7

Participatory Action Research with Transnational and Mixed-Status Families

Understanding and Responding to Post–9/11 Threats in Guatemala and the United States

M. Brinton Lykes, Erin Sibley, Kalina M. Brabeck, Cristina Hunter, and Yliana Johansen-Méndez

Recent estimates by the Pew Research Center suggest that in 2013 there were approximately 11.2 million unauthorized migrants1 (28% of the foreign-born population) living in the United States (Passel et al. 2014). As of 2012, an estimated 82% of children of unauthorized migrants were U.S.-born citizens living in mixed-status families, amounting to 4.5 million children. In 2010, over 80% of these children were born after their parents resided in the United States. for more than two years, and over 50% were born after their parents lived in the United States for at least five years (Passel and Taylor 2010). The majority of these families are also transnational, that is, they include family members (including children) to whom they have obligations, attachments, and communication, residing in their countries of origin.

This chapter draws on findings from seven years of an ongoing interdisciplinary participatory action research (PAR) with unauthorized Central American migrants and their families. Participants are members of both mixed-status families, which include U.S.-born children, and transnational families, which include children “left behind” in the country of origin. We argue that the experiences of Central American mixed-status families are best understood within a historical and transnational framework. These participatory action research processes are sponsored by the Center for Human Rights & International Justice (CHRIJ) at Boston College, and explore experiences and threats of detention and deportation among migrant families. Participants included predominantly mixed-status families based in New England and sending family members and deportees in the Southern Quiché region of Guatemala. All co-authors have been involved in various facets of this work over the years discussed in this chapter. Through collaboration with these families, their communities, and community-based organizations, university-based project participants advocate for fundamental changes that will introduce proportionality, compassion, and respect for family unity into U.S. immigration laws and bring these laws into compliance with international human rights standards. Furthermore, in light of the transnational nature of these families and their experiences, researchers seek to better understand and respond to the effects of U.S. policies and practices beyond U.S. borders. To achieve these goals, the CHRIJ affiliates engage in direct legal representation of deported migrants, participatory and action research projects intended to systematically document the effects of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies and practices on migrant families in New England, and community organizing and advocacy. Through ongoing collaborative research and educational programs in Zacualpa, Quiché, Guatemala (the place of origin of many of the participating U.S.-based families), researchers seek to better understand the factors that push many parents to migrate, the mixed consequences of transnational family relations for children and families, and the impact of deportation from the United States on family members abroad.

This chapter focuses on mixed-status and transnational Central American families’ experiences and the meanings they make of migration, detention, and deportation on both sides of the U.S. border. Such experiences and meanings are situated within their histories and current realities, including previous armed conflicts (e.g., civil war and state-sponsored violence) and ongoing extreme violence in migrants’ countries of origin (e.g., femicide, drug and human trafficking, gang violence) (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre & Norwegian Refugee Council 2011; Stone 2011); recent iterations and intensification of U.S. immigration policies and practices (see below); and other global social structural factors (e.g., extreme poverty in countries of origin as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and other International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies (Cohen 2006; Washington Office on Latin America [WOLA] 2003). The chapter then examines the psychosocial effects of migration, detention, and deportation on U.S.-based migrants living in mixed-status families and on transnational families in Guatemala and argues the importance of understanding U.S.-based mixed-status families within a transnational framework.

Figure 7.1 PAR in 2014

Data were drawn from interviews, ethnographic research, community surveys, and community-based participatory educational and reflection processes that were part of participatory and action research processes in New England and in Zacualpa (see figure 7.1). Each of these participatory research activities was designed collaboratively with local organizations. Each effort aimed to enhance leadership development and to design strategies to educate the wider U.S. and Guatemalan publics through systematic research based in migrants’ own stories and participatory workshops.

Below we summarize and bridge the knowledge generated within and across selected data-gathering processes. We begin by situating our work within the literature on the political environment for unauthorized migrants in the United States and the socio-historical context for migrants’ families and children “left behind” in the sending country of Guatemala where our transnational project is based. While scholarship on the effects of parental legal vulnerability on U.S.-based children is extremely relevant to our work, we do not include it in this chapter as it is summarized elsewhere in this volume (see Brabeck, Porterfield, and Loughry, this volume). We next discuss participatory action research as a resource for fostering the project’s goals. We then present findings which argue: (1) that unauthorized migrants, including those in mixed-status families, situate themselves historically and are deeply affected by ongoing violence and poverty in their countries of origin; and (2) that threats to these mixed-status families are experienced transnationally, that is, actions that occur in the United States have profound implications for children “left behind” in migrants’ country of origin and for their caretakers. Together these data reveal the challenges for service providers and U.S. policy makers who promote an ideology of the United States as a family-oriented society that values and supports family unification. We conclude with recommendations for those who seek to transform repressive practices and support mixed-status and transnational migrant families.

Situating Unauthorized Migrants in 2014: Changing Legal Context

The political and social climate for migrants in the United States has undergone many changes during the past decades, with significant implications for mixed-status families and their family members abroad (see also Kantroom and Lykes, this volume). In the mid-1990s, under the Clinton administration, the U.S. government passed laws that amplified the authority of the federal government to arrest, detain, and deport noncitizens (Hagan, Eschbach, and Rodriguez 2008). The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) (1996) and the Anti-terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) (1996) expanded the offenses for which a noncitizen could be deported, allowed for retroactive deportation, increased the categories of persons subject to “removal,” and eliminated the range of judicial review and due process rights formerly available to immigrants. Additionally, the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, signed into law under the George W. Bush administration, expanded the ability of the government to deport persons who were deemed as “threats to national security” and allowed for use of “secret evidence” in such cases.

