Knowing Silence: How children understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives.

University of Minnesota Press

Educators who underestimate children’s knowledge about citizenship and immigration status can marginalize or misunderstand these students and their families. In Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School, author Ariana Mangual Figueroa models new ways scholars might collaborate with educators, children, and families—and makes audible the experiences of immigrant-origin students in their own terms, ultimately offering teachers and researchers a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom. Here, the author is joined in conversation with collaborators Dra. Aurora Chang, Claudia Rolando, and Lumari Sosa Garzón.

Ariana Mangual Figueroa is author of Knowing Silence and associate professor of urban education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a co-principal investigator at the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY IIE).

Dra. Aurora Chang is associate professor of higher education at Loyola University and incoming Director of Faculty Development and Career Advancement at George Mason University. Chang is founder of Academic Life Simplified.

Claudia Rolando is a graduate of Brooklyn College and an educator in New York.

Lumari Sosa Garzón is a Mexican student in the Macaulay Honors program with a TheDream.US scholarship at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. Lumari is a co-author of the Afterword appearing in Knowing Silence.

Episode references:

-Published research of Michael Fix and Wendy Zimmerman (“All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform,” International Migration Review)

-The Struggles of Identity, Education, and Agency in the Lives of Undocumented Students (Dra. Aurora Chang)

-The Undocumented Americans (Karla Cornejo Villavicencio)

-The New York State Youth Leadership Council

-Lives in Limbo (Roberto G. Gonzales)

-concept of Community Cultural Wealth / Dr. Tara Yosso

-Plyler v. Doe, Supreme Court decision, 1982

-The New School’s Parsons Scholars Program

Recommended reference:

-Areli is a Dreamer / Areli Morales

Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School is available from University of Minnesota Press.

"No words can express all that I think and feel about this beautiful, brilliant book. Narrated innovatively and with the utmost of care, with rich analyses of language data and thought-provoking insights drawn from a longitudinal and intimate ethnographic research relationship, Knowing Silence will surely make you think, wonder, laugh, cry—and see and hear young people who are growing up in contexts of immigration in new ways."
—Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, UCLA

"Using child-centered methodologies, Ariana Mangual Figueroa unveils the critical yet often invisible aspects of students' lives and highlights unintended chilling effects of school practices. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this is an important and compelling contribution to the field."
—Carola Suárez-Orozco, Harvard Graduate School of Education