It is Time to Tell a Powerful Story About Immigrants

For U.S. immigrants and their allies, families, neighbors, and friends, this is a time of bracing fear and uncertainty. A surge in unlawful arrests and deportations is wreaking havoc on families, communities and the economy. As immigrant rights organizations have been stepping up their direct support and legal representation for immigrants, the team at Define American are leaning into what they do best: painting a fuller, more human picture of a United States where “everyone belongs.”

For 14 years, Define American has been a core grantee partner for the Haas, Jr. Fund. Founded in 2011 by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and Tony-nominated producer Jose Antonio Vargas, Define American plays a crucial role in humanizing the immigrant experience, one story at a time. Most recently, Define American has expanded its digital narrative work, releasing ground-breaking research on anti-immigrant tactics flooding YouTube and equipping grassroots organizations to use digital strategies to broaden and strengthen public support. We recently spoke with the organization’s vice president of programs, Shauna Siggelkow, about the pain, power and potential of narrative in this moment and how we can all take action.

What are your thoughts on how narrative and storytelling can make a difference right now?

Shauna Siggelkow: This is an incredibly difficult and confusing time. The signals are grim. On the other hand, with everything moving and changing so quickly, we’re seeing new openings and opportunities for powerful storytelling about immigrants that represent their full humanity. So it’s both a dangerous time, and one with a lot of potential for new work, and positive change.

How do you define narrative and narrative work?

SS: Narrative emerges from a collection of stories that people see and hear about an issue like immigration. It’s about how we start to see and understand what’s at stake, and how we start to internalize the intrinsic value of welcoming and supporting immigrants, based on individual stories of immigrants and their families. Borrowing from our partners at Pop Culture Collaborative, we say that narrative is the ocean we swim in, while stories and messages are the waters that accumulate and feed the ocean and that, when taken together, shape our values and afford us a larger perspective.

What is a narrative or story you are following right now on these issues?

SS: The big narrative right now is that no one in this country is safe if we allow our government to abuse its power—and I think it’s a narrative that’s getting through. Take the story of Kilmar Ábrego García. This is the Maryland man the administration admitted they deported by mistake to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador, and yet they continue to persecute and criminalize him. It is a shot across the bow for every person in this country, including citizens. In fact, it’s an attack on citizenship itself. And, it’s not the only story that shows what’s happening. We are all vulnerable.

And so it’s no surprise that we’re seeing a majority disapprove of how this administration is carrying out immigration enforcement. We just need to keep shining a bright light on how these policies are an attack on people’s basic rights—not just the immigrants caught up in this dragnet, but everyone.

What are you doing at Define American to change the narrative on these issues?

SS: We have always been a bridge-building organization. Our focus is on broadening the tent and building more support for immigrants and connecting with the general public on these issues. We want to talk to the person who shares our concerns about how immigrants are being scapegoated and targeted right now, but who also would still not be considered someone within our base.

One example of this work is a project called Immigrants Belong. With an initial investment, we have facilitated the Immigrants Belong community of narrative practice, which consists of immigrant rights organizations from across the country. Our goal is to build social media infrastructure for immigration narrative change. Our work with these 10 groups is based on three years of research on how to reach and move the “moveable middle” on these issues. We looked at what messages they respond to and the media they follow. That work has led to a lot of important breakthroughs in how we talk about these issues and the strategies we use.

Can you share some examples?

SS: All of the projects we produced worked with social media influencers chosen based on research that identified their channels as likely to reach the moveable middle. One of my favorite examples really showcased how this process can be iterative. One of the groups in the community, TIRRC, had a guide for effective communication that they had developed from door-to-door grassroots canvassing work. We worked with them to use that guide to develop a script for our influencer partner, taking lessons learned from grassroots communication into social media content. That ended up being the most successful video for shifting opinion on immigration. Across the board, our research showed that 70% of the videos that we produced were highly persuasive in moving the moveable middle towards more positive views on immigrants, which is great because we reached over 3 million moveable audience members within the first month of publication.

In another example in the television space, we consulted with the writers of the popular TV show, Superstore, about its portrayal of an undocumented worker named Mateo. We wanted to help them present a real and genuine portrayal of what it means to be undocumented, who these workers are, some of the challenges they face, and more. That series was a primetime hit, viewed by tens of millions while it was on air, and many more in streaming.

Those are great examples. How can people and organizations that support immigrant rights make sure these kinds of stories start to change the narrative on these issues?

SS: At Define American, we work on the premise that the cultural ground we stand on is contested—and reclaiming it is urgent. More and more, we are seeing stories of radical violations of human rights, and the deportations of community members. The fact that people and organizations are documenting these abuses and then sharing them on social media is a game changer. Combine that with the power of social media influencers to amplify immigrants’ stories and create positive, pluralist future-facing content, and you start to see some new models with great potential for changing the cultural narrative.

To lift up an in-person example of this approach, we recently organized an event celebrating immigrant communities through comedy. We called it the Immigrants Belong Comedy Night, and along with our partner Social Currant, we hosted it at the largest social media influencer conference in the world. I think there is something incredibly powerful and subversive about showing radical joy in this moment, and leveraging new technology to amplify it.

What is your message to philanthropy about how funders can support this important work?

SS: The message is simple: don’t neglect narrative! Yes, foundations need to fund urgent direct services, but we also need to think long term.

And the good news is, there are many entry points to funding narrative work on these issues. That includes supporting the narrative work of grassroots organizations you are already funding. It can include supporting the development of digital narrative tools and strategies that can be used across organizations. And it includes working with organizations that are partnering with media experts and journalists, and also groups that are working within popular culture and entertainment spaces.

What this work is really about is shifting culture, and that requires investments—and action—at multiple levels.