Sarah C. Bishop’s research while affiliated with The Graduate Center, CUNY and other places

This project analyzes the roles of communication and culture in credible fear interviews and asylum hearings in the United States to elucidate how autobiographical testimonies enable and restrain asylum seekers in their efforts to establish themselves as deserving of protection. This work shows how trauma influences one’s ability to narrate their past and argues that culturally-bound storytelling norms negatively and unevenly threaten the outcomes of some asylum cases. I support this claim with evidence from oral history interviews with asylum seekers, immigration officers, judges, and attorneys.

This paper draws on asylum court hearing observations and oral history interviews with asylum seekers and governmental personnel to examine the impact of nonverbal communication and displays of emotion in asylum interviews and hearings in the United States. The narrators describe why nonverbal communication plays such a central role in the asylum process and, building on theoretical foundations from communication studies, the paper offers an in-depth illustration of the ways eye contact and movement in particular influence the interpretations of asylum seekers’ claims for protection.

This research explores the competing discourses and relational tensions that emerge in intergenerational communication in immigrant families with undocumented parents through in-depth interviews with undocumented Latino/a parents and their children living in New York City. Through the articulation of three themes, we illustrate how material realities affiliated with a lack of legal status incite unique discursive tensions in family relationships that manifest in family narratives. This study lends scholarly insight into the ways undocumented immigrants and their families communicatively navigate their uncertain life terrain through conversation about immigration status, conflicting career dreams, and hybrid cultural values. Using these findings as guidance, we offer practical applications related to communal coping and family advocacy for professionals and volunteers working in immigrant-serving community organizations.

Ample evidence exists of bipartisan positive attitudes towards undocumented immigrants receiving a path to citizenship, and of a lack of US residents’ knowledge about undocumented immigration, but it is not yet clear whether individuals in the same sampling frame may exhibit both favourable attitudes towards and ignorance about undocumented immigrants. We used open- and closed-ended survey questions (N = 231) to probe perceptions of immigrants and knowledge about US immigration procedures in a cohort of demographically and ideologically diverse college students. Our findings confirmed largely favourable attitudes towards undocumented immigrants, but also misconceptions about undocumented immigrants’ rights and options with respect to citizenship. That this lack of understanding exists even in a diverse population with direct contact with undocumented immigrants suggests that such ignorance is pervasive, and not only likely to occur in areas where few undocumented immigrants live or where a conservative political climate creates a culture of exclusion.

This article chronicles and dissects the U.S. government's narrative communication with immigrants who apply for citizenship by investigating the eligibility requirements for naturalization. I provide a textual analysis of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services' comprehensive Guide to Naturalization. The article uses performance theory as a method of analysis to illuminate the sociopolitical role of the public oath ceremony that concludes each successful applicant's process. Interrogating the narrative of U.S. naturalization through its corresponding media reveals that the tasks required for citizenship supersede matters of legality; they oblige applicants to learn, commit to, and then perform a particular narrative toward the goal of an idealized supercitizenry that reifies the nation's power and legitimacy.

This essay examines the grassroots digital media produced by young undocumented immigrants to reveal how these media both enable and restrain immigrants in processes of negotiating the effects of stigma affiliated with being undocumented, abating isolation, and advocating for immigration reform. I problematize the coming out process by revealing the ways digital communication may discourage heterogeneous perspectives, normalize free labor, facilitate hateful and xenophobic responses, and perpetuate confirmation bias. Foregrounding oral history interviews with 25 undocumented or formerly undocumented immigrants in New York City, this project advances understanding regarding the facility and limitations of digital media while simultaneously attending to an existing underrepresentation of undocumented immigrants in U.S. scholarship.

This essay examines Moving Memories, the 9/11 Memorial in Tucson, Arizona, as an instance of resistance to dominant ideologies regarding the public memory of national tragedy. Though Moving Memories was designed to reveal the conflicting viewpoints embodied by those affected by 9/11, area residents and government representatives argue that it fails to capture the “true” sentiment of Arizonans. This analysis provides a theoretical interrogation of the memorial’s unveiling and later contestation, illustrates the political value of unity over dissention, and theorizes the implications of spatiality in memorialization by way of a detailed review of one of Moving Memories’ particularly divisive features.

I recently completed 74 oral history interviews with refugees from multiple origins to ascertain how they interpret and learn from popular and government-produced media throughout their relocation to the USA. This multisited, multilingual research presented a unique manifestation of the ethical and pragmatic considerations inherent within qualitative research. In this brief essay, I reflect on the challenges and implications of planning, doing, and writing engaged scholarship in peculiar contexts.