“I wish I didn't have to talk about these things, that they weren’t important.”
Rafael Martínez discusses safety and youth organizing amidst Trump 2.0
Currently an assistant professor at Arizona State University, Dr. Rafael A. Martínez’s recent book Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States, serves as a powerful reminder of the legacies of undocumented youth organizing.
In this second part of our conversation, Dr. Martínez discusses the shifting landscape of youth organizing. For years, the primary, public fight around immigration has focused on DACA recipients. However, with most DACA recipients aging out of schooling systems (individuals had to be residing within the US prior to 2007 in order to be eligible for DACA), new pathways for organizing are emerging.
If you missed the first part of our conversation, you can read it here:
ANTERO GARCIA: Have your feelings around sharing this work publicly and your own safety changed at all?
RAFAEL A. MARTÍNEZ: Yeah, it’s essentially taking cue from organizing efforts. One of the first steps that we tell community is to make a plan. Something that we've done as a family is have these very uncomfortable and difficult conversations, saying, "Should things happen, how would we proceed?" Both in terms of our daughter and ourselves. Of course, this work impacts me, but it impacts my partner as well. She's a DACA recipient as well, and so we're navigating all those different things.
And at the end of the day, of course it's frightening because it's the reality that we're living in. While people see me showing bravery and doing the book tour and doing all these things, my partner is incredibly brave and holding it down at home with our little one.
We live in Arizona, which is not the easiest state in some of these discussions. But again, it's about forming community and having people that we know are going to be supportive. It’s also about having my partner's support saying that this is going to be … not once in a lifetime. “Ideally you'll have other books,” she said.
AG: A few times in a lifetime opportunity.
RM: Yeah, she said, “Give yourself that time. It'll be tough, but we'll manage.” I was just out in a city and a colleague invited me to go to a protest that was happening on their home campus. I said, "As much as I would love to be there, I'm already taking a risk by being here."
AG: Absolutely.
RM: “I'm going to skip on that. Obviously you should go to it," I said. "But I'm going to go ahead and go have lunch or go have coffee, or whatever." And so it's having to unfortunately pick and choose those matters but also knowing that what I'm trying to do is for a purpose and I can't do everything, but I'm trying to contribute.
AG: That makes sense. My La Cuenta collaborators and I have been thinking about the increased importance of storytelling in this current political landscape. Did the election make you rethink anything about your work or your capacity to share your work?
RM: I think this is an area that is missing in terms of discussion right now. The storytelling behind folks' attention to social class, math, and the economics of every day decision-making processes immigrants have to make: that's super powerful.
I’ll share a quick anecdote I’ve been thinking about. One summer I worked with a friend who was an airbrush artist. That was really popular in the early 2000s. I would do airbrush tattoos to help him out. And the number one business that kept his business really afloat was people would come in and get commemorative shirts for funerals. It was one of those things that was like, “Man, it sucks that that should be your number one source of income, but it's also important because you're offering a service for your community.”
And so, to your question, that's kind of how it feels right now. I wish I didn't have to talk about these things, that they weren’t important. But I think it is also correlated with the moment that we're living.
The hard part is having answers, right? And part of that is developing answers as you talk to different people, having your book offer a few nuggets or a few entry points into the discussions. And so I think that's been the current moment.
Something neat that I’ve encountered is that of course the majority of the undocumented youth in schools or universities right now are fully undocumented without DACA because of the age group. And so I found it really interesting that a lot of them were feeling a lot of the same feelings that my generation, pre-DACA, were feeling.
Many of these young people didn't know a lot of this history of undocumented youth social movements. So, for me, I’ve gotten to see those light bulbs go on, where many of them are seeing possibilities and alternative ways of organizing. For me, that's been a really fruitful conversation.
AG: I have been thinking a lot about how so much of the immigrant rights advocacy that the mainstream public has seen has been for DACA recipients – an important group and also one that is a minority in the larger undocumented community. As this group ages and is no longer central to youth movements, I’m curious what you think happens next.
RM: There're two clear paths I've thought about. One is that I think that there are a lot of parallels for this current generation of undocumented youth. I see a lot of anger, I see a lot of frustration, and I see that they are trying to think of places to put those feelings. I think that we are going to see some creative forms of organizing rise up. I couldn't tell you what those are going to be, but I do think that there are conversations happening at the grassroots level. I also think that the current movement is at a much better place than it was during my generation in the sense that a lot of our youth have many more options in thinking of pathways and directions -- opportunities and entrepreneurship and other things that my generation were just not aware of. So I think that's an avenue.
And then the second path: I'm part of a board for undocumented graduate students for the President's Alliance convening, and the President's Alliance just pulled the latest data for undocumented graduate students in higher education. And that number just completely shocked me, right? It says that from 2022 we had about 35,000 undocumented graduate students in universities across the US, and for the 2024 number, it's telling us that we have about 77,000 undocumented students.
AG: It more than doubled.
RM: Yeah, exactly. And so we were trying to think about how this happened, My own contribution to that discussion was that I think a lot of the folks realize that we're going to have to wait this out in some ways and waiting that out is putting our investment into education. We have many more undocumented scholars and people visible in these different fields and areas where peer mentorship and one-on-one support have been there for our community. The idea of graduate school is a reality for many undocumented students today. In my generation it was only a few of us sprinkled across the US. Folks are thinking of different directions where they not only can exist and wait things out but really thrive in areas of their own interest and grow economically as well as professionally.
AG: I love that. You're an assistant professor at Arizona State University. Are you in a Chicana/Chicano studies department?
RM: We don't have traditional programs at ASU. We are housed under colleges. So I'm in the College of Integrative Science and Arts. Within that, I’m in a smaller unit in history. I primarily teach history-based courses, and started to do a few immigration-based courses as well. This all sits well within my training in American Studies, to be able to do interdisciplinary teaching and work, as well as focus on the Southwest.
AG: Has your university been supportive of your scholarship?
RM: It’s been a great start to my career. Being in a state that could feel anti-immigrant, the institution has definitely been supportive, not only of me, but you see how things trickle down and support of undocumented and immigrant students as well. So that's been really heartwarming to see. The other thing I'm happy to share--I haven't shared this widely—is that my institution sponsored me for a H1 Visa, and so I just entered Visa status about a month ago.
AG: Wow, congrats. It feels like a thing I shouldn't have to congratulate you for, but still.
RM: Thank you. I'm still processing it all. But again, to your question, the institution has definitely shown commitment and support. I see that across the board with other students and other faculty and staff members. It's been a journey to say the least. This is my fifth year. I'll be going up for tenure next year.
Propina
We’ll conclude our conversation with Dr. Rafael Martínez next week. Please consider checking out his recent book, Illegalized: Undocumented Youth Movements in the United States.
This week, The Cost of Being Undocumented received a starred review in Booklist:
The book is out in two weeks! It’s not too late to preorder and score some awesome stickers. Just fill out the form here.
We’ll see you next week.
Great interview!