially

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predicated, and deviantly gendered identities arrive at representation” (6). I use the concept of disidentification to depict how the minoritarian, or undocumented, subjects strategize in their everyday lives.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s pivotal book Borderlands/ La Frontera depicts the two worlds she inhabited as a Chicana living in Texas near the border to Mexico. Her scholarly work challenges normative concepts of identity and migration. Relevant to this line of thought is Homi Bhabha’s

Third Space theory that relies heavily on the concept of hybridity. Bhabha’s cultural hybridity

insists there is a cross of two cultures, where people can pick elements from either culture to form one identity (Bhabha 97). Therefore, Anzaldúa’s use of code-switching Spanish, without translation, and English in her writing is essential to the ways immigrants interchangeably use different languages as a third, hybrid language. Most relevant is her concept of the “mestiza consciousness.” She theorizes that when two cultures collide in one person it produces a third element, the mestiza consciousness (101). This new consciousness serves to breakdown the duality of cultures and languages in order to make this one, unique culture. Anzaldúa’s works to explore the ambiguous nature of immigrants and how they cope with contradicting cultures and how this is found in the third space created by them. Her concepts in this book acquire new meaning as I employ the mestiza consciousness on the undocumented narratives. The additional vulnerability of an undocumented status affects the ambiguity of an immigrant identity, as I will apply directly to the use of mixed language.

1.3 Structure

Grounded in the academic works detailed above, I take the contemporary undocumented narratives as evidence of current change in how scholars view undocumentedness, immigration

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and linguistic identity. Of course, not all undocumented experiences are the same, given undocumented immigrants have diverse backgrounds. They come from different countries, speak different languages, and have grown up in different parts of the U.S. Certain elements, however, tend to show up across experiences. I will look at each undocumented experience in the case studies through three chapters.

Chapter one entitled “Belonging” focuses on Jose Vargas’s Dear America memoir. I first look at Vargas’s experiences as a child, when he was oblivious to his undocumented status. He engages in “passing” and mimicry as tactics in order to “pass” in an American school. His tactics change to ones of survival as he becomes aware of his undocumented status. I explore how Vargas’s actions are different than the undocumented generations before him, as he wants to take up public space and live as an American. I will demonstrate how Vargas disidentifies, through Muñoz’s ideological lens, from the majoritarian world in order to form his own version of experiential undocumentedness.

Chapter two, “Transition into a Temporal Reality,” focuses on the YouTube videos by Daisy Marquez and Mawizza. I explore the role of DACA in the current undocumented experience and what it means to the undocumented youth that is protected by it. In this chapter, Marquez’s and Mawizza’s videos demonstrate the new temporal reality that DACA helped create within the undocumented experience. Exemplary of a true state of “in-betweenness” both vloggers show how they are not documented, but not traditionally undocumented and are instead, in a new temporal space with no form of progression.

Chapter three is titled “Me Quedo” which translates to “I am staying.” This final chapter focuses on the spoken word poetry by Sonia Guiñansaca. Their poetry embodies the obscure “something else,” or what I name the “undocumented ethos” as the ungraspable tenet of the

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undocumented experience. The undocumented ethos will be exemplified in Guiñansaca’s use of language, activism and a concept I call “me quedo.” The me quedo concept is the epitome of the radical act of staying in the U.S. that the undocumented narratives in this thesis embody.

In my conclusion, I will note how analyzing each narrative in its own medium serves as a cultural criticism of the binary perspective of immigrants in the U.S. Most importantly, I call for a closer look at the unique spaces and how they arise within each undocumented narrative, perceiving that many variants exist in different undocumented communities. They are testament to the ever-changing, unstable grasp an undocumented status holds on a life. Additionally, what I introduce as the me quedo concept assesses the inherent defiance in all undocumented experiences. I hope the insights in this thesis challenge the undocumented immigrant rhetoric and provide a new lens on which to further UndocuCrit Theory.

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2. Chapter One: Belonging

Am I home?

In the 2018 memoir, Dear America: Notes from an Undocumented American, Jose Antonio Vargas recalls his experiences of growing up undocumented in the United States. As a journalist and activist, his memoir is meant to expose the realities and struggles of being undocumented. Before he begins his first chapter, he opens with an explicit note to the reader. He states that his is “only one story of an estimated eleven million here in the Unites States” and goes on to say that “although the details of our stories differ, the contours of our experience are much the same: lying, passing, and hiding” (Vargas). The sentiment in the note upholds the Undocumented Critical Theory (UndocuCrit) perspective which states that although undocumented experiences are each their own, there are some tenets that resonate throughout mostly all experiences.