Due in large part to the aforementioned legislation, between 2001 and 2012 approximately 3.6 million immigrants were deported from the United States, a vast majority of whom were from Mexico and Central America (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 2012a). Immigration Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (2013) reports that the number of removals reached an all-time high of 419,384 in 2012, but declined by 12% to 368,644 removed in 2013 (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 2013). These numbers do not reflect the immigrants who were “returned” by a means other than a removal order, such as an order of “voluntary departure,” which accounts for an additional 9.9 million from 2001 through 2012 (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 2012a). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also neglected to take into account the many more “de facto deportees” (Argueta 2010)—including U.S. citizen spouses and children—who were forced to leave the United States when a family member was deported (Lykes and Chicco 2011).

More deportations have occurred under the Obama administration than in any previous administration (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 2012b; Slevin 2010). In many of these cases, deported parents are separated from their U.S.-born children. For example, Baum, Jones, and Barry (2010) found that between 1997 and 2007, 88,000 U.S. citizen children (44,000 of whom were under the age of 5) lost a legal permanent resident parent to deportation. A more recent report by Wessler et al. (2011) from the Applied Research Center (ARC) reported that at least 5,100 children whose parents were detained or deported currently live in U.S. foster care and face significant barriers to reunification with parents. Extrapolating from the 205,000 deportees between July 2010 and September 2012 who reported having at least one U.S.-citizen child, these figures suggest an estimated annual average of 90,000 parental deportations (Wessler 2012). Moreover, the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the New York University School of Law found that, between 2005 and 2010, 87% of processed immigration cases of noncitizens with citizen children resulted in deportation (NYU School of Law Immigrant Rights Clinic 2012). Overall, these statistics suggest that between 2005 and 2012, persons detained and deported were typically parents and workers, with no criminal records, who migrated from Latin American countries.

Federal and local collaborative and independent initiatives. Although the number of worksite raids has decreased under the Obama administration, these raids and arrests have been largely replaced by home and street arrests in addition to “silent raids” that entail federal auditing of employer records (Bacon and Hing 2010). A hallmark of the Obama administration’s approach to immigration enforcement, Secure Communities (SC) (implemented in 2008), further threatens noncitizens in the United States. SC calls for checking fingerprints of every person booked by local law enforcement against DHS databases for immigration violations. While it was purportedly designed to identify and deport unauthorized migrants convicted of serious crimes, in practice, the majority of those deported under SC have committed no serious offense: ICE records reveal that 70% of those removed or returned under SC had no criminal records or had been picked up for low-level offenses (e.g., misdemeanors and traffic violations), while only 30% had been charged with or convicted of serious “Level 1” crimes (e.g., aggravated felonies) (National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) and Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) 2010).

Some states and localities have voiced their opposition to mandatory participation in the SC program (Foley 2011) and others have initiated a grassroots response to counter this federal effort (e.g., Just Communities/Comunidades Justas in Massachusetts). Despite this, many other states and local authorities have sought opportunities to enforce immigration laws themselves (Friedland, Johnson-Firth, and Garnett-McKenzie 2009). This push to enforce immigration laws is evident in the dramatic increase in the number of Memoranda of Agreement (MOAs) between ICE and state and local governments under 287(g) since 2007 (287(g) Program 2008; Friedland et al. 2009). The 287(g) MOAs essentially delegate the federal function of enforcement of immigration laws to state law enforcement agencies. This means that local police departments that enter into a 287(g) agreement with federal immigration authorities can legally investigate individuals’ immigration status and detain those persons suspected of being in violation of immigration laws until federal immigration authorities can verify their status or initiate removal proceedings. Further, state laws related to immigration have dramatically increased in recent years. In 2005, there were 300 immigration-related bills introduced in state legislatures. In the years 2007–2013, that number increased to an estimated average of 1,300 immigration-related bills per year (National Conference of State Legislatures 2014).

In these ways, U.S. immigration policies function increasingly as mechanisms of internal social control, constraining unauthorized migrants’ daily lives and pushing them further into “the shadows.” They have consequences for the mental and physical health, social, economic, and acculturative experiences for families, parents, and children in the U.S. These experiences are summarized elsewhere in this volume (see Brabeck, Porterfield, and Loughry). We complement this information with a brief description of some of the multiple challenges facing Guatemala-based sending families with transnational ties.

Transnational Families: Migration Pushes and Children and Youth “Left Behind”

Researchers have documented the migration experiences of Central Americans and Mexicans and the value of remittances to the gross domestic product of sending countries, as well as local improvements in housing, education, and healthcare for children “left behind” and their caretakers (Smith 2006; UNICEF and IOM 2011). Children and youth are often described as beneficiaries of their parents’ sacrifices (Dreby 2007; Frank and Wildsmith 2005). Other more recent scholarship focuses on indebtedness of sending families (see, e.g., Brabeck, Lykes, and Hershberg 2011; Barrett, Gibbons, and Peláez Ponce 2014) and the many consequences for children “left behind,” particularly within the current political environment for migrants in the United States. These are among the pushes and pulls experienced by the Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants with whom we have worked. The experiences of Salvadorans—and a brutal history of armed conflict—are summarized briefly in another chapter in this volume (see Dingeman-Cerda and Rumbaut). We describe below some of the migratory antecedents to current experiences of the transnational Guatemalan Mayan families with whom we have worked.

During an economic boom in agriculture exports in Guatemala in the 1960s and ’70s more than 300,000 indigenous people each year began to migrate to coastal farmlands for seasonal agricultural work. Salaries were low and working conditions were grueling and unsanitary, but the economic need was so great that many either left their families at home or took their children out of school for months at a time to join them on the journey (Davis 1988). Other Guatemalans migrated beyond formal nation-state borders to work on Mexican coffee plantations, having begun that journey in the 1800s. The U.S. government’s economic and political interests in Guatemala have been widely documented, e.g., the United Fruit Company’s vast land holdings and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s involvement in directing the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 (Schlesinger and Kinzer 1999). This history situates current migrations into an older history of exclusion and forced labor fueled by U.S. interests in Guatemala over many decades.

