Event

Abstract:

LGBTQ immigrant youth have become prominent activists in the efforts to pass the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act.  In accounting for LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer) visibility and representation in the youth branch of the U.S. immigrant rights movement, this study contributes to research on coming out, social movements, and intersectionality.  Empirical analyses draw on data from 410 survey and 50 semi-structured interviews collected in 2011-12 from DREAM activists in California. Findings indicate that LGBTQ youth comprised a significant proportion of movement activists and that they exhibited high levels of activism—even though they encountered multiple challenges to coming out as sexual minorities within their families and communities.  As such, LGBTQ representation and visibility within the movement can largely be attributed to the internal dynamics of the movement, as well as to the politicized identities of individual activists. Specifically, DREAM organizations fostered an ethic of tolerance towards sexual minorities through activities that aimed to combat homophobia.  Additionally, DREAMers' "coming out of the shadows" strategy, borrowed from the gay rights movement, increased the ranks of Latino and Asian-Pacific Islander LGBTQ-identified youth among movement participants.  This case of social movement spillover not only empowered young people to publicly disclose their legal status, it also enabled them to declare a stigmatized sexual identity.  Finally, as politicized young people who embodied various marginalized identities, undocumented LGBTQ youths' experience with multiple forms of oppression intensified their activism.  LGBTQ DREAMers' intersectional consciousness motivated them to actively and simultaneously contest different types of oppressions through their involvement in the immigrant rights movement.
 

Veronica Terriquez received her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA. Her research focuses on educational inequality, immigrant integration, and organized labor. Her work is linked to education justice and immigrant rights organizing efforts in California. Dr. Terriquez has also worked as a community organizer on school reform and other grassroots campaigns.

Veronica Terriquez is currently working on a study of parental engagement in Los Angeles County. Drawing on survey and semi-structured interviews data, she seeks to understand how individual parents acquire the confidence, cultural capital, and problem-solving skills to actively participate in school affairs. She is particularly interested in examining how labor and community organizations support various forms of school-based civic participation among Latino immigrants and other racially diverse parents. Dr. Terriquez is also the principal investigator of the California Young Adult Study (CYAS), a mixed-methods investigation of youths' access to postsecondary education, employment, and civic engagement opportunities.