The Power of Innocence - Examining the performance of “child innocence” in the documentaries ‘Terug Naar Je Eige Land’ and ‘The Dream is Now’ in the claiming of immigrant rights in the Netherlands and the United States

Abstract

While previously known as a mainly American phenomenon, in recent years (and especially months), the influence of children on immigrant rights debate in the Netherlands has been disruptive. In the United States, undocumented youth advocates referred to as the “DREAMers” successfully embark on a broad range of themes regarding immigrant rights, whereas in the Netherlands, undocumented immigrant children like Mauro, Lili, Howick and Nemr cause great upheaval in the political debate. Now I wondered whether there is a relation between these advocating youths, and whether they have learned from each other in the past or might learn from each other in the future. In order to research this comparison, I analyze the performance of “child innocence” in the Dutch documentary ‘Terug Naar Je Eige Land’ and the American documentary “The Dream is Now’. This is done at the hand of the “politics of deservingness” by Nicholls, Maussen & Mesquita, a theoretical framework which describes the cleansing of polluting stigma’s that are attributed to the undocumented status of certain immigrants and make them “deserving” of exceptional considerations regarding their rights. The analysis of the documentaries about immigrant youths turns out to confirm this “politics of deservingness”. In addition, building on Benford and Snow their representation of social realities, the “politics of deservingness” is broadened by a formulation of three problematizing frames that make up the documentaries. Lastly, in this research opens up the possibility for researching the relation between the documentaries (or undocumented immigrant youths that are portrayed within it) according to Charles Tilly his contentious performance framework. The conclusion is straightforward: the children are always deemed innocent and thus deserving of a safe home in their residing country. They are in power of innocence.