“In Africa, whenever an old man dies, a library burns down.” –Amadou Hampâté Bâ. Malian writer, historian, and ethnologist Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s quote underlines elders as keepers and purveyors of knowledge, culture, and wisdom. As “libraries” worth prioritizing and preserving, Black grandmothers’ stories and cultural inheritances (material possessions, cultural traditions, rituals, language, etc.) have been integral to the matriarchal traditions and culture characterizing people of African descent. Yet, at key periods, African Americans have experienced threats to our collective ability to document, preserve, and pass down our “libraries” because of a lack of financial resources and technological support. Black grandmothers experience multidimensional oppressions and rarely have a chance for self-representation. What are the ways black grandmothers experience erasure in the digital age, and within their communities through displacement? How are we responding? How can researchers mitigate, document, and disrupt their erasure? To conduct this work, we collect oral histories, document cultural inheritances, and create data visualizations to digitize their "libraries." We document, preserve, and amplify Black culture and history by sharing the lived experiences of Black grandmothers. The Black Grandmother Worldmaking Library is a collaborative, community-based model for gathering, archiving, and digitizing distinct aspects of our “libraries” beginning with the stories and cultural inheritances of Black grandmothers experiencing mass displacement in Seattle’s Central District and along the Gullah Geechee Corridor. The project offers a readily accessible digital resource for Black grandmothers to contribute to and control the stories we tell about their lives. The Black Grandmother Worldmaking Library aims to repair what we are taught about Black grandmothers, to reclaim their narratives and culture using firsthand accounts, and to preserve their legacies.

Undocumented youth are a highly politicized group in the United States and Israel, two nations who are themselves composed mostly of recent migrants. Recently, Israel and the United States introduced temporary policies to attempt to address the "issue" of undocumented youth. In 2006, Israel enacted the Temporary Arrangement for Grant of Status for Children of Illegal Residents (TAGS) policy. This one-time program granted legal residence to undocumented youth in Israel. Just six years later, President Obama announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that granted undocumented youth protections from deportation, a work permit, and sometimes access to certain benefits. In this study, I conduct a comparative analysis of DACA and TAGS to evaluate how both states restrict and expand pathways to citizenship for undocumented youth. I conducted a literature review of the policies and experiences of undocumented youth utilizing large research organizations such as the Migration Policy Institute, academic journals such as the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, and local news sources such as Haaretz and i24News. I argue that through their limited criteria and application, both policies function as a "gatekeeping" mechanism, creating a liminal status of citizenship through their narrow eligibility criteria and temporality. These policies also contribute to state-building through reinforcing a hierarchy of 'deservingness' and belonging in both States (Lee, 2004). As the relationship between the US and Israel continues to evolve and undocumented migration continues to be a politically charge topic, it is pertinent that undocumented youth, one of the most vulnerable groups, continue to be a topic of study.