Undocumented Critical Theory, authored by Carlos Aguilar, is a new scholarly theory that emerged recently alongside the activism that Vargas is part of. It is an activism that aims for recognition of undocumented Americans. Vargas reignited the undocumented immigrant activism by showing what an undocumented immigrant looks like and experiences as part of the “Undocumented and Unafraid”4

movement. This movement consists of undocumented youth openly “coming out” as undocumented and visibly fighting for their rights to stay in the United States (Aguilar 2). “Undocumented and Unafraid” led undocumented scholars like Carlos Aguilar to highlight the undocumented experience within the academic world. UndocuCrit, as employed in this thesis, seeks to “dismantle the myth of model undocumented minorities… and to challenge a superficial and binary rhetoric” used to describe undocumented lives (Aguilar 3).

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It is for this reason that Vargas’s personal memoir will be used; as it is written by an undocumented person describing his undocumented experience.

Taking Jose Vargas’s memoir, Dear America, Notes from an Undocumented Citizen, as center point of analysis, his recollections of what it is like to be a young person in the undocumented space show how those exact struggles and experiences are so unique to this sphere. Jose Vargas is an accomplished, Pulitzer-winning journalist who “outed” himself as undocumented in a New York Times op-ed.5

He is known as America’s “most famous illegal”6

as dubbed by some of his fiercest critics. Originally from the Philippines, his book is meant to show the unique nature of being undocumented. Through his activism, Vargas created the organization Define American. This organization is dedicated to redefining what it means to be American, what it means to be undocumented, and what it means for those who identify as both, a concept that will be explored in this chapter.

Vargas describes his undocumented experiences in three parts: as a child, oblivious to his legal status, as a teenager, conscious of his status and as an adult, living with his status. This chapter will focus on the crux between the oblivious immigrant child and the conscious undocumented young person. Vargas only discovered his undocumented status when he tried to get his driver’s license at age sixteen with his green card, only to find out his immigration documents were forged. It was this short interaction with the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) staff that altered how he lived. From this moment onward he was not only an immigrant trying to fit in, but an undocumented immigrant trying to survive. The moments specified in his memoir depict a young Vargas trying desperately to be American to then

5_{The article entitled “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant” was first rejected by the Washington Post and} later printed by the New York Times on June 22, 2011.

6_{A term meant to be hurtful dubbed on Vargas by Fox News host Tucker Carlson (source). The term “illegal,”} for various reasons, will not be used in this thesis.

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becoming part of American society as not an American in the normative sense, but as an undocumented citizen.

Vargas depicts a concept introduced in this chapter that will continue through the entire thesis: the undocumented experience. This is a concept that only an undocumented person could write about, it is a concept that Aguilar is trying to approach through scholarly work. I will follow the undocumented experience starting in this chapter. Vargas’s struggles between simultaneously identifying as an American citizen and as undocumented will be analyzed through Muñoz’s disidentification lens as this binary opens a space in where Vargas can come to call himself an “undocumented citizen.”

Vargas’s memoir draws attention to a new space, or alternative reality, within the undocumented experience. He does this by describing different tactics of survival in his memoir, tactics that refer to his experiences in school, his acquisition of the English language, and his performance of “Americanness.” In the memoir, it is how he survives that depicts the undocumented experience. As Toni Morrison explains about the life of Pecola, a character in The

Bluest Eye, “There is really nothing more to say— except why, but since why is difficult to

handle, one must take refuge in how” (1).

In the following chapter, I establish Vargas’s refuge in the different ways he seeks to navigate his new environment at home and in the public sphere. This will be done in two parts: “Before” and “After” the incident at the DMV where he became aware of his undocumented status as this is where his actions and tactics turn to ones of survival. I will show how Vargas constructs a particular space for a young undocumented experience in the United States by analyzing Vargas’s practices of passing and mimicry as tactics of disidentification. I will do this

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by a close analysis of Vargas’s experiences and performances of passing as American in his memoir Dear America.

2.1 Disidentification

Jose Esteban Muñoz’s concept of disidentification will thread many concepts found in this thesis, starting with that of passing and mimicry. Disidentification, in Muñoz’s own terms is “a mode of analysis” that “register[s] subjects as constructed and contradictory” (Muñoz 115). Disidentification is rooted in the minority subject and how these subjects create their own worlds in a dominant culture that pushes their identities to the margins. In Muñoz’s article, “Feeling Down, Feeling Brown” (2006), he describes a “brown feeling” as a feeling “with a certain ethics of the self that is utilized and deployed by people of color and other minoritarian subjects who don’t feel quite right within the protocols of normative effect and comportment” (675). This “not quite right” feeling is integral to the minoritarian7

subject. Vargas’s narrative, as an example of a minoritarian narrative, is therefore one that ultimately feels uncomfortable in the space it is trying to enter and, as an accidental consequence, creates his own space. This space captures the undocumented experience and Vargas’s concept of an undocumented citizen. Moreover, Muñoz defines disidentification as “the survival strategies the minority subject practices in order to negotiate a phobic majoritarian sphere that continuously elides or punishes the existence of subjects who do not conform to the phantasm of normative citizenship” (4). To put it simply, Vargas disidentifies with the majoritarian, American society since his undocumented young

7_{The term “minoritarian” is one used in Muñoz’s Disidentifications to refer to the marginalized (i.e. the} migrants, minorities, queers, queers of color, etc.). Muñoz himself acknowledges how the usage of this word is not applicable to all those individuals who do not or cannot identify under the dominant or majoritarian culture. It is nonetheless a useful term that can be applied, in this case, to the undocumented American.

