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ABSTRACT
Given the call to examine the U.S.-Mexico border as both discursive and material, I focus on the enactments of migrant-rights violations and immigration-related trauma creating mental health concerns for those experiencing it. Concerned with the complex, long-term effects of child separation and detention centers, I provide a historically and structurally grounded analysis of the psychological and emotionally systemic violence at the U.S.-Mexico border. I argue for how rhetorical border studies can address the transmission of intergenerational trauma, consequences of the forced parent-child separation, and possible critical interventions to this human rights issue, which are more important now than ever.
Notes
1 D. Robert DeChaine, ed., Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012).
2 Claudia A. Anguiano (Evans-Zepeda), “Dropping the “I” Word: A Critical Examination of Contemporary Migration Labels” in The Rhetorics of US Immigration: Identity, Community and Otherness, ed. E. Johanna Hartelius (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015), 93.
3 Sonya M. Alemán, Claudia A. Evans-Zepeda, and Mari Castaneda, “Deconstructing ‘Build that Wall’: A Latina/o Critical Communication Theory Analysis,” in Latina/o Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice, eds. Leandra Hernandez, Diana I. Bowen, Sarah de los Santos Upton, and Amanda R. Martinez (Lanham, MA: Lexington Press, 2019), 47–72.
4 Antonio Tomas De La Garza et al., “(Re)bordering the Scholarly Imaginary: The State and Future of Rhetorical Border Studies,” in Rhetoric Across Borders, ed. Anne Teresa Demo (Parlor Press, 2015), 107–18.
5 Nicholas De Genova, “Spectacles of Migrant ‘Illegality’: The Scene of Exclusion, the Obscene of Inclusion,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 36, no. 7 (2013): 1180–98.
6 Kent A. Ono, and John M. Sloop. Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California’s Proposition 187 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002); David Cisneros, The Border Crossed Us: Rhetorics of Borders, Citizenship, and Latina/o Identity (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2014).
7 Lisa A. Flores, “Constructing Rhetorical Borders: Peons, Illegal Aliens, and Competing Narratives of Immigration,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20, no. 4 (2003): 362–87; Karma R. Chavez, “Understanding Migrant Caravans from the Place of Place Privilege,” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 8, no. 1 (2019): 9–16.
8 Lisa A. Flores, “Introduction: Of Gendered/Racial Boundaries and Borders,” Women’s Studies in Communication 40, no. 4 (2017): 317–20; Lisa A. Flores, “At the Intersections: Feminist Border Theory,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 2 (2019): 113–15.
9 Alemán et al., “Deconstructing ‘Build that Wall”; Amy N. Heuman and Alberto González, “Trump’s Essentialist Border Rhetoric: Racial Identities and Dangerous Liminalities,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 47, no. 4 (2018): 326–42.
10 Bernadette M. Calafell, “Love, Loss, and Immigration: Performative Reverberations between a Great-Grandmother and Great-Granddaughter,” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), 151–62; Dustin Bradley Goltz and Kimberlee Perez “‘Borders without Bodies:’ Affect, Proximity, and Utopian Imaginaries through ‘Lines in the Sand’” in Border Rhetorics: Citizenship and Identity on the US–Mexico Frontier, ed. D. Robert DeChaine (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2012), 163–80.
11 See Harmeer Kaur, “Actually, the US has a Long History of Separating Families,” CNN, June 24, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/24/us/us-long-history-of-separating-families-trnd/index.html; Jessica Pryce, “The Long History of Separating Families in the US and How the Trauma Lingers,” The Conversation, June 26, 2018, https://theconversation.com/the-long-history-of-separating-families-in-the-us-and-how-the-trauma-lingers-98616; Patricia J. Williams, “The Generational Trauma of Separating Families,” The Nation, June 20, 2019, https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/generational-trauma-separating-families/.
12 Juan Gonzalez, Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (New York: Penguin Books, 2011). Alemán et al., “Deconstructing ‘Build that Wall,” 50.
13 Cynthia Pompa, “Immigrant Kids Keep Dying in CBP Detention Centers, and DHS Won’t Take Accountability,” ACLU, June 24, 2019, https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/immigrant-kids-keep-dying-cbp-detention.
14 Leandra H. Hernández and Sarah De Los Santos Upton, “Critical Health Communication Methods at the US–Mexico Border: Violence against Migrant Women and the Role of Health Activism,” Frontiers in Communication 34, no. 4 (2019): 1–12.
15 Eric Gay, “More than 5,400 Children Split at Border, According to New Count,” Associated Press, October 25, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791.
16 “Home,” Latinx Parenting, https://www.latinxparenting.org (accessed December 1, 2020).
