“El Mexicano se ríe de sus desgracias”: adolescent arrivals and humour in an anti-immigrant context

ABSTRACT

This article examines how newcomer immigrant teens navigate a heightened, anti-immigrant climate in the United States. Drawing on 24 months of ethnographic observations and interviews with adolescent arrivals who immigrated in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election, this study highlights the nuanced ways adolescent arrivals negotiate their precarious situations. For newcomer teenagers navigating two life-changing transitions at once – adolescence and immigration – their experiences coalesce producing distinct levels of stress and anxiety for the youth. This study finds that amid hardships and dire circumstances that surround them, the youth use humour as a lens to process their experiences. I find that the youth engage in humour as a form of political expression to make fun of social conditions. They do this by mocking and ridiculing anti-immigrant discourses. This play world created by the youth provides an alternative understanding of immigrant youth culture during contested political times.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent arrivals
• humour
• unaccompanied minors
• coping mechanism
• immigrant youth vitality
• anti-immigrant climate

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to participants for allowing me into their worlds making this research possible. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers and countless others who provided me with invaluable feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to Tanya Golash-Boza for her mentorship, support, and insightful comments on this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For safety and confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for participants. Pseudonyms are also used for the school they attended and city where they resided.

2 Release theory argues that humor and jokes allow individuals to vent away any nervous energy through laughter. Superiority theory argues that humor manifests from a sudden feeling of glory. Incongruity theory argues that humor takes place when an unexpected outcome transpires.

3 The “zero-tolerance policy” was implemented in May 2018 and was designed to prosecute anyone who crossed the border without authorization. It allowed for the separation of children from their parents while taken into custody (Pierce, Bolter, and Selee 2018).

4 California is an immigrant-friendly state. Therefore, the experiences of the youth are geographically specific to this accommodating state.

5 Participants who are documented were taken as infants to their parent's country of origin and came to the United States as adolescents. Upon arrival, they quickly discovered they closely identified with the experiences of their immigrant-born peers.

6 Human Subjects Committee Protocol ID 16-0658

7 The author’s first language is Spanish and is fluent in reading, writing, and speaking the Spanish language.

8 Janet defined “chola” as a person who uses drugs, hangs out in the streets, and eventually becomes homeless.