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presence does not conform to its norms, thus negotiating and creating his own space where he is not punished for his existence.

Two elements of the abovementioned definition are particularly important to my argument: negotiation of a majoritarian sphere and the term “normative citizenship.” A negotiation of the majoritarian sphere is precisely what disidentification does; it deals with normative ideology. For Vargas, who holds a minoritarian perspective, the U.S.-American norms and society constitute the majoritarian sphere with which he must negotiate to be a part of it and ultimately have a normative citizenship. This, as I will show, is not possible for Vargas, but rather in negotiating he creates the abovementioned space for an undocumented citizen. Furthermore, disidentification is “the third mode of dealing with normative ideology” as one that neither “opts to assimilate within the structure nor strictly opposes it” (11). What Vargas’s young undocumented experience shows, is first wanting to assimilate (as seen in “Before”) and realizing that it is not possible, thus coming into his own non-majoritarian performance as an undocumented citizen (as seen in “After”).

2.2 Before

“Passing was purgatory” (Vargas 106)

Vargas, arrived in the United States at the age of twelve in 1993 as the result of various efforts of his grandparents and his mother. In the first chapter of his memoir, he details how he was woken up early in the morning by his mother in the Philippines. He was rushed to the shower and his suitcase was already packed. His mother handed him off to an “uncle” who, as Vargas later

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found out was a coyote8

who was to bring him to the United States. Vargas left his mother, who promised him she would soon follow to go live with his grandparents in Mountain View, California. They knew before he was old enough to realize, that he was entering the country illegally and would be undocumented once there. His mother had no financial means to raise him in the Philippines, while his grandparents in the U.S. did. In fact, the first sentence of his book reads: “I come from a family of gamblers” (Vargas 3).

His family gambled the quality of life he would have in the Philippines versus as an undocumented immigrant in the United States. They chose the undocumented life. They gambled on his future while keeping his undocumented status hidden from Vargas. Vargas’s grandfather, Lolo, would repeat to him “I brought you here” to reiterate what kind of life he would now have, where “here” meant a life-changing experience as opposed to the Philippines (Vargas 10). The first time Lolo told Vargas he “brought him here” was before Vargas started school. This was meant to stress whether his grandfather’s gamble would pay off. This is also where Vargas would strive to “pass” to prove to his family how well integrated he was in his new, American home.

2.2.1 Language

Passing has a long history within minoritarian cultures. It was important for Vargas to pass since “passing is working to be perceived as a member of a non-stigmatized community,” which in this case is the dominant U.S.-American society (Goffman 31). For Vargas, passing as American meant to be part of the dominant American culture but evolved to also prove his worthiness of

8_{A coyote is a Mexican-Spanish term for a person who facilitates the smuggling of people(s) from one country} to the next.

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his family’s efforts. He would often write letters to his mother about how well he was integrating, stressing the colloquial language he was mastering:

“I wanted to show Mama that I was adapting to the language— the what’s up—

you guys— how are you doin’? of it all. The first American student who ever

spoke to me was Ryan Brown, his face covered with what I later learned were “freckles.” When he greeted me by saying “What’s up?” I responded, “The sky.” I quickly realized that the English I spoke in the Philippines was not the same as American slang.” (Vargas 14)

Arriving as an outsider, Vargas must learn every small detail of what it means to live in the United States. First, there is the language: Vargas very purposefully leaves out the “g” in “doin’.” This shows that he is already aware of not only the word itself, but how it sounds and therefore how to pronounce it. This knowledge of the word alludes to fact that a young Vargas is working on losing the accent to sound more “local” or, to pass as a knowledgeable native English speaker. Moreover, it shows how he does not understand the frame of reference in American humor, it is “not the same” as the English he knew from the Philippines. Vargas additionally drops the causal “guys” in the letter, a term that is absorbed within the American quotidian sphere. By employing “guys” Vargas tries to show he understands the everyday linguistic details of American interactions.

