What does it mean to be a young undocumented immigrant? Current public debate on undocumented immigration provokes discussion worldwide, and it is estimated that there are more than 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the US, yet what it really means to be an undocumented immigrant appears less explicitly delineated in the debate.

This interdisciplinary volume applies theories from Media, Cultural, and Literary Studies to investigate how undocumented immigrant youth in the United States have claimed a public voice by publishing their video narratives on YouTube. Case studies show how political protest significantly shapes these videos as activists narrate and perform their 'dispossession', redefining their understanding of the mechanisms of immigration in the Americas, and of home, belonging, and identity. The impact of the videos is explored as the activists connect them to Congressional bills and present their activities as a continuation of the legacy of the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

This book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students involved in debates on migration, communication, new media, culture, protest movements and political lobbying.

About the Author

As of spring 2018, Stefanie Quakernack is a postdoctoral researcher and project manager at Ruhr-University Bochum. Her fields of research are immigration, education, and language. Up until 2017, Stefanie Quakernack was a lecturer and doctoral research fellow in the American Studies department at Bielefeld University, where she studied fields of U.S. immigration at the intersections of Media, Political, Literary, and Cultural Studies. Much of the research presented in this book originates in the field research that she carried out in Chicago, Illinois, in spring 2014."

Book Information
ISBN 9780815378525
Author Stefanie Quakernack
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Inc
Weight(grams) 494g