Recent political administrations have focused on issues surrounding immigration in the U.S., affecting the ways that immigrant communities are seen and treated. This project recognizes that the rhetoric used by political actors influences and perpetuates views about immigration, and asks the question of how rhetoric around immigration in the 21st Century has affected the identities and experiences of Mexican immigrants in the United States. Drawing upon interviews and secondary research sources, including print and social media, we construct an intertextual and diverse series of podcast episodes, which feature candid discussions with members of the immigrant community. These interviews allow us to gain a more personalized understanding of how public rhetoric, as perpetuated by political administrations and the media, have impacted and shaped the lives and identities of real individuals, families, and communities. Through this podcast, we hope to inspire conversation around the intersection between rhetoric, politics, and immigration, while providing more insight into and compassion for individual, real-world experiences of the immigrant community.

Farmworker communities are among the most vulnerable and marginalized labor forces of the United States. There are many studies that explore the multiple forms of systematic oppression among these communities. However, these studies often perpetuate paradigms of victimhood that diminish the multidimensional experience of communities, such as their resilience, enactments of food sovereignty, and the ways they work toward radical change. Additionally, this scholarship also tends to leave out a “call-to-action” that demands greater responsibility on the part of recipients of knowledge, such as students, to engage in active solidarity work. My research explores two dimensions of migrant farmworker lives and labor in a settler-colonial state: the structures and institutions that sustain this dehumanizing condition (such as the academy), and the ways farmworkers contest these conditions, demand justice, and do more than just survive. Using ethnographic, archival, and bibliographic research, and focusing on resilience as a theoretical framework, the first part of my research explores resistance and sovereignty in migrant farmworker communities. How do migrant communities enact food sovereignty and sustain an ongoing movement for their rights? How does this struggle allow them to imagine the possibility of revolutionary change; of different forms of living? Additionally, I offer a critical analysis of the Food System and Health major from the School of Public Health to explore how this major represents and engages (or not) with migrant farmworker communities. Does this major help to amplify the voices of migrant communities? Or does it instead perpetuate violence against these communities? This research hopes to highlight the ongoing resilience-work of communities who feed us and inform our thinking to help us re-imagine what social movements can look like and to actively engage in solidarity-work beyond the production of research in the academic world.