Exploring the Impacts of Deportation on Families and Communities: A Comparative Study of Documentaries from Various Countries

1. Introduction

Deportation is a contentious issue worldwide, fueled by ongoing political debates. This analysis determines the impact of deportation on families by focusing on four documentaries made in different countries: 1. “Deported” (2010) from Mexico, directed by Juan Carlos Echeverria; 2. “For Our Children” (2013) from Italy, directed by Andrea Segre; 3. “The Last Resort” (2009) from the USA, directed by Michal Weits; and 4. “Mexican Highway: A Nymph in the Night” (2021) from China, directed by Yang Liu. Though the backgrounds, narratives, and styles of these documentaries are vastly different, they all express strong opposition to deportation policies, demonstrate how these policies harm families and communities, and verify such impacts through interviews with individuals who have experienced deportation or whose families or communities have been affected. Each documentary focuses on the aftermath of deportation in a specific location. By making these impacts visible to a broad audience, these creators hope to prevent future deportations.

Migration is a phenomenon that has existed since antiquity and, despite imperfect attempts by States to regulate it, such efforts have never succeeded. Offenses related to movement and residence became serious in the second half of the twentieth century. From 1992 to 2002, Latin America passed some of the harshest immigration legislation, tied to the growing perception of migration as a security concern. Such legislation has been viewed as taking precedence over human rights, leading to the exclusion of migrants considered illegal. While prospective migrants are seen as criminals, the deported and their families have borne the additional shame caused by their expulsion.

The deported become sentenced by dual punishment: they are deprived of citizenship while also punished for its absence. In their hometowns, they are further punished with stigmas attached to a failed migration project. Through their expulsion, they also affect their family’s honor and status. Families of deportation victims feel ashamