Serving Refugee Children

Montse Feu (Ph.D., University of Houston) is Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies at Sam Houston State University. She is the author of Correspondencia personal y política de un anarcosindicalista exiliado: Jesús González Malo (1943-1965) (2016) and Fighting Fascist Spain (2020). She is the co-editor of Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States (2019).

Amanda Venta (Ph.D., University of Houston) is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on how relationships between children and caregivers affect mental health with more than 100 publications and funding from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Serving Refugee Children shows the struggles and traumatic experiences that unaccompanied and undocumented children undergo they seek safety in the United States and instead find imprisonment, separation from their families, and immigration enforcement raids. Current legislation and bureaucracy limit publication of first-person narratives from unaccompanied and undocumented children, but service providers and grassroots activists authoring the pieces in this collection bear witness to the children's brave human spirits in their search for safety in the United States. Through the power of storytelling, Serving Refugee Children exposes the many hardships unaccompanied and undocumented children endure, including current detention center conditions. No child should have to live the persecution suffered by children featured in these stories, nor should they have to embark upon perilous journeys across Latin America or be subjected to the difficult immigration court process unaided. Researchers and readers who believe that the emotional bonding of storytelling can humanize discussions and lead to immigration policies that foster a culture of engagement and interconnectedness will be interested in this volume.