The history of the U.S. government’s continued involvements in Guatemala is lengthy, culminating in its support for the Guatemalan military’s campaign against Mayan communities during the 36-year armed conflict (Grandin, Levenson, and Oglesby 2011, among others). By the mid-twentieth century, Guatemalans organizing in search of economic equality and political, social, and cultural change became more militant (Chamarbagwala and Morán 2011). They protested increases in the cost of living, low wages, lack of sufficient land, cultural oppression, and racism (Grandin et al. 2011). These movements coalesced and insurgent groups, including, for example, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP, by its Spanish acronym), became increasingly violent in the 1980s. The Guatemalan army, with support from the U.S. government, destroyed villages in the highlands and displaced many peasants. Then President Efraín Ríos Montt instituted social control in the form of a new army tactic that armed civilian villagers with rifles (Civil Self-Defense Patrols, PACs by its Spanish acronym) to fight off the EGP and other militant groups (Stewart 2012). The municipality of Zacualpa, the center of work described below, was bombed by military planes and occupied by the Guatemalan army during the early 1980s, while PACs controlled many of the surrounding villages (Remijnse 2002).

The Guatemalan government, the guerrilla forces, and a UN commission established to seek truth and justice in the wake of nearly 36 years of armed conflict signed a Peace Accord in December 1996 (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico [CEH] 1999). The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH for its Spanish acronym) report estimated that 200,000 individuals had been murdered or “disappeared” during the conflict, with 93% of the crimes linked to the Guatemalan state. Eighty-three percent of the victims were classified as indigenous Maya, contributing to the report’s conclusion that genocide had been committed against the Maya. According to the CEH, “racism nourished an attitude toward Indians [the Maya] as different, separate, inferior, almost less than human and outside of the universe of moral obligations, making their elimination less problematic” (Commission for Historical Clarification 2011:390). Moreover, large numbers of Maya were displaced from their communities, fleeing bombings, massacres, and military occupations. Approximately one million people were “internal refugees” within the country, out of an estimated population of 8.5 million. Many working with the displaced estimated another 150,000 Guatemalans sought refuge in Mexico, 6,000 in Belize, 1,000 in Honduras, and between 100,000 and 200,000 in the United States (Melville and Lykes 1992). Some estimates at the time put the number of children who had lost one or both parents at 200,000; the Guatemalan press suggested that there were as many as 500,000 (Carmack 1988; Salvadó 1988).

Thus, migration predated but was deeply exacerbated by nearly four decades of armed conflict (e.g., Hamilton and Stoltz Chinchilla 1991). Moreover, despite the horrors that populations displaced by the war experienced, estimates are that only about 2–3% of Guatemalans who sought refuge in the United States during this period were granted political asylum (González 2000). Despite cessation of the armed conflict, current economic conditions, drug trafficking, ongoing gang violence, and impunity continue to create conditions in the twenty-first century that push an ever-increasing number of Guatemalans and Salvadorans north (see Dingeman-Cerda and Rumbaut, this volume, for estimates of Salvadorans; Grandin et al. 2011 on Guatemala).

Research with more recent Central American migrants has found that many choose to migrate and separate from their family to be able to find work and earn a living wage in order to support those back home (Andrade-Eekhof and Silva-Avalos 2003). They are motivated by a combination of health, education, and/or monetary needs of the family members who remain in origin countries (Schmalzbauer 2004). Thus, despite an ever-more harrowing journey to the U.S.-Mexico border, challenging socioeconomic conditions and ongoing gang violence facing families in origin countries push some members, most typically males, north (De Genova 2002; Schmalzbauer 2005; Zentgraf and Stolz Chinchilla 2012). Moreover, increased militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border and the increasingly difficult legal constraints facing twenty-first-century migrants contribute to unauthorized migrants’ decisions to stay in the United States for longer durations than in past years (Dreby 2010; Dreby and Stutz 2012). It is estimated that more than 1 million Guatemalans (of a total population of approximately 14 million) live in the United States today (Smith 2006), with a large percentage of them being unauthorized. Many of these are also transnational, having left family members behind in Guatemala.

Interdisciplinary Participatory Action Research with Unauthorized Migrants, Mixed-Status, and Transnational Families

Given the realities confronting the growing number of Central American migrants “living in the shadows” in New England and others struggling in their countries of origin as well as the increasingly hostile public discourse about unauthorized migrants in the United States, the CHRIJ directors initiated relationships with several New England community-based organizations working mainly with Salvadoran and Guatemalan migrants. This initiative was under way in March 2007, when approximately 300 federal immigration agents raided a New Bedford, Massachusetts leather factory, arresting more than 360 unauthorized migrants, many of whom were Maya K’iche’ from the southern Quiché area of Guatemala. Our initial partnerships shifted to better respond to those families most directly affected by the raid, a move that fortified and focused both the community engagement and the participatory research aspects of the project. As project priorities shifted, we sought collaborations with organizations seeking to support mixed-status and transnational families with everyday life problems “living in the shadows.”

Our selection of participatory and action research as a methodology reflects our recognition that the policies, enforcements, and public attitudes reviewed above as well as a longer colonial history punctuated by racism against Mayan communities generated distrust between unauthorized migrants and their families and outsiders, including members of the CHRIJ. As significantly, it reflects our prioritizing the development of collaborative relationships and generative spaces in which unauthorized migrants and their mixed-status, transnational families could engage in educational, advocacy, and organizing activities that contribute to generating knowledge about their lived experiences “in their own words.” The participatory methodology and activist stance of PAR (Fals Borda 1985; 1998; 2000) facilitates the development of “just enough trust” (Maguire 1987) between community members and outsiders (e.g., CHRIJ researchers, lawyers, and activists) to risk emerging from the shadows. Through “pragmatic solidarity” (Farmer 2003) we engage together in action-reflection processes through which we (1) identify a problem focus or injustice, (2) gather information about it, (3) critically analyze its root causes, and (4) generate collaborative strategies toward redressing the injustice (Reason and Bradbury 2008). The participatory processes are teaching-learning contexts through which unauthorized migrants deepen their analyses about the causes of their current threats and strengthen their voices and local protagonism. These local understandings and the development of solidarity across communities contribute to collaborative generation of pragmatic responses to migrant families’ ongoing marginalization in the United States and in their countries of origin.

