In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children of undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public school education alongside native-born children. But when these undocumented kids leave high school, they transition from protected child to illegal immigrant. That is, the laws support the undocumented child, but not the undocumented adult they’ll eventually become. Roberto G. Gonzales (American Sociological Review, August 2011) explores how these youth experience their status transformation through interviews with 150 “1.5-generation” Latinos in California.
It's an interesting and little-discussed side of the "illegal immigration" debate in the US. It also highlights the arbitrariness of much of the discourse about "saving the children", and of children's right to fair treatment and equal opportunity, a set of entitlements that have a clear and definite expiry date (your 18th birthday). You see this false distinction again when it comes to popular discussions of children and gangs, imprisonment, poverty, etc. After that point, the discourse shifts from "victim" to "perpetrator", from "innocent" to "guilty" as arbitrarily and suddenly as we go from child to adult. Am I right?Adolescents, Gonzales writes, first recognize their illegal status in their late teens, when their lack of a Social Security number prohibits such rites of passage as getting a part-time job or a driver’s license. Assimilation alongside their native-born peers led these kids to believe they would have more opportunities than their parents, but undocumented youth get a harsh reality check at graduation: no papers means no future. The young adults must “learn to be illegal,” which includes re-evaluating their future goals. And parents—who often believed that their children would have citizenship by the time they reached adulthood—don’t prepare them for this transition.Despite speaking fluent English and earning high school (and sometimes college) degrees, undocumented young adults end up no better off in the labor market than their uneducated parents. Gonzales argues that the system has created a “new disenfranchised underclass”—2.1 million young adults who are stuck in what might be called “illegal limbo.” Link
It's all very ironic, of course, given how prevalent and brutal child labour practices were, but also highlights the bourgeois origins of the discourse.
The man usually credited with - or accused of - creating the modern notion of childhood is Jean Jacques Rousseau. Building on the ideas of John Lockeand other 17th-century liberal thinkers, Rousseau formulated childhood as a brief period of sanctuary before people encounter the perils and hardships of adulthood. "Why rob these innocents of the joys which pass so quickly," Rousseau pleaded. "Why fill with bitterness the fleeting early days of childhood, days which will no more return for them than for you?"The Victorian Era has been described as a source of the modern institution of childhood. Ironically, the Industrial Revolution during this era led to an increase in child labour, but due to the campaigning of the Evangelicals, and efforts of author Charles Dickens and others, child labour was gradually reduced and halted in England via the Factory Acts of 1802-1878. The Victorians concomitantly emphasized the role of the family and the sanctity of the child, and broadly speaking, this attitude has remained dominant in Western societies since then. Link
Simpler times! Coming back from Charlemagne. Running for the two symbols of power and supremacy in our three-membered kingdom: 1) the remote, and 2) getting the single sofa (that was, in the early years, covered in a shiny tissu with a beige background and ratatouille-coloured flowers, and later in a yellowish ocher with navy piping). Sitting in that throne like a hammoc, securely cupped in its plushness, our small frames luxuriously disproportionate to it. And the less lucky/quick/diligent among us would have to sit on the edge of the long sofa, a little too close to the screen, lying on their stomach. The green and red plaid fabric scratchy on your chin....Though it must be said this spot came with an advantage- and no small advantage at that - the well-being and freedom of having nothing to lose. The subtracted stress of vigilance. The liberty to go make yourself a plate of rice with beef and green peppers at your leisure without worrying about losing your spot. Even the knowledge that your role will be to criticize and complain about the selected programming, and not defend your executive choice of Gargoyles over X-Men. Then daddy would arrive, his shuffing and unloading lit by the kitchen's spotlights, and call out in the direction of the family room about homework notdone. And the spell would be broken.
But what has really changed since those days? Well, the solo chair has shrunk significantly since then, somehow; television programming in the 4 to 7 o'clock weekday slot had diminished in quality quite significantly... and that's pretty much it though, right?
Here is some more of the finest after-school entertainment that the world has ever known...
and not to forget baba in all this mid-nineties nostalgia, I give you The Eternal....
PS: Sometimes, these things need to be dealt the weight they deserve.