Vargas’s encounter with Ryan is significant in how Vargas approaches language. In the excerpt, Vargas shares an interaction with Ryan Brown when he does not understand the colloquial meaning of the “what’s up?” greeting, but then uses the same greeting in his letter to

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his mother. This interaction exemplifies how Vargas copied and used the term enough for it to integrate these kinds of colloquial sayings into his vernacular. Moreover, Homi Bhabha refers to minoritarian subjects attempt to fit into normative society through “copying” as a practice of cultural mimicry. The concept of cultural mimicry stems from postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s colonial mimicry in his studies of colonialized subjects in British India. Mimicry describes the practice of colonized subjects who attempted to imitate the culture of their colonizers. In British India, the colonized would attend British schools, learn British English, and, alongside the ubiquitous presence of the British colonizer, would learn the British culture. Mimicry, in this case, is the first part of passing that Vargas utilizes through language.

Bhabha notes, however, that the colonized subject will never become recognizable as a British subject, no matter how well she has mimicked colonial Britishness. Therefore, in Bhabha’s words, the colonized subject is “almost the same, but not quite” (122). In Vargas’s memoir, I see this primarily in his use of language. He imitates colloquial sayings, specifically using “guys,” “what’s up?,” and knowing when to properly add or leave out the “g” in “doing.” He uses the correct words, eventually at the right moments and is almost the same, but he is still

Othered. According to Gonzales, who dedicated twelve years of research into the undocumented

community, racial profiling of non-white residents plays a major role in the othering of undocumented communities (12). For Vargas, no matter how well he appropriates American English he remains the racialized other.

2.2.2 Race

Bhabha specified the racial connotations to his concept of colonial mimicry by specifying that the colonial subject is “almost the same, but not white” (127). In this encounter, Vargas alludes

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to the racialized social situation that his young self must now learn to navigate through his first contact with freckles. Freckles are found on any skin tone, but it is telling how Vargas had never encountered people who had them. Vargas was entering a deeply engrained racialized society that he had not yet experienced, but is central to U.S. majoritarian culture. Later he would state that “when it came to the subject of race, my fourteen-year-old immigrant brain couldn’t process it… I didn’t realize I was ‘Asian’” (Vargas 18), followed by “where do you go if you are multiracial and multiethnic?” (19). Moreover, he had a teacher, Mrs. Wakefield tell him “you’re not black, you’re not white” (19)—the first teacher who became his friend and ally had to almost explicitly and simply introduce young Vargas to the American racial conventions. While in school, Vargas recalls his classmates knowing how to differentiate between races. His Mexican classmates would tell each other to “not be too white” and his Filipino friends asked each other “why are you acting so black?” (20). Vargas’s fellow students were aware of the race dynamics even at school. Regardless of how well he would learn to use American slang, his racial profile would keep Vargas as almost the same, but not white thus being forever Othered.

Race introduces a binary where Vargas did not seem to belong. U.S. racial relations are often framed through a binary of black and white, Vargas being neither introduces another complexity he must learn. When Vargas learns he is undocumented, it further complicates his place in the U.S. binary systems. The encounter with Ryan highlights his coming into the contact with how to navigate categorizing the “black students,” “Asian students” and “Hispanic students” like the students themselves did so effortlessly already. Vargas soon “realized that being good at school—making friends, talking to teachers—was a way of blending in… Being accepted at school felt like being accepted in America” (15). Being accepted into different

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groups in school, allowed Vargas to know where “his place” was in the racial binary, it allowed him to know where he fit in.

2.2.3 Americanness

Audrey Scranton, a communications scholar who in 2016 conducted one of the only studies on the methods and practices used by undocumented immigrants to “pass,” states that “identity is co-created among people and emerges in communication” (450). The above-quoted interaction that Vargas depicts in his book is one that shows how his 12-year-old self as working to be accepted as having the “Americanness” his peers did. “Over time,” Vargas states, “America had become more than a class subject I was trying to ace” (Vargas 14). He approaches wanting to socially pass as passing a test and, in order to do so, one must study to earn it. His perception of learning to be American was through studying popular American culture. “Here in America, the libraries were my church, and I was an acolyte” Vargas recalls as he was fully committed to his mission (47). He continued: “What I watched on TV led to what movies I looked for, what music I listened to, what books, magazines, and newspapers I read” (48).

The practices young Vargas engaged with to gain full cultural knowledge, like being immersed within American popular culture, is a performance of “Americanness.” Vargas observed that although his grandparents had arrived in the United States one decade before him, he “was their introduction to America” (26). Through school, Vargas was learning the language and, now, the culture thanks to his library trips and newly made friends. Moreover, Lilia Monzó and Roberto Rueda, both education scholars, conducted a study which “situates immigrant children passing for English fluent” (as quoted in Scranton et al, 452). This, to them, is seen as a “communicative act” that positions the children “as agents of change” (452). The change, for

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Vargas, is found within the household—where his grandparents learned about American culture because of him; he was their change since the language part of him, at this point in his life, adhered more towards U.S. culture.

“Our home was decidedly Filipino” continues Vargas. In his home life, Lola “could tell you the news from Manila, but would struggle to explain what was happening in San Francisco, just an hour north of us” (27). Additionally, Vargas explains that he and his family spoke Taglish at home “a combination of the Tagalog that Lolo and Lola spoke, and the answers I gave in English… except for the 11pm local news, Lolo and Lola watched only the Filipino Channel, a cable network that re-aired shows for the Philippines. Sometimes I watched the shows with everyone” (54). He balanced his home life as almost exclusively Filipino, with the exception of the English he brought from his school life. The practices of researching and immersing oneself in the dominant, American culture as Vargas did in school proved how well he responded to U.S. culture by how literate he had become in the rhetoric of that culture. Furthermore, his success in passing through performing Americanness undermines the immigrant binary. Vargas’s literacy in Americanness demonstrates how one can inhabit both the undocumented immigrant space and the U.S.-American space simultaneously.

2.3 After

It took only one encounter at the age of sixteen for Vargas to change his initial motivation to pass in the culture he had become literate in to one deeply rooted in survival. At sixteen, an age where most American teenagers go and get their driver licenses, was when Vargas decided, without telling anyone, to go an apply for a driver’s permit (31). He rode his bike to the DMV where he knew to bring proof of identification—his supposed green card (31). He waited until his number

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was called, went up to the DMV employee and after examining the green card she stated “This is fake. Don’t come back here again” (32). This is a turning point in the how for Vargas. At first, he aimed to pass as American as a way to integrate into U.S.-American culture. Vargas knew the language, the slang, he did well at school—practices he could do through mimicking and passing as having Americanness. This, however, would change for Vargas, the undocumented American child who must now pass so that he can hide.

2.3.1 Culture as Survival

Passing now meant survival. The word “fake” that the DMV employee had told him still rung in his head. It meant not real. Essential to cultural passing, is taking “advantage of cultural codes in order to encourage predisposed assumptions of one’s identity” (Scranton et al, 450). Vargas had already learned the language, the slang, how to navigate the racial norms, all in order to pass as having an Americanness. In performing Americanness, he felt comfortable as an immigrant child beginning to pass as American. As Sara Ahmed states in The Politics of Emotion, “to pass might produce an effect of comfort… but not for the subject who passes, who may be feeling a sense of discomfort, or not being at ease, given the constant threat of ‘being seen’ or caught out” (167). For Vargas, passing through Americanness was utilized in order to hide his legal vulnerabilities. Unlike a legal immigrant passing through Americanness, his performance was needed to not “be seen” or “caught out.”

The teenage Vargas, after his confrontation at the DMV, is now conscious of his immigration status. He knows that “undocumented” adds a discomfort when he passes. The opening passage demonstrates this shift in the importance of passing for young Vargas as seen in the excerpts of the chapter entitled “Playing a Role”:

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“I swallowed American culture before I learned how to chew it.

Being an American felt like a role I had to play, in an extemporaneous one-man play I made up after I found out I was not supposed to be in America.

Talk like an American. Write like an American. Think like an American.

Pass as an American.

I was the sixteen-year-old actor, producer, and director of this production, inhabiting a character that I honed with the help of a fourteen-inch TV set, a VCR, an audio player that played cassettes and CDs, and library cards from both the Mountain View Public library and the Los Altos Library… It was not my decision to come here, acquire fake papers, and lie my way into being in America. But I was here. At the very least, I felt that I had to control what kind of American I was going to be, what kind of cultural connections I was going to make, which led to what kind of mask I had to wear.” (emphasis added, Vargas 48 & 55)

This chapter is the beginning of Part II of his memoir entitled “Passing” where he proves the pivotal moments where young Vargas is now conscious of his immigration status. He describes several elements that focus on his shift in consciousness on how he must uphold his burden of performing Americanness as survival. Young Vargas swallowed before he learned to chew— meaning he had delved into American culture without having time to assess the meaning in every part of the dominant culture and what it meant to him. Vargas had now acquired different

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elements of passing: he could “talk like an American” through colloquial phrases, he could “write and think” like an American through popular culture references. He understood dominant culture and could ultimately pass as an American. Vargas, however, begun to accept that “realness is not the goal of the project” (Muñoz 107).

In the excerpt, Vargas accentuates the fact that he is now in a performance role, showing the performative nature of Americanness. He says he is now in “a one-man play,” highlighting that he is in a space that only he inhabits—an undocumented space where no one around him seems to be. Moreover. he describes himself as a sixteen-year-old actor, producer, and director that “inhabited a character.” He uses the language of movies. Vargas even highlights that this character benefitted from the movies he watched on the old VCR, on the TV, listening to audio cassettes. The chapter ends with him explicitly stating how careful and precise he had to be in choosing which “mask he had to wear.” For young Vargas, passing was now a full-frontal façade in which he could hide his vulnerabilities. He took the role of a knowledgeable, outgoing, all-American kid although the word “fake” first said to him by the DMV employee was now an entire part of his act—something that was not inherently real.

