RFG Talk: Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children

Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance among Immigrant Children (NYU Press, 2023) argues that immigrant children are not passive in the face of the challenges presented by U.S. anti-immigrant policies. Based on ten years of work with immigrant children in two different border states—Arizona and California—Drawing Deportation gives readers a glimpse into the lives of immigrant children and their families. Through an analysis of 300 children’s drawings, theater performances, and family interviews, this book, at once devastating and revelatory, provides a roadmap for how art can provide a necessary space for vulnerable populations to assert their humanity in a world that would rather divest them of it.

Silvia Rodriguez Vega is a community engaged writer, artist, and educational practitioner. She is an Assistant Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of Chicana/o Studies. Her research explores the ways anti-immigration policy impacts the lives of immigrant children through methodological tools centering participatory art and creative expression. Before joining UCSB, Rodriguez Vega was a UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow and a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at New York University in the Department of Applied Psychology. She received her Ph.D. from UCLA’s Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies.

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Sponsored by the IHC’s Global Childhood Ecologies Research Focus Group