17 Jane E. Stevens, “Those Who Separate Immigrant Children from Parents Might as well be Beating Them with Truncheons,” Aces Too High, June 19, 2018, https://acestoohigh.com/2018/06/19/those-who-separate-immigrant-children-from-parents-might-as-well-be-beating-them-with-truncheons/.
18 Ann Keating ed., EntreMundos/AmongWorld: New Perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa (New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, 2008), 6.
19 Sandra Espinoza, “Family Separations: Addressing the Long-term Systemic Effect of Trauma,” Alliant Health, September 13, 2019, https://www.alliant.edu/blog/family-separations-addressing-long-term-systemic-effects-trauma.
20 Leandra Hinojosa Hernández, “Feminist Approaches to Border Studies and Gender Violence: Family Separation as Reproductive Injustice,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 2 (2019): 130–34; Flores, “At the Intersections,” 115.
21 Leandra Hinojosa Hernández and Sarah De Los Santos Upton, “Insider/outsiders, Reproductive (In)justice, and the US–Mexico Border,” Health Communication 23, no. 8 (2020): 1049; Also, see Roberto Hernández, Coloniality of the U-S//Mexico Border: Power, Violence, and the Decolonial Imperative (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2018).
22 Sarah De Los Santos Upton, “Nepantla Activism and Coalition Building: Locating Identity and Resistance in the Cracks between Worlds,” Women’s Studies in Communication 42, no. 2 (2019): 137.
23 Ricardo M. Phipps and Suzanne Degges-White, “A New Look at Transgenerational Trauma Transmission: Second-generation Latino Immigrant Youth,” Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development 42, no. 3 (2014): 174–87.
24 Cindy Sangalang and Cindy Vang, “Intergenerational Trauma in Refugee Families: A Systematic Review,” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 19, no. 3 (2017): 745.
25 Kevin Ackerman et al., “‘There Is No One Here to Protect You’ Trauma among Children Fleeing Violence in Central America,” Physicians for Human Rights, June 10, 2019, https://phr.org/our-work/resources/there-is-no-one-here-to-protect-you/.
26 Margaret G. Stineman, and Joel E. Streim, “The Biopsycho-ecological Paradigm: A Foundational Theory for Medicine,” Clinical Review: Current Concept 2, no. 11 (2010): 1035.
27 Hajar Habbach, Kathryn Hampton, and Ranit Mishori, “‘You Will Never See Your Child Again:’ The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family Separation,” Physicians for Human Rights, February 25, 2020, https://phr.org/our-work/resources/you-will-never-see-your-child-again-the-persistent-psychological-effects-of-family-separation/.
28 Habbach et al., “You will Never See Your Child Again.”
29 Sarah Reinstein, “Family Separations and the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma,” Clinical Physiatry News, July 9, 2018, https://www.mdedge.com/psychiatry/article/169747/depression/family-separations-and-intergenerational-transmission-trauma.
30 While the recent family separation at the southern US border is a unique circumstance, there are other moments in history of separating children from parents (e.g., during slave auctions; forced assimilation of Native Americans; the Holocaust; and transnational forced adoptions, to name a few).
31 Gabor Mate, “How to Build a Better Culture of Good Health,” Yes! November 16, 2015, https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/good-health/2015/11/16/.
32 Colleen Long, Martha Mendoza and Garance Burke, “‘I Can’t Feel My Heart:’ Children Separated from Their Parents at US–Mexico Border Showed Increased Signs of Post-traumatic Stress,” FRONTLINE, September 4, 2019, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/children-separated-from-their-parents-at-us-mexico-border-showed-increased-signs-of-post-traumatic-stress-us-report-says/.
33 Joanne M. Chiedi, “Care Provider Facilities Described Challenges Addressing Mental Health Needs of Children in HHS Custody,” Report in Brief OEI-09-18-00431, US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, September 2019, https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-09-18-00431.asp
34 Chiedi, “Challenges Addressing Mental Health.”
35 Long, “I Can’t Feel My heart.”
36 Laura Santhanam, “How the Toxic Stress of Family Separation Can Harm a Child,” PBS: Health, June 18, 2018, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-the-toxic-stress-of-family-separation-can-harm-a-child.
37 Stevens, “Those Who Separate Immigrant Children.”
38 D. Robert DeChaine, “Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Alienization, Fence Logic, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 1 (2009): 43.
39 For instance, boycotting the home-furnishing company Wayfair, who sold $200,000 worth of furniture to furnish a camp in Texas, where 3,000 migrant children are currently detained. See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/25/wayfair-walkout-border-facility-furniture.
40 Lisa A. Flores, “Stoppage and the Racialized Rhetorics of Mobility,” Western Journal of Communication 84, no. 3 (2020): 258.