Discursive Entrapment and the Limits of Potentiality in Plyer v. Doe
Abstract
This essay traces the enduring legacy of the figure of the child leading up to and at the centre of the 1982 Plyler v. Doe decision. I attempt to demonstrate the limits of the discursive deployment of the child figure for racialized subjects. This essay intervenes in education, childhood studies, and immigration literature by reading the child to understand the enduring legacy of Plyler for those who are not the central focus of the court case. I demonstrate how the necessity of matriculating into U.S. schools is implicated in politics of disposability for racialized gendered populations represented in reading the contradictions in immigration reform.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Abrego, L. J. (2006). “I can’t go to college because i don’t have papers”: Incorporation patterns of Latino undocumented youth. Latino Studies, 4, 212–231. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.lst.8600200
Abrego, L. J., & Gonzales, R. G. (2010). Blocked paths, uncertain futures: The postsecondary education and labor market prospects of undocumented Latino youth. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk, 15(1–2), 144–157. https://doi.org/10.1080/10824661003635168
Benjamin, W. (1968). Theses on the philosophy of history (H. Zohn, Trans.). In H. Arendt (Ed.), Illuminations: Essays and reflections. Schocken Books. (Original work written 1940)
Cardenas, J. A., & Cortez, A. (1986). The impact of “Doe v. Plyler” upon Texas public schools. Journal of Law & Education, 15(1). ERIC Institute of Education Sciences, ERIC No. EJ335773.
Castañeda, C. (2002). Figurations: Child, bodies, worlds. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822383895
De Genova, N. P. (2002). Migrant “illegality” and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31(1), 419–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.31.040402.085432
Derrida, J. (2012). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203821619
Dinshaw, C., Edelman, L., Ferguson, R. A., Freccero, C., Freeman, E., Halberstam, J., Jagose, A., Nealon, C. S., & Nguyen, T. H. (2007). Theorizing queer temporalities: A roundtable discussion. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 13(2), 177–195. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-030
Doe v. Plyler, 458 F. Supp. 569 (Dist. Court, ED Texas 1978).
Edelman, L. (2004). No future: Queer theory and the death drive. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385981
Gerety, T. (1982). Children in the labyrinth: The complexities of Plyler v. Doe. Symposium: Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants in American Law: Equal Protection for Illegal Aliens. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 44, 379.
Gill-Peterson, J. (2018). Histories of the transgender child. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv75d87g
Gonzales, R. G. (2010). On the wrong side of the tracks: Understanding the effects of school structure and social capital in the educational pursuits of undocumented immigrant students. Peabody Journal of Education, 85(4), 469–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2010.518039
Gonzales, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76(4), 602–619. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122411411901
Gonzales, R. G. (2015). Lives in limbo: Undocumented and coming of age in America. University of California Press. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520962415
Gonzales, R. G., & Chavez, L. R. (2012). “Awakening to a nightmare”: Abjectivity and illegality in the lives of undocumented 1.5-generation Latino immigrants in the United States. Current Anthropology, 53(3), 255–281. https://doi.org/10.1086/665414
Gonzales, R. G., Heredia, L. L., & Negrón-Gonzales, G. (2015). Untangling Plyler’s legacy: Undocumented students, schools, and citizenship. Harvard Educational Review, 85(3), 318–341. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.3.318
Hernandez v. Houston Independent School District. 558 SW 2d 121 (Texas Court of Civil Appeals, 3rd Dist. 1977).
Hull, E. (1982). Undocumented alien children and free public education: An analysis of Plyler v. Doe. Symposium: Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants in American Law: Equal Protection for Illegal Aliens. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 44, 409.
In re Alien Children Ed. Litigation, 501 F. Supp. 544 (Dist. Court, SD Texas 1980). https://casetext.com/case/in-re-alien-children-ed-litigation
Kelly, J. F. (2017, June 15). Rescission of November 20, 2014 memorandum providing for deferred action for parents of Americans and lawful permanent residents (“DAPA”). https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DAPA%20Cancellation%20Memo.pdf
Menjívar, C. (2006). Liminal legality: Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants’ lives in the United States. American Journal of Sociology, 111(4), 999–1037. https://doi.org/10.1086/499509
Napolitano, J. (2012, June 15). Exercising prosecutorial discretion with respect to individuals who came to the United States as children. https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/s1-exercising-prosecutorial-discretion-individuals-who-came-to-us-as-children.pdf
Ngai, M. M. (2014). Impossible subjects: Illegal aliens and the making of modern America. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850235
Ofer, U. (2011). Protecting Plyler: New challenges to the right of immigrant children to access a public school education. Columbia Journal of Law and Race, 1, 187. https://doi.org/10.7916/cjrl.v1i2.2245
Olivas, M. A. (2005). Plyler v. Doe, The education of undocumented children, and the polity. Immigration Stories, 197, 197–220. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4107785
Olivas, M. A. (2012). No undocumented child left behind: Plyler v. Doe and the education of undocumented schoolchildren. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814762448.001.0001
Plyler v. Doe, 457 US 202 (Supreme Court 1982).
Reddy, C. (2011). Freedom with violence: Race, sexuality, and the US state. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822394648
Saldaña-Portillo, M. J. (2016). Indian given: Racial geographies across Mexico and the United States. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822374923
Shelley, F. M. (1994). Local control and financing of education: A perspective from the American state judiciary. Political Geography, 13(4), 361–376. https://doi.org/10.1016/0962-6298(94)90004-3
Soleimani, D. (2010). Plyler in peril: Why the Supreme Court’s decision in Plyler v. Doe is at risk of being reversed—and what Congress should do about it. Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 25, 195.
Steedman, C. (1995). Strange dislocations: Childhood and the idea of human interiority, 1780–1930. Harvard University Press.
Texas v. US, 809 F. 3d 134 (Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit 2015).
Copyright (c) 2024 Alé Romero
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors contributing to the Journal of Childhood Studies agree to release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International license. This licence allows anyone to share their work (copy, distribute, transmit) and to adapt it for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given, and that in the event of reuse or distribution, the terms of this license are made clear.
Authors retain copyright of their work and grant the journal right of first publication.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