PAR processes with transnational and mixed-status families. In the multi-year interdisciplinary PAR project herein described (see figure 7.1), we developed three initial goals: (1) to document how Guatemalan and Salvadoran mixed-status and transnational families experience and respond to detention and deportation; (2) to contextualize current risks to families within a socio-historical, sociopolitical, and transnational framework; and (3) to collaboratively respond to the current realities through community-based actions, policy development, advocacy, and organizing. The work in Central America was initiated in partnership with Ricardo Falla, S.J., a Guatemalan anthropologist conducting research with returning migrants and sending families in Zacualpa in the Southern Quiché region, and with the social programs of the local Catholic church.

The participatory action research initiatives discussed in this chapter include: (1) in-depth interviews with 18 Central American migrant families in the United States, a majority of whom are mixed-status and all of whom had at least one unauthorized member; (2) community-based educational and organizational activities with migrant families in the United States; and (3) in-depth interviews, community-based survey research, and educational programming with sending families and children in Guatemala. Much of our community-based participatory work with migrant communities in New England has been in the form of community-led Know Your Rights (KYR) workshops and the development of educational curriculum resources about migrants’ rights. Similar workshops with adults in Guatemala included a focus on the local community’s questions about migrating family members’ experiences in the United States. In response to the request from the local community, educational workshops with children and youth were designed to educate them about life in the United States and to elicit, through creative activities, their experiences regarding family members’ migration north. Additional goals of the participatory educational workshops in both sites were to foster leadership development from within participating communities and to inform families about how U.S.-based migrants can best protect themselves in the face of the shifting U.S. immigration policies and practices (see Lykes, McDonald, and Boc 2012; and Migration and Human Rights Project, Center for Human Rights and International Justice 2012, 2013; formerly, Post-Deportation Human Rights Project 2009; 2010; 2011, for more details).

These initiatives complement additional work by the project’s legal team that supports individual deportees with U.S.-based family members who have been denied the right to appeal for reentry once they have been deported beyond U.S. borders. The Boston-based team also consults with families in Guatemala who are searching for U.S.-based family members who have been detained or who face deportation. U.S. educational initiatives that expand knowledge on post-deportation issues include the publication of practice advisories on post-departure motions to reopen, as well as a self-help manual for deportees.

These PAR processes aim to develop a critical body of scholarship “from the bottom up” that will influence social and political change. Most of the qualitative data have been transcribed and analyzed using a range of qualitative methods including content analysis and thematic narrative analysis. NVivo 8 was used to consolidate initially coded data facilitating the enumeration and analysis of themes and their interrelationships in the first phase of the analyses. Analyses of community survey data were performed using SPSS 19. Meetings with participants and other community members were opportunities to review preliminary findings and explore alternative interpretations. These research and action processes are iterative and facilitate strengthening relationships between collaborating community and university groups. They were tape recorded, with data analyses of meeting transcripts following similar strategies as those articulated above. The Human Subjects Review Board of Boston College, one of the host institutions, has approved all phases of the PAR processes described herein. To protect the anonymity of participants, all names in this text are pseudonyms. We next report U.S.-based parents’ historically rooted narratives of current detention and deportation threats and experiences and explore children and youths’ stories based on experiences in the United States and in Guatemala. We thereby aim to provide a thicker description of mixed-status and transnational families.

Narrating the Present through Past Experiences

As discussed in this volume, researchers (e.g., Capps et al. 2007; Chaudry et al. 2010) have increasingly documented the negative impact of U.S. immigration policies and their enforcement on migrant families’ emotional, social, relational, and financial well-being in the United States. We conducted interviews with 18 Salvadoran and Guatemalan parents residing in New England whose families had been impacted directly by detention and deportation; 93% of these families had U.S.-born children and 39% had children residing in the country of origin. Parents reported several psychological consequences of detention and deportation, including sadness, loss of energy, feelings of hopelessness, crying, anxiety, lost sleep, weight loss and gain, anger, fear, hypervigilance, distrust, nightmares, and worry, as well as economic hardship. Negative effects on children identified by their parents included academic problems, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, developmental regression, and behavioral difficulties (Brabeck et al. 2011).

Violence and violations in the U.S. and Central America. An important theme that emerged from interview data was that current threats posed by the detention and deportation system are experienced by Salvadoran and Guatemalan participants as deeply connected to previous threats including poverty, histories of state-sponsored violence in countries of origin, ongoing violence in sending countries, and related migrations and resulting family separations. Our research confirms that the current atmosphere of vulnerability and anxiety caused by immigration policies and enforcements is especially poignant when considered against the historical backdrop of state-sponsored violence during which families were divided, family members “disappeared,” self-silencing was a means of survival, and people feared that the government would “take away” a loved one. Nine of the 18 interviewed families (50%) spontaneously discussed the fear, silence, and displacement of family members that took place during la violencia (e.g., the twentieth-century civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala (Betancur, Planchart, and Buergenthal 1993; CEH 1999)). Eight of the interviewed families (44%) reported the murder of an immediate family member during the years of armed conflict in El Salvador and Guatemala. Two male participants reported that they migrated to the United States specifically to avoid being forcibly “recruited” into the armed forces. Four participants (22%) described decisions to migrate to the United States as related to loss of family, security, land, and community that followed from la violencia; Arturo recounts,

I left [Guatemala] approximately in the ’80s, as a result of the war. The army came knocking on the door . . . to the home of my father. . . . They said that we belonged to the mafia or to the guerrillas. . . . This was not right, and as a result of this we could not live in peace in that community, instead simply every day we lived in fear.