Due to his undocumented status, legally, he would never be American. Nevertheless, Vargas needed to pass, now knowing “had to control what kind of American [he] was going to be.” The newfound understanding of passing as survival brought, to use Ahmed’s term, a discomfort to Vargas. The majoritarian culture was now threatening him with legal repercussions (i.e. deportation) if he did not pass. By feeling the need control his kind of Americanness to find what kind of mask he will wear, Vargas begins to disidentify with the majoritarian, American culture.

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2.3.2 Passing becomes Disidentification

Passing, for Muñoz, is a third modality, like disidentification itself, “where a dominant structure is co-opted, worked on and against” (107). Passing is not identifying with (first modality) nor rejecting the dominant form altogether (second modality), but is a production that lies in between both. Vargas does more than simply survive in the dominant structure, but begins to restructure the majoritarian sphere to reclaim a space influenced by the majoritarian and minoritarian for the undocumented experience. Passing as an American is something Vargas can only perform. He studies the dominant culture and the dominant racial, lingual and social structures of U.S.-American life. As Vargas states, “being an U.S.-American felt like a role I had to play” (48). This is when Vargas begins to reshape what American means. As Bhabha states, a person who mimics dominant culture “does not automatically lose who they are as people, but just learn the way of the colonizer” (126). Vargas still had his multicultural elements that undermined notions of Americanness. His speaking Tagalog and keeping Filipino culture was still part of his everyday life. On top of his minoritarian culture, Vargas is undocumented. His actions are not those of an undocumented immigrant trying to survive, but instead of an American trying to thrive.

In Part II, Vargas describes how he was part of the school choir, wrote in two student newspapers, competed in school speech and debate tournaments, acted and directed plays and musicals, and was elected by the student government to represent their interests to the school board; in his words he was “so omnipresent at school that teachers, administrators, and parents of my classmates took notice” (Vargas 60). He finds that, unlike the conclusions in Scranton’s study that finds that undocumented immigrant adults avoid public spaces in order to pass (450), Vargas was breaking with one tenet of the undocumented experience: hiding. As Muñoz further states, “the subject who passes can be simultaneously identifying with and rejecting dominant

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form” (107). Vargas was going against the dominant culture that would have otherwise kept him in hiding, but also adhered to American culture by participating in all the hegemonic extracurricular activities. Vargas instead wanted to come into his own person and develop his skills in school without fearing legal repercussions as undocumented adults would, thus creating his third modality.

“The moment I realized that writing for newspapers meant having a ‘byline’—‘by Jose Antonio Vargas,’” Vargas recalls, “my name in print, on a piece of paper, visible and tangible—I was hooked” (57). By wanting his name in public and made known to all, Vargas explicitly goes against the majoritarian perspective that undocumented immigrants are hidden and the minoritarian perspective that undocumented immigrants should keep a low profile. Even Lolo, his grandfather asked him “what are you doing? Why is your name in the newspaper?” as he grew concerned and angry at Vargas for being so public while being undocumented (59). Vargas, however, did not limit himself because of his legal vulnerability, but rather claimed public space where he could write and grow and not stay at home because of his status, where he was “reminded of [his] limitations” (59).

As Sara Ahmed’s notes on the status of the stranger: “the alien takes on a spatial function establishing relations of proximity and distance within the home (land)” (as quoted in Lahiri 416). Dominant society regards the “alien” as foreign-born, or more broadly, non-white individual in the United States. Vargas, an Asian male, must balance the line of sufficient impersonation to culturally mimic those of the dominant culture while keeping enough distance as to not warrant surveillance and have his immigration status be “found out” (Lahiri 416). Moreover, Vargas enjoys many elements of the dominant society, like writing for newspapers with his name publicized. In this act he is close to majoritarian culture, but he consciously does

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this while undocumented, distancing him from minoritarian, undocumented culture. Instead, Vargas disidentifies with the majoritarian culture by taking space in the public sphere. As stated, Muñoz regards disidentification as a third modality thus making Vargas’s action an anti-binary, third space: not undocumented, nor American but rather a space for the undocumented American citizen.

The second tenet of UndocuCrit reads: “different experiences of liminality translate into difference experiences of reality” (4). This tenet is what Vargas practices through his concept of “undocumented citizen” in his memoir. As seen in “Before,” his passing shows the performativity of Americanness that turned into survival once he discovered his undocumented status. His undocumented experience is one of passing and mimicry, one of fear and being called “fake.” Aguilar states that being undocumented “can be conceptualized as a cloud that follows an individual throughout their intersecting experiences and that manifests differently, and at varying degrees, depending on the entity with which the interaction occurs, and the context in which it exists” (5). His status, his language, and race are all elements that will never allow him to be “fully” American, especially since his status will follow him in every action.

Once aware of his status, Vargas is conscious of what he can and cannot do. Vargas, however, utilizes his contradicting elements, his Americanness performance and his undocumented status to recognize a third space for the undocumented experience. For Muñoz there is a specific point in the disidentification process where there is a collision of the different perspectives, or different identities. It is during this moment of collision “that a moment of negotiation when hybrid, racially predicated, and deviantly gendered identities arrive at representation” (6). This moment applies to Vargas’s experiences as he comes to terms that who he is and who he passes as collide. Furthermore, Vargas’s reality is where the collision happens

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and where he lives as both passing as American and undocumented. Vargas co-opts part of the dominant world to collide with his undocumented, minoritarian world to create a space for him, an undocumented citizen.

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3. Chapter Two: Transition into a Temporal Reality

DACA, “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” is an executive order signed in 2012, introduced by the Obama Administration (Singer 1). As an executive order, it is not considered a law and can be rescinded at any time. This makes DACA a temporary policy, constantly at risk of cancellation. In the aftermath of a failed immigration reform bill vote, DACA was taken as a temporary solution until a formal bill was passed as law to change the immigration status of undocumented youth who were brought into the United States as children. The policy is meant to provide such undocumented youth with certain legal protections; the most important of which being protection from deportation and a viable work permit to be renewed every two years. The introduction of DACA changed the undocumented experience for a new generation of undocumented young people.

DACA has become an influential marker on the undocumented experience in the time it has been in place. Before 2012, the undocumented experience was one that was primarily known to those who were undocumented. It was vital to many families to keep their immigration status secret, emphasizing this task to their children (Gonzales 95). These children, who have come of age in the United States as undocumented immigrants, are exactly those who benefit from the protections DACA affords them. It is this spectrum of undocumented youth that personally know the benefits of this policy and how this has changed the undocumented experience for them. By being able to work legally, study legally, being in the country lawfully, many of the fears before DACA are quenched, for at least two years at a time.

When DACA was first introduced to the public, the activists and the youth who fought for a permanent immigration reform law were conflicted. The permanent solution was no longer an option, and instead there was a small comfort policy. DACA does provisionally suppress

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many fears and worries about legal work permits, social security numbers, and affordable in-state tuition for universities and colleges. The conflicted feelings arise when DACA, almost seven years later, is the only policy that protects undocumented youth and is frequently challenged in courts (Capps et al. 2).

Thanks to undocumented American activists like Jose Vargas in Chapter One, many other undocumented Americans that have come of age in the United States have “come out” and shared their stories in public platforms. This is especially the case with the new generation that is protected under DACA. Many of the worries and fears that loomed over the undocumented experience are no longer what sets them back from speaking out. For two years at a time,

DACAmented9

youth encounter a new form of the undocumented experience; one where they feel protected. Before DACA, undocumented youth were completely vulnerable to deportation. Any traffic stop or other small infraction of the law and they could be jailed and deported. Any person who knew of the undocumented status could “reveal” this information to immigration authorities and have them deported, therefore secrecy was key. Before DACA, undocumented youth had no legal way to participate in the documented world—the world where citizens and permanent legal residents could work, study and live freely without fear.

The introduction of DACA released a lot of the fear around deportation. It is not, however, a total immunity from deportation. DACA only allows a lawful, but not legal presence (Singer 2). It is lawful for the DACAmented youth to work, study, etc. but it is not fully legal. This means that deportation, in some cases, is permitted. Every two years, the DACAmented must wait and see if their application is renewed so they can keep their protection from deportation. In this process, the smallest infraction can threaten their future protection. DACA

9_{“DACAmented” is a term referring to undocumented youth protected by DACA. This term is used by} DACA-protected youth themselves and is now used by scholars on the topic, like Roberto Gonzales, when speaking specifically of the undocumented youth protected by DACA.

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allowed for a new reality for the undocumented – one that exists in the space between the documented and undocumented; an ambiguous reality that mirrors the ambiguous policies that help create it.

3.1 DACA’s Influence

In this chapter, I focus on the space that DACA opens within the undocumented experience; a space that could not have been possible before the DACA policy. Under Carlos Aguilar’s UndocuCrit Theory, there are four main tenets found in undocumented communities (see: Introduction). Although not every tenet is experienced by every undocumented person, these resonate with various aspects of the undocumented experience, at varying degrees. The second tenet is the most relevant and essential regarding DACA, it reads: “Different experiences of liminality translate into different experiences of reality” (Aguilar 4). Aguilar elucidates this tenet by first explaining that prior to DACA, undocumented youth faced the same opportunities their undocumented parents had (4).

Living in a state of illegality meant that undocumented immigrants could only live an undocumented life—a life working “under the table,” most times unable to attend higher education, essentially becoming “stuck” in the life of their parents (Gonzales 102). Aguilar, however, conscious of the modern legal policies that benefit undocumented young people also states that the binary perspective of undocumented versus documented no longer captures the experience (4). Through the implementation of DACA, “a legal status, or lack thereof, no longer strictly shields nor predisposes one from experiencing a uniform state of illegality” (Aguilar 4). To clarify, Aguilar’s tenet highlights that experiences among undocumented youth are not

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monolithic, and DACA is a distinct factor which highlights the experiential heterogeneity of the undocumented experience.

An additional aspect of DACA is the importance of timing. Undocumented youth become eligible to apply for DACA once they are fifteen years old with a clean criminal record (Singer 1). The policy and its protections come at a time where young people begin to transition into adulthood. Jeffrey Arnett (2000), a developmental psychologist, termed the phase of development between adolescence and adulthood “emerging adulthood” (471). It is precisely this time where Roberto Gonzales claims undocumented youth begins to transition not only to adulthood, but transition to illegality (Gonzales 96). This is the time where young people transition out of school and into the workforce or into higher education. As seen in chapter one, the transition for Vargas begun when he tried to obtain his driver license. For undocumented youth before DACA this was never a legal possibility. DACA’s influence on this transitionary phase complicates the (clear) meaning into illegality. Moreover, undocumented youth protected by DACA are no longer transitioning into the same illegality their parents experienced, nor are they transitioning into the adulthood of their documented peers, but rather transitioning into a liminal space. I will rely on Roberto Gonzales’s definition of liminality as specific to undocumented communities: “the ambiguous space individuals occupy as they move in one key point in their lives to the next… it is a ‘betwixt and between stage’” (100).

The new DACAmented generation lives in the new in-between space, benefitting from their protections by partly living in the documented space. I focus on two DACA-generation undocumented YouTube vloggers. Daisy Marquez and Mawizza (real name Maria, last name never shared) are two beauty vloggers who each created and shared one video on their personal undocumented stories. In the videos, they are very aware of their undocumented status regardless

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of DACA. However, through DACA and the precedence of undocumented activists like Vargas, these two young women felt emboldened to share their undocumented stories in a public space.

Both Daisy Marquez and Mawizza, in the telling of their undocumented narratives, expand on the role DACA has played to allow them to build their lives (for Daisy Marquez it is to legally work and gain monetary profit as a beauty vlogger and for Mawizza, it is to study at a state university). Through their respective videos, I will explore the role of DACA in the undocumented experience in two parts. First, I will argue DACA creates a new temporal space; an in-between zone bordering the undocumented and documented realities that ultimately forms its own. The new temporality due to DACA is seen a liminal condition because of the same transitional timing—transitioning into a not documented, but not undocumented, adulthood. Secondly, this new temporal space then allows for the each of the vloggers’ videos to work as counternarratives towards the hegemonic perception of the undocumented experience. The videos, made by undocumented youth for the public, serve to shape a new temporal reality and create a contemporary undocumented perspective of the DACAmented youth.

3.2 A New Temporal Reality

The incorporation of DACA brought a variety of benefits for undocumented youth. Both Marquez and Mawizza speak of the positive impact it has made due to the protections described above. There are, however, setbacks to the DACA policy: individuals with DACA status cannot apply for permanent residency and it is not a pathway to citizenship; it is an executive order, not a law—which means there is no judicial grounds for appeals for the youth who has it (Benuto et al., 261). The instability of the DACA policy and what it offers is known to both Daisy and Mawizza. They know their protections and, more importantly, know that their current lives and

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YouTube channels are only possible due to the affordances DACA provides them and know they can be taken away.

Daisy Marquez is a verified beauty vlogger and has 1.2 million subscribers. Her video published on January 13, 2017 entitled “Story Time: I’m Undocumented” was the only video on her channel where she personally narrated her undocumented journey. Both vloggers shared their doubts on making the videos, given their personal and vulnerable content matter, with Daisy Marquez starting her video by remarking:

“Today’s video is gonna be a bit different and is going to be a bit emotional for me to talk about. It’s a really deep video. I am here to talk about my story… I was going to do the whole draw-me thing so it wouldn’t be such a sad video, but I was like, you know what I don’t wanna lose focus of what this video is really about.” (Marquez, 0:08-0:25)

Marquez opens her video with this statement, alluding to the emotional toll her past has on her life. She wants to talk about “her story,” knowing it is a sad one and willing to convey this sentiment on her otherwise happy beauty channel. During her video, she begins to tear up at different moments, dabbing and airing her eyes stating “well, there goes the first tear” (Marquez, 7:33) and later in the video, begins to openly sob (14:35). All of which are emotional moments that could have been edited out are purposefully used to accentuate the ethos of her story. Marquez’s focus on “what this video is really about” brings an emotional recollection of all her life experiences that revolved around her immigration status. The sentimentality of recalling how she crossed the border as a child and the unpredictability of her future demonstrate the fears and

Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá: An analysis into the contemporary undocumented experience in the U.S.