https://www.fcd-us.org/what-is-resistance-do-a-hopeful-thing-and-then-do-it-again/
First-graders displayed so much anxiety that their teachers were asking for help. I remember that as the moment I decided I had to do something.
It was 2016. I was a few years out of my doctoral program, and I was trying to find my way in academia as a developmental psychologist. I was the project director of a longitudinal study focusing on Latine child development during the transition to preschool and kindergarten. The project had been going on for several years, with more than 20 school sites participating across New York City. As part of our partnership, we offered workshops to educators and parents.
Workshop topics included “the importance of routines” and “supporting healthy nutrition habits.” That election year, though, teachers said that what they really needed was help managing student anxiety. They shared that anxiety among students was presenting at a magnitude they had never seen before.
We asked teachers what they were seeing in their classrooms. The day after the election, one teacher shared, “children were crying, children were saying things to each other about the election. We had children who were breaking down, hiding in the closets, hiding in different places in the classroom, afraid that immigration was going to come get them, that their families were going to be torn apart.” Families had been watching TV news and talking politics. Young children were affected by the charged sociopolitical climate. The principal and school counselor visited each classroom, the teacher said, in an attempt to calm the students. The children “were so upset and said they would be sent back to Mexico,” one teacher said. “Some argued about whether they had papers so they wouldn’t be sent.”
Not The Right Kind of American
I not only heard their anxiety, I recognized it. These kids were like me when I was little, in an immigrant family where safety was not assured.
I grew up in California, and la migra was often in the area. My parents are immigrants from Mexico. My mom was educated to 2nd grade, and my dad to 6th grade, and both started working at a young age. Eventually, they were able to get green cards. But I always was aware that I had a different level of safety than my parents did, because I was born here and they were not. And I was also aware that, even though I was born here, I had a different level of safety than my white friends.
“You’re safe because you’re a citizen,” my parents would tell me. “You’re an American.” But then I’d go to school, see differences in how kids were treated, and think, “OK, but I’m not the right kind of American.” Despite the lack of formal education in my household, I went on to Stanford University. I then went on to earn my Ph.D. from Columbia University. Motivated by my passion for child health and education, I became a researcher in academia.
If I stayed silent while children suffered — as a U.S.-born citizen, as a daughter of immigrants, and as a developmental psychologist — then what did I do all of this for?
Courage and purpose reared up inside me. But what to do with it? As a non-clinician, I felt at a loss to provide practical resources. I didn’t see existing programs for young children and parents that addressed immigration-related anxiety. I tried to find clinicians to work with, but they didn’t seem to get it. They did not recognize the level of alarm I was hearing from educators.
I was a junior researcher and, in retrospect, had it been any other issue I probably would have stopped when they said no. But Trump’s messages were dog whistles, and I could see what was coming before my colleagues could because of my childhood. I knew that the anxiety of the children, described by their teachers, needed to be addressed and was worthy of research.
Some scientists might say that my personal life influenced my research or that I’m projecting, so they might discount my research. But the demographics of our profession shapes what we think of as norms: what gets seen and not seen. These norms are their own kind of bias.
Power in People
I shifted from looking outward to looking inward. I tapped into my network. I had gone to school with a bilingual immigration lawyer; I trusted him enough to ask, “Will you help me?” Two of my research associates were bilingual social workers. I asked, “Will you do this with me?” I found people who understood.
We — all children of immigrants — created our own workshop and presented it to moms at a school with the hope that it would help. The social workers talked about recognizing anxiety in yourself and in your children, and how to manage those emotions. The immigration lawyer taught a Know Your Rights workshop, debunked misinformation, and answered mothers’ questions.
During the workshop, some mothers shared that their children were not sleeping. Mothers were distressed and did not know what to say to their children about their safety and chronic fears. In separate conversations, educators shared that they were feeling unprepared for how to handle children’s emotional distress. As the researcher in the room, it felt important to capture and elevate these narratives.
I was struck by the urgency I was feeling to act. Again, I was also struck by the calm among my colleagues. Maybe because I’m Mexican American, maybe because I work with immigrants, maybe because I was having trouble sleeping, maybe because it felt familiar. I felt the need to help translate what educators and parents were describing to my colleagues in the fields of population health, child development, and mental health.
Psychological Violence
Community violence research was the bridge. Substitute psychological violence for community violence, and you have a framework to talk about the impact of immigration-enforcement threat on child development. Children can experience the chronic uncertainty about their safety and the persistent threat of family separation as psychological violence.
I built on this framework to study the impact of a restrictive immigration climate on educators’ work and well-being. Using mixed methods, I learned that educators’ own worry about immigration-enforcement threat is associated with sleep problems and psychological distress. I also learned that communal coping, informational support, and emotional support protected against educator loneliness and burnout. These findings were published in a series of papers in the early 2020s. I was honored to share some of these findings in a testimony to Congress.
And the psychological violence of immigration-enforcement threat continues.
The stress of families and children spills over into academia. Anyone doing qualitative work with undocumented people — or any sort of research where you’re holding people’s safety — knows it is stressful and hard and slow. Early-career researchers either don’t do this kind of work or endure the secondary trauma and stress that comes with it. We don’t have a lot of support. We have even less now, given the threat of censorship and of further cuts to research funding. And yet, we must remain hopeful and continue to exercise the power and agency that we have.
Lifting Up What We Already Know
When the second Trump administration announced the rescission of the sensitive-locations policy earlier this year, I once again felt the need to act. Based on what I had learned from my work during the first administration, I knew this policy change was going to result in harm not only to students but also to the teachers working with them. I decided not to conduct more research; I wasn’t sure my body could handle the emotional weight of these narratives again at this time.
Instead, I have been leveraging my voice, my research expertise, and my networks to educate people about the harm being inflicted on children, families, and teachers. I have turned again to cross-sector collaboration and put together a webinar for teachers that shared some of my findings from the first administration, provided Know Your Rights information, and provided support for managing stress and uncertainty. I have been speaking on panels, collaborating on briefs, and posting relevant research on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
I am lifting up what I learned in the hope that it can help school communities. Sometimes it feels overwhelming to know how to resist. One answer is to do one hopeful thing. And then to do it again.