Migrant Youth, Transnational Families, and the State. Lauren Heidbrink
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migrant children and youth in federal immigration facilities, a quintessential “captured population,” presents a number of complex ethical and methodological considerations. My university’s Institutional Research Review Board and the American Anthropological Association Code of Ethics provided the ethical guidelines that directed my research. Researchers working in “vulnerable populations” or correctional settings (e.g., prisons, parole, probation, juvenile justice, and so on) assisted me in anticipating and attending to critical issues of (dis)empowerment, choice, and consent in this project (Fisher et al. 2002; Haggerty 2004; Levine et al. 2004; Waldram 2009). I found myself drawing on my previous work in Guatemala, Argentina, Angola, and the United States with survivors of war, genocide, and torture. On the basis of these professional experiences, I was particularly attentive to the profound and prolonged impact of trauma on people’s lives and how institutional practices can exacerbate symptoms and even retraumatize people.
I attempted to be mindful of the multilayered power imbalance between myself (an adult middle-class citizen) and the children (unauthorized, often impoverished legal minors). Methodologically, I tried to create spaces of privacy and feelings of confidence during our meetings. When interviewing children, we met one on one in a private room. While we were unable to escape the gaze of surveillance cameras throughout the facilities, we did experience a level of privacy children were not permitted at any other time during their detention. I explained to youth that I did not work for the government, facilities, attorneys, or consulates. I had no benefit to give them. I could not influence their legal or custody cases in any way. I simply explained that I was writing a book about youth, their experiences of migration, and their lives in the United States. I told them I wanted to learn about why they came, about what they hoped to find, and about their everyday lives both in detention and beyond. By writing about their thoughts, perspectives, and experiences, I hoped my book might educate the public and perhaps improve the laws, practices, and policies for the treatment of migrant children who came to the United States in the future. For detained youth, I explicitly sought consent multiple times throughout their participation in the study—at initial meetings, every three months of detention, on release, and following their removal from the United States. Most children welcomed the opportunity to escape the everyday monotony of detention and to spend time talking about their lives. Some children who were reserved or quiet in class and group activities overwhelmed me with their willingness to speak at great length and with candor. It seemed they had been storing up conversations over time that only erupted when provided the space and time to speak. One youth told me, “No one here [at the facility] has talked to me like this before. They are all too busy to talk.” Indeed, always-harried staff had very little time to be present for children because of their heavy caseloads. Time to talk was a luxury I uniquely possessed as a researcher.
During my research at the facilities, I engaged with youth on a regular basis. I attempted to occupy a space beyond the everyday expectations children had of staff and various “stakeholders” they encountered on a daily basis in the facilities. Contingent on the flows and needs of children, I tried to circulate with them in their everyday lives—sitting among the children in the classrooms, doing homework alongside them, sharing lunch at tables apart from the staff, standing in line to be perpetually counted and surveilled, and engaging in recreational activities. From my perception, the children’s interactions with “stakeholders” were fundamentally different. They fulfilled a specific purpose—completing a questionnaire with facility staff identifying potential “sponsors” for release; responding to an intake assessment with legal service providers determining their eligibility for legal relief; cataloging medical or psychological concerns with a clinician at intake; or requesting a continuance or legal determination with an immigration judge in court. For fear of overwhelming children with additional inquiries, I tried to place as few constraints as possible on our informal interviews, open-ended conversations, and daily interactions. I hope they too felt our dialogue was structurally different.
Spontaneous conversations—at mealtimes, during free time, the rare outing, or on the soccer pitch beyond earshot of staff—proved qualitatively more informative than one-on-one interviews. Amid an influx and exit of children, knowledge circulated in the facility in impressive ways. Particular youth, often those who remained in custody longest, became sophisticated power brokers. They revealed to new arrivals which staff to trust or distrust; which youth to align with or guard against; which stakeholders to discuss past histories or current concerns with or not; what to disclose or conceal in court; how to orchestrate unauthorized phone calls with boyfriends or girlfriends; and where to hide from the surveillance cameras either to share an intimate moment with another youth or to seek retribution for interpersonal conflicts.
Sergio, a fifteen-year-old youth who migrated to the United States with his mother at age seven and who was detained for over nine months during my research, was a critical interlocutor for me. Able to navigate English and Spanish fluently, Sergio had a keen understanding of the institutional logic, staff dynamics, American culture, and the social and political contexts from which children came. Gregarious and knowledgeable, Sergio listened attentively to others. He let them vent their frustrations with family members who were reluctant to “sponsor” them out of detention. He counseled youth soliciting his legal and relationship advice. He imparted to them his knowledge about life in America beyond the confines of detention. He had seen, as one youth articulated as the source of her intrigue in his stories, “el otro lado” (the other side). To my reassurance, Sergio communicated explicitly to other youth that I was “alguien de confianza” (a trusted person). He let them know that the information shared with me would not be divulged to others. I made an explicit methodological choice to interview staff at the initiation and completion of my research in the facilities to create clearer boundaries during my interactions with children. This was made transparent to staff at the outset so as not to compromise their comfort or candor in our conversations and formal interviews.
Even with Sergio’s confidence in my silence, in a handful of cases, children refused to meet with me. I was grateful that they felt empowered to do so. In some instances, I suspected that children were being guarded and, in some cases, even untruthful. The factual accuracy of their statements did not matter to me, though it proved intriguing. I became interested in why some youth would conceal or tell only partial truths. Was it a sense of obligation to protect their families from disclosing the truth to an outsider? Was it fear or coercion from smugglers or traffickers? Was it suspicion of the facilities and government authorities? Was it a survival skill that assisted some youth who lived in the streets? Or was it because I, essentially, at least to them, was no different from their detainers? These refusals and misgivings reminded me that, despite my efforts to establish trust and confidence, my position of privilege was insurmountable.
For children who had been institutionalized, either in the juvenile justice system or in several ORR facilities, initial conversations followed a “script,” one that appeared told and retold to various stakeholders, likely in differing variations. They had learned to be suspicious and guarded, attempting to decipher the “right answer” to my questions. When I first met Emilio, a seventeen-year-old whom authorities had bounced between four federal and juvenile facilities for nearly two years, he recounted his life’s narrative with little affect, relative ease, and impeccable chronology. Mindful to include only the pertinent individuals and events, he neatly (re)told of his past traumas, the reasons for his incarceration, and his desire to make better choices. Only after eight months following his release, over our monthly coffee at the local Pancake House, did he begin to break from his script with subtle shifts in vocabulary, changes in narrative structure, and divergent stories. Elements of his narrative from our initial meetings fell out of our conversations, while other facets of his experiences unfolded.
For some children, the inescapable reality that I would return home to my family at the end of the day could only be overcome by meeting them following their release from detention. Julio, sixteen, had been detained in three facilities over fourteen months. At the outset of our first interview, he asked: “Why is my life important to you?” and “Can what I tell you cause me harm?” Savvy to the multiple and shifting meanings of confidentiality, Julio tested my sincerity and his ability to trust me. I was one in a long line of professionals, primarily women, asking him to describe his life. I do not believe that the distinction for Julio sank in until I met with him at his father’s