Following this assault on his family, Arturo fled to Mexico and later migrated to the United States.

Participants in the United States drew connections between the atmosphere during these years of armed conflict in their countries of origin and the current U.S. atmosphere for migrants—one characterized by suspicion, distrust, and fear. For example, Mario, whose wife was detained in a large workplace raid, described how previous traumas were retriggered in the current atmosphere: “What happened last year [raid] . . . It starts to open up the wound, or the fear, that you have held, because these things are not easy to erase. Because the wound is always there and when you open it, it burns anew.” Julia, who was detained in the workplace raid described above and separated from her 2-year-old son, described the current assault on immigrants as a “second war”: “If they are taking children away and everything, then for me, that’s a second war.” Marta, whose father was kidnapped and “disappeared” during Guatemala’s civil war, had a husband detained at the time of our interview. Understanding that her own unauthorized status made her vulnerable, Marta recounted being unable to investigate where he was held, thus re-experiencing the “disappearance” of a family member. Her options were further complicated by having two U.S.-born children, who would experience significant repercussions should their mother also be detained and possibly deported. Marta’s example demonstrates the importance of understanding mixed-status families within their transnational and historical contexts.

Poverty and racism precede and follow armed conflict. Although Peace Accords in El Salvador in 1992 and in Guatemala in 1996 brought an end to armed conflicts, the wars had decimated local economies; the gross social inequalities that lay at the roots of these earlier conflicts remain unaddressed (Smith 2006). Salvadoran and Guatemalan participants described poverty as both preceding and resulting from these wars. Moreover, poverty resulting from violence and ongoing racism motivated participants’ migrations; this was underscored in the survey work completed in Guatemala which we discuss next. For example, soldiers in Guatemala robbed and killed Mario’s father and left his family without means of support, prompting his migration to the United States: “We endured hunger, poverty; we hardly had clothing for the babies to use each week. Then coming here [U.S.], seeing the blessings, you want to grab hold of that to be able to give your children a life, a future, what you yourself never had.” Similarly, Jorge, another U.S. participant, recounted how fear during la violencia, and the resulting poverty and destruction, led many Guatemalans to flee to the south coast, where they worked on fincas (plantations), a foreshadowing of the later migrations “al norte” (northward):

The war started. . . . Soldiers came, entered homes, there was fear. They fired guns, threw bombs. The people left running; they [soldiers] grabbed them all of a sudden. They started killing them, without [the people] having done anything. This is the fear. . . . We left; we went as far as the south coast. . . . the south coast where they plant sugar cane, cotton, cardamom, vegetables.

Histories of poverty, racism, and violence in countries of origin also complicated participants’ current efforts to organize and speak out against the policies that threaten their families in the United States, thereby curtailing efforts toward collective action. Julia, for example, is a mother of two U.S.-born children and three children in Guatemala. Having been detained in a large workplace raid in 2007, she was applying for defensive asylum at the time of this interview. Julia described how indigenous Guatemalans were conditioned to believe that speaking out would result in death for their families, communities, and themselves:

We are all afraid, because I know our [indigenous/Mayan] race; we all walk with fear like this. Because in our country we were threatened, the indigenous race was threatened in many ways. If one speaks, if you say something, they [government] say we have no right to do so, and so we never did.

Her statement reflects how transnational, historical experiences influence current responses of unauthorized migrants in mixed-status families. In contrast, Julian describes a similar fear in Guatemala but re-vindicates his rights to speak out in the United States, despite his unauthorized status: “I work for an organization because all of our people are afraid of speaking out, but here in this country [the U.S.] we don’t have to be afraid of speaking out, whereas in other countries, like Guatemala, if you speak out you are killed.”

Repeated family separations. Poverty in countries of origin motivates migration northward, which allows families to potentially thrive financially, but also separates family members. These previous experiences of migration-related family separation also exacerbate and texture current risks to the integrity of mixed-status families posed by deportation policies and practices. When participants decided to migrate northward, disconnection from family in countries of origin produced feelings of isolation, loneliness, and sadness. Thirteen of the interviewed families (72%) discussed migration-related separation. Seven of the 18 parents (39%) interviewed in the United States had left a total of 22 children in their country of origin and most had not seen them for many years. Clara, who has both U.S.-born children and children residing in El Salvador, explained her decision to leave four children behind in El Salvador:

Still today I sometimes regret that I came [to the U.S.] because there is nothing more important than your children. But at the same time, I know I’m achieving something. In my view, here [in the U.S.] things are possible. There are people who say, well, the laws say that a person who crosses [the border] is a criminal. It’s more criminal to let your children starve to death. If I have to lose my life, at least I wanted to try rather than let my children die of hunger.

The seven parents (39%) interviewed in the United States who had children both “allá” (over there) and “acá” (right here), described watching their U.S.-born children thrive and succeed in the United States; learn English and study; have access to needed services like healthcare, physical and speech therapy; and experience opportunities that do not seem possible “allá” (i.e., in their countries of origin). In Clara’s words: “My heart is divided; I have three [children] in my country and three here. I’m here because I want my kids to study and speak English, and not go through life cleaning bathrooms like I did.” Again, the experiences of these mixed-status families are often best understood within the context of their relationships being structured, ruptured, and sustained transnationally. These experiences are similar to the ones described in the vignette in the fifth chapter of this volume in which Maria and Felipe struggle with similar transnational and mixed-status challenges (see Chicco and Congress, this volume). Thus, deportation of a family member is one of multiple separations that these families have faced.

Participants in the United States described the ways in which migration—a byproduct of poverty, racism, and armed conflict—and deportation—a direct effect of U.S. policies—separate families. Some observed the brutal irony of overcoming separation from loved ones for years because of migration north only to face the threat of separation again due to deportation. As Diana, who faces a deportation order for herself and her 9-year-old daughter, described: “Well, as a wife, I think that he [husband] will be here alone, that we fought so hard to be together and now, well, we have to separate.” The fear of separation from loved ones due to deportation is exacerbated by previous separations resulting from multiple migrations. During a KYR workshop, Julian, one of the 18 interviewees in the project, described family separation as the most difficult aspect of migration:

The most painful thing in the U.S. is the separation of the family because no person has the right to separate a family . . . and the children suffer because they say, “What is the reason? Why are they doing this to us?” . . . “Us” as indigenous people, as Maya. Sometimes with anger I say, “We are here because of all the wars in our countries . . . the U.S. has sent the arms to our country which the military has used to kill the indigenous people. . . . and that is the reason we are here.” . . . I see in the U.S. there are laws but the U.S. is not following their own laws, they are violating the laws of the U.S.

Notable in Julian’s comments on family separation is his attribution of responsibility for these tears in the family fabric to the Guatemalan and U.S. governments, the latter of which he accuses of violating its own laws through financing the Guatemalan military. Additionally, he highlights how families are twice marginalized: once, as they become transnational because of repression in the country of origin, and again as they become mixed-status and face threats of separation from U.S.-born children. To further illustrate how the threats of detention and deportation transcend borders, we present analyses of surveys and interviews with deportees who have returned to Guatemala and children and youth “left behind.”

Migration, Detention, and Deportation: Multiple Views from Guatemala

Patterns of migration and profiles of migrants. To estimate the impact of migration, detention, and deportation on one local community in Guatemala, we engaged in a series of community collaborations and action research activities in Zacualpa and its surrounding villages. In 2008, a team from the CHRIJ interviewed approximately 100 family members from Zacualpa and five of its villages who responded to an invitation from the social program of the local Catholic parish to participate in interviews with U.S. human rights activist researchers. Based on this work and the interests of the recently formed Migration and Migrant Rights office in Zacualpa, in 2011 we initiated a collaborative community survey and administered questionnaires in three of the five villages in which we had conducted interviews, as well as in the town, Urban Area (Área Urbana, see table 7.1). Each home in the four surveyed communities was visited by a local research assistant who was a community member trained in data collection. Research team members in the United States and Guatemala developed the survey instrument. Sections included (1) Demographic information: family composition and gender, level of education, language, and ethnic group for head of household and all additional household members; (2) Economic information: material possessions owned by the family (such as a cell phone, radio, etc.) and information on the quality of the family’s home (including type of plumbing, materials used on the walls, roof, and floors, etc.); (3) Migration information: Presence of migrant in the family, years of migration, amount paid for migration, level of remaining debt, and U.S. state destination for migrant; and (4) Effects of migration information: Remittances and the effects of migration on children living in the household.

Across all villages, the migrants were primarily male, ranging from a low of 74.8% of the migrants from the Urban Area, and a high of 86.2% of the migrants from San Antonio Sinaché I (herewith referred to as San Antonio). The vast majority of migrants were unauthorized in the United States—92% from Tablón did not have legal status, 88.5% from San Antonio, 76.4% from Arriquín, and at least 79.1% from the Urban Area (although about 10% of the Urban Area respondents did not answer the question on legal status). As argued above, the lack of documented status in the United States puts these migrants at high risk of detention and deportation and can cause pervasive stress in their daily lives. Members of sending families are deeply aware of these threats and concerned about their sons and fathers as well as about the economic insecurities facing them locally.

Table 7.1. Basic Description of Villages Included in Survey

Tablón Arriquín San Antonio Sinaché I Urban Area

Number of Families

137

62

303

549

Number of People

915

352

1,907

2,708

Average Household Size

6.68 people

5.66 people

6.29 people

4.93 people

Family Ethnicity

100% K’iche’

61.3% K’iche’, 35.5% Ladino,

3.2% Mestizo

100% K’iche’

63% K’iche’

35.5% Ladino

0.2% Mam

0.5% Mestizo

0.8% no response

Total N and Percentage of Population under 18

454

(49.6%)

131

(37.2%)

927

(48.6%)

1,067

(39.4%)

Total N and Percentage of Adults Age 18 and Up Who Migrated to U.S.

112

(24.3%)

53

(24.3%)

128

(13.1%)

230 (14%)

Total N and Percentage of All Migrants Who Are Male

96

(81.4%)

47

(85.5%)

112

(86.2%)

172

(74.8%)

Total N and Percentage of Families with a Family Member Who Migrated to U.S.

59

(43.1%)

29(47%)

92

(30.4%)

145

(26.4%)

Number of Deportees from the U.S.

7

1

17

24

N and Percentage of Population Who Were in Home Village at Time of the Survey

772

(84.4%)

295

(83.8%)

1,713

(89.8%)

2,505

(92.5%)

N and Percentage of Heads of Household Without Formal Education

91

(66.4%)

28

(45.2%)

228

(75.2%)

197

(35.9%)

Note: There was a small amount of missing data for some items; each individual percentage is based on available data only. One migrant in San Antonio did not have an age listed, but was assumed to be an adult.

In June 2012, the Pew Research Center reported that migration from Mexico to the United States had slowed, suggesting that after four decades of migration from Mexico into the United States, the net migration flow had stopped and may have reversed (meaning slightly more Mexicans in the United States were returning to Mexico than the number of Mexicans coming to the United States) (Passel, Cohn, and Gonzales-Barrera 2012). Our data did not reveal the same pattern for Guatemalans migrating out of Zacualpa. In fact, 81% of all migrants across all three villages and the Urban Area surveyed came to the United States between 2000 and 2012.

Moreover, the data give us a better understanding of who migrates and of the indebtedness of families in countries of origin due to financing migration. In all three villages and the urban area, adult migrants had higher levels of education than adult non-migrants, and this difference was statistically significant in all three villages but not in the urban area. The greatest difference was in Arriquín, where 96.2% of adults who migrated had some formal education, whereas only 62.4% of adults who did not migrate had some formal education. This finding suggests that those with the most education and therefore the most human capital are the ones who are leaving the community. Interview data suggest that among the most prominent reasons for migration is an inability to find jobs with a track of upward mobility. Thus, rather than investing their knowledge into improving the local community, migrants bring this human capital to the United States.

