The Consequences of Inaction: A Narrative Toolkit on the Social, Mental, and Emotional Effects of an Uncertain Future for DACA Recipients

Narrative Toolkit

The Consequences of Inaction: A Narrative Toolkit on the Social, Mental, and Emotional Effects of an Uncertain Future on DACA Recipients is a toolkit rooted in the power of academic research and storytelling, that elevates the voices of undocumented young people whose daily lives are defined by uncertainty about their future in this country. The link above contains a narrative repository of the stories of Florida DREAMers interviewed for a peer-reviewed study on the emotional, social, and mental toll of the politicization and uncertain future of DACA.

The toolkit is a resource for anyone - from Congressional staffers to media to community organizations - interested in including personal narratives about the effects of having DACA discussed and argued throughout the policy’s existence.

One-Pager

Undocumented Again? DACA Rescission, Emotions, and Incorporation Outcomes among Young Adults, published in Social Forces in 2022, is a rare piece of peer-reviewed qualitative research on life as a DACA recipient after 2016. To ensure that this research is accessible to a wide array of audiences, collaborators from the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, the Im/migrant Well-Being Research Center, and the University of South Florida have produced a one-pager that details the main findings of the study and policy implications to help amplify the real consequences of Congressional inaction on the everyday lives of undocumented people.

For access to the full article for personal scholarship, contact Elizabeth Aranda or Elizabeth Vaquera.

The Immigrant Youth Project

The experiences shared in the narrative toolkit were collected as part of a larger research study supported by the National Science Foundation and conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida and the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute at the George Washington University: The Immigrant Youth Project. The webpage for the project includes more information on the project and related publications on undocumented youth.