Migration Justice Media! :)

News broadcasts and social media posts can be useful tools for staying informed day-to-day as a downpour of policy changes, executive orders, and humanitarian disasters flares up around us. But sometimes a piece of media that takes a step back, educates you on an issue, or tells a personal story, fictional or nonfictional, is what truly deepens your understanding. For those who want to get informed, or add something meaningful and beautiful to their reading/watching list, here’s Ariadne’s recommendations for immigration justice-related media! 

Books

Tell Me How It Ends

by Valeria Luiselli

This short piece is somewhere between a novella and an essay, and it tells the true story of the author’s experience working as a court interpreter in New York City. She worked with children, translating and helping them form answers to the questions on the 40-question “intake questionnaire”, a document that helps a lawyer understand the facts and experiences of a child’s immigration case. Through the true stories of unaccompanied migrant children, she unpacks the form, question-by-question, in a way that is as poetic as it is brutally honest. Her deconstructed legal analysis helps to clarify the judicial process in a way that is somehow lyrical.

Somewhere We Are Human

compiled by Reyna Grande and Sonia Guiñasaca

There is no simple way to summarize this anthology of migration-related poetry, essays, short stories, and mixed media photography. It’s an intense dive into the immigrant experience and all of the human perspectives involved. This collection is wildly intersectional, and touches on issues of class, gender, police brutality, LGBTQ+ issues, and mental health. The purpose of the book is to convey humanity and emotion, not to educate those who are new to the issue, so it will be powerfully moving, but not necessarily as informative as other things on this list. 

Lost Children Archive

by Valeria Luiselli (again. she is incredible.)

This fictional novel tells the story of a young married couple who previously worked as audio journalists, compiling recordings of every language spoken in New York City. With their two young children, they begin a long road trip from New York to Arizona, partially because one of the journalists is working on a project about the unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border. This book was written in response to the first Trump administration’s family separation policy, and as the fictional family loses their sense of stability, their story parallels the deterioration of the situation at the border. At the time of writing this article, I haven’t finished this book yet, but it has already been intriguing and, in Luiselli’s beautiful style, incredibly well-written.

Solito

by Javier Zamora

This book has been a staple in the last few years for anyone interested in immigration justice. It’s a true story, creatively autobiographical, about the author’s journey unaccompanied from El Salvador to the United States when he was nine years old. Through the innocent perspective of a child, it calls into question the existence of policed borders and systems that create the level of desperation that pushes a nine-year-old to cross continents alone, in cold deserts at night, dehydrated atop moving trains, confused and looking for parental love in every adult he meets. Many people have told me this book made them cry. 

TV & Movies

Living Undocumented

This six-episode Netflix docuseries tells a range of extremely different stories about families’ experiences with being undocumented in the US, living under the radar, facing deportation and separation, grappling with the inability to get a work permit and the challenges of applying to college, and so many more day-to-day experiences that are impossible to understand until you experience them vicariously through these families. Being a Netflix series, it is dramatized a bit, but I don’t criticize it for that, because it gets across an intense message and the majority of it is crushingly real. The stories are relatable, accurate, and I can say with certainty that this one made me cry, on an airplane no less. As someone who does not cry frequently, that is a strong achievement for a TV show. Be warned, but don’t let it deter you — emotion is productive and natural!

Immigration Nation

This is another six-episode Netflix docuseries, and my analysis of it is exactly the same as my analysis of Living Undocumented. It wasn’t made by the same producers, the format is very similar, and it feels like an extension of Living Undocumented, but expanded to the issue of immigration in general, not just to undocumented families. My recommendation is to start with Living Undocumented, and if it speaks to you, watch Immigration Nation next.

The Swimmers

This semi-biographical movie about two sisters from Syria who become world-renowned swimming champions is very popular right now, having been nominated for so many awards in the last few years. The ‘Syrian Refugee Crisis’ is a topic that comes up often when talking about historic approaches to refugee issues, and it’s another good example of media distortion of an issue. Syria will continue to be in news headlines in the present day (🇸🇾❤️) and this story is helpful for understanding the experience of ordinary teenage girls living through it. It’s also an intense exploration of how the trauma of fleeing shapes experiences and memories later in life.