The average cost of migration in the town as well as the three villages was approximately Q36,000, whereas the most commonly reported cost was Q40,000. Using January 2014 conversion rates, this latter amount is about $5,000 USD. Each family was also asked to report how the migrants financed their trip. Overwhelmingly across all three villages and the urban area, loans with accruing interest were the most frequently used method of paying for the journey. Other common methods of financing migration included taking out mortgages using land or homes as collateral, personal resources, and loans that did not accrue interest.

Although national statistics within Guatemala and in the United States confirm continued high levels of remittances despite downturns in the U.S. economy, our local collaborations suggest that the families in this village continue to live in poverty (see Lykes et al. 2013, for details). For example, in the three smaller villages, between 24.2% and 57.4% of households had no sanitation (plumbing) service, and less than 15% of households in Tablón and San Antonio had a refrigerator to keep food fresh.

The relationship between poverty, migration, and deportation. In the Guatemalan community-based interviews with key informants and families, we heard repeated stories of extreme poverty which had prompted family migration to the southern coast of Guatemala to work on plantations, only to return after a four-month season with scarcely enough money to pay for children’s schooling the following year. Participants described experiences of living separated from a family member in the United States and also recounted unsolicited stories about children and spouses’ forced migrations. Many described family members being killed or disappeared during the war. During the massacres of the 1980s, some fled to the capital, others hid out in the local town, and still others fled to Mexico, with a small number reaching the United States and Canada. The stories confirm U.S.-based migrants’ narratives, adding further detail about the horrors of the war and its multiple legacies. Roberto described forced recruitment into civilian patrols and migration:

During the war there was a lot of migration . . . that time was unbelievable, I patrolled, I was 18 years old and there are others who were 12 or 13 years old and were obligated to join the patrols [PACs], if we didn’t do it they [the military] would kill us. Here in Zacualpa it was horrible. . . . Twice a week I had to do it [patrol].

Manuela chronicled her experiences in her village and the neighboring town during the war:

I was washing in the river when I heard a bomb and people running. We went running when the war started . . . it was August 15th . . . we went running to the town because my husband was working there . . . My sister was pregnant, but she wasn’t afraid so she stayed on one of the plantations . . . and ended up in the hands of the soldiers . . . they tied her up saying “look at the faces of the guerrillas” . . . they stood her up, they killed her baby, they cut him into pieces then piled them up and poured gasoline on him.

As argued above, these histories frame how participants in the PAR processes experience the current atmosphere for unauthorized migrants in the United States.

In addition to confirming the stories of terror we heard from unauthorized migrants in the United States, interview participants in Guatemala recounted surprising levels of indebtedness, as confirmed in the survey results, with many families reporting interest rates of 10% calculated monthly, resulting in the doubling of indebtedness in a single year when they were unable to make payments. In one household, including three generations of women whose spouses had either been killed in the armed conflict or had migrated to the United States, a grandmother stated that their home—which had been secured through a local widows’ rights organization as reparations for her husband having been assassinated during the armed conflict—had been repossessed by the bank for the family’s failure to pay back interest and principal on the nearly $15,000 USD that had been borrowed to pay for three of her children’s migrations to the United States. She, her children, and grandchildren had been told to leave the property by the end of the year. Although evictions numbered less than a half-dozen among the approximately 100 families we interviewed in 2008, many described similar levels of indebtedness and indicated that as remittances decreased due to un-/underemployment or detention in the United States, they were unable to pay loans that were often secured by land or homes. And when family members in the United States are deported, the family’s economic prospects are decimated, again, particularly if they are in debt. Thus, policies affecting migrants in the United States have severe consequences for family members abroad.

Psychosocial effects of migration and deportation on those “left behind” and their families. Guatemalan participants whom we interviewed in Guatemala described similar psychological effects of migration, detention, and deportation as those narrated in U.S.-based migrant communities. Many children and youth in Zacualpa make sense of their parents’ migration largely through understanding it as a way in which parents care for them. Kate, interviewed in 2008, reported that her father had left when she was only weeks old but stated that she spoke to him weekly on the phone and recognized that his job in the United States allows her to attend school in the nearby town. Similarly, children reported that, “They [migrant parents] are not criminals, because they are going to search for a better life for their family members.”

Still, despite acknowledging the importance of remittances in sustaining their family and giving them access to schooling, some children and youth described life without their mother as one of sadness and longing. For example, although she understood why her mother migrated to the United States after her father deserted the family, leaving them destitute, Julia noted her own and her brothers’ longing to join their mother in the United States. Julia reflected upon their situation:

. . . [I] have been thinking, and always I am saying, that I would like to go with my mother; but she is not able to [earn] money for me to come there, so I’m not going. My [older] sister would like to go also but my mother tells my sister [that] my brothers are too young; they are little and there is no one that can care for them. And so that’s what she tells us. She tells us “I’m going to return soon, I’m coming when I find work and make money, and I’m going to return to my house, when I’m able to pay my debt I am going to be able to return to you all.”

Migrant parents’ promises to return to children left behind are complicated, not only by indebtedness and underemployment, but also by having U.S.-born children with linguistic/cultural familiarity and increased opportunities and privileges in the United States.

Among families surveyed (Lykes et al. 2013), many youth under age 18 lived with families that had experienced the migration of one or more family members. One-quarter to one-half of children in all four areas surveyed had experienced the migration of a household member. Experiencing the loss of at least the physical presence of a family member had become an increasingly normative experience for children, and schools and other organizations working with youths were slowly becoming aware of this prevalence.

To better understand some of how youth were responding to these realities, our research team facilitated participatory workshops in a Guatemalan school in the town center whose students came from the villages and the town (Lykes and Sibley 2013). Thirty-three Mayan students who had at least one parent in the United States described repeatedly asking a mother or father when she or he would be “coming home,” only to be told that finances, debt, and/or reduced employment opportunities in the United States prevented parents from returning. Other children and youth referred to telephone conversations with their mothers or fathers, describing a sense of loss and sadness at their parent’s absence but also their understanding that parents migrated due to the extreme poverty locally. One young girl, Vivian, remarked that: “. . . The children feel sad, but they [the parents] leave out of necessity, because of the poverty they leave. . . . they leave because there is a great need.” Although these youth rarely described their own emotions, many, like Valeria, recounted younger siblings’ tears upon viewing a photograph of a mother or hearing her voice on the phone: “One day I saw my sister crying and looking at a photo of my mother . . . She calls us every week . . . one day she calls, the next day she doesn’t . . . She speaks to everyone, even the smallest ones. Not anymore—they have become accustomed to it—but at first they cried.”

Mayan youth participating in educational workshops and interviews were very well informed about life in the United States. They revealed knowledge about discrimination against unauthorized migrants, low wages, racism, and the weakening economy—all of which they saw as constraining their parents’ capacity to care for them from afar. Some described parents’ experiences of racism and discriminatory treatment in the workplace and in local communities (see Lykes and Sibley 2013, for a fuller description of youth “left behind,” and Hershberg and Lykes 2012, for stories from girls within these samples living in mixed-status and transnational families). Others spoke of U.S.-based parents’ loss of one or more jobs, and/or parents’ being fearful of leaving the home or of socializing outside of the house due to “la migra,” i.e., ICE. Yet, despite this knowledge, most youth reported dreaming of heading north, and according to the community survey in Zacualpa, increasing numbers of youth between the ages of 18 and 25 are risking everything in hopes of improving their life options and/or supporting their families in Guatemala.

Adults in Zacualpa also reported pain and loss due to multiple separations common to transnational and mixed-status families. Augusto, a deportee interviewed in 2008, described the pain of being unable to return from the United States in order to attend his mother’s funeral (his father had been killed during the armed conflict) because he lacked documents to travel—only to be “sentenced home” through deportation a short two months later.

Our father died on August 7, 1982 during one of the massacres by the military; he was assassinated. And our mother died December 11, 2007 . . . seven months to this day . . . and sadly we were not here, since my sister Juana and I were in the U.S. It was a very difficult moment . . . we couldn’t come because we were undocumented and wouldn’t be able to return . . . we had made the sacrifice of not coming to my mother’s burial, just so that in two months we’d be forced to come anyway and not find her here anymore. So it is a—or to say that in a psychological sense—these become traumas that little by little you will recover from.

His loss was exacerbated further when his wife gave birth to their first child in Maine after he had been deported back to Zacualpa, multiplying the separations among family members living across borders with different statuses.

Implications and Pending Challenges

Our data confirm that current threats to unauthorized migrants and their families “left behind” posed by U.S. immigration policies and their enforcement are experienced and narrated historically and transnationally by the Salvadorans and Guatemalans in mixed-status and transnational families with whom we are collaborating in the United States and in Zacualpa. Few in the United States are aware of the history of U.S. involvement in the armed conflicts in Central America (see González 2000/2011), yet our research suggests that such understanding is crucial to framing our participants’ experiences of and meaning-making about contemporary immigration policies and enforcements. Additionally important to understand is that children on both sides of the U.S. border are being raised in families fractured by U.S. policies and practices. Migrants separated from their family members due to forced recruitment, massacres, disappearances, or migrations when they were children are today prevented from traveling to their countries of origin and live with daily fear of separation from U.S.-born children. Children in the United States and abroad are being separated from parents due to forced migration (rooted in poverty, racism, and violence), detention, and deportation. Children on both sides of the border hear their parents referred to as “illegal” or “criminals.” They hear stories and witness evidence of unemployment, racism, and/or discriminatory U.S. policies vis-à-vis immigrants. Yet many develop a critical moral compass through which they defend their parents’ choices. Moreover, despite knowledge of workplace raids, violence on the journey north, and indebtedness for those who chose to leave home, youth report dreams of traveling north or being resigned that the only option for realizing their goals is through crossing the border without authorization.

Impacting the lives of unauthorized migrants and children living in mixed-status and transnational families requires significant policy reform that enacts purportedly American values, including family integrity, human rights, protection of the vulnerable, and the best interest of children. Based on these participatory and action research processes and outcomes—and our relationships of pragmatic solidarity—we argue that such policies should benefit children and parents in countries of origin and in the United States. Children should have opportunities to reunite with their families in the United States or receive adequate resources that enable them to improve their quality of life and life options within their country of origin. U.S. citizen children should be allowed to petition for their parents to become U.S. citizens now, rather than having to wait until they are 21 years old (see Thronson, this volume). If parents are detained and threatened with deportation, children’s interests should be represented in such hearings.

Interdisciplinary and transnational partnerships among activists, academics and migrants, and participatory and action research methods offer the potential for understanding the deep historical rootedness of contemporary experiences in the words of those most directly impacted and the potential to collaboratively design more systemic responses for individuals and families on both sides of the border. The PAR process described herein is one methodological resource for developing a response in that direction.

Note

1 Mainstream media frequently refers to this population as “illegal aliens.” Recent criticisms by academics, activists, and journalists (see, e.g., http://www.nahj.org/nahjnews/articles/2006/March/immigrationcoverage.shtml) challenge this discriminatory labeling of the foreign-born who have entered the United States without inspection or “overstayed the expiration date of a visa or other status” (http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/undocumented-immigrant-term.html). Although many don’t meet the technical definition of immigrant (a person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another), they are also not temporary migrants. Recognizing these complexities, we use the term “unauthorized migrant” when speaking of the population with whom we are working, but defer to current government use of immigrant in describing U.S. policy and laws as well as government statistics.

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