Fragile Families
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In the past decade, debates over immigrant rights and family rights, and accompanying concerns over birthright citizenship, have taken center stage in popular media and mainstream political debates. These debates, however, frequently overlook the role of the public child welfare system in the United States—the agency charged with protecting children and maintaining the integrity of families. Based on research conducted in the San Diego-Tijuana region between 2008 and 2012, Fragile Families tells the stories of children, parents, social workers, and legal actors enmeshed in the child welfare system, and sheds light on the particular challenges faced by the children of detained and deported non-U.S. citizen parents who are simultaneously caught up in the immigration system in this border region. Many families come into contact with child welfare services because of the precariousness of their lives—unsafe housing, unstable employment, and the conditions of violence, drug use, and domestic violence made visible by the heightened police presence in impoverished communities. Naomi Glenn-Levin Rodriguez examines the character of child welfare decision-making processes and how discretionary decisions constitute the central avenue through which race, citizenship, and other cultural processes inflect child welfare practice in a manner that disproportionately impacts Latina/o families—both undocumented and U.S. citizens. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork to look at how immigration enforcement and child welfare play central roles in the ongoing production of citizenship, race, and national belonging, Fragile Families focuses on the everyday experiences of Latina/o families whose lives are shaped at the nexus of child welfare services and immigration enforcement.
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Fragile Families
Bert B. Lockwood, Series Editor
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When Tatianna arrived at Esther’s house she was not happy with Alba’s circumstances—she didn’t feel that the home had enough room for the whole family, she didn’t like that Esther said she was relying on welfare payments, and she wasn’t comfortable with the fact that though Esther had told Alba’s father she was married, she in fact lived in San Diego with an undocumented boyfriend. Tatianna felt that Esther had misrepresented her situation to Alba’s father and that Alba was not as well cared for as she could be. When Tatianna explained who she was and refused to leave Esther’s home without Alba, Esther called the police. Officers soon arrived, hands on their guns, to evict Tatianna from the property. Tatianna explained to the police that Esther had illegally smuggled Alba into the country, but they told her the situation was beyond their jurisdiction and would have to be settled in family court. Tatianna was then escorted off Esther’s property.22
Tatianna then began the long, arduous process of petitioning for Alba’s custody. She explained how surprised she had been that the social worker for Alba’s case did not seem concerned by Alba’s circumstances and the lack of clarity about how she had come to be in Esther’s care. Even Tatianna explained, however, that Esther’s intentions seemed good: “I really do think she just wanted another daughter,” Tatianna told me, “She wasn’t really trying to exploit her, I don’t think. It wasn’t a money situation.”23 I was never able to speak to the county social worker involved in this case, so I do not know what her perspective was on Alba’s condition and Tatianna’s claims. From Tatianna’s perspective the social worker was dismissive of what amounted to human trafficking and did not feel she had any reason to be concerned about Alba’s situation. Tatianna, for this reason, appeared to be nothing more than a hassle the social worker was forced to deal with in the context of an otherwise relatively straightforward, unproblematic case. Tatianna initiated a letter-writing campaign to Alba’s social worker and her supervisor, eventually pressuring the social worker to move Alba to a foster home while the case was pending in dependency court. Tatianna realized she needed help navigating the legal complexities of the child welfare system. She happened to see an ad for the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program in San Diego, an agency that provided volunteer advocates empowered by the court to make recommendations on behalf of foster children. Tatianna requested an advocate for Alba, and was connected with a CASA without whom she felt she would not have been able to navigate the complex legal obstacles to gaining custody of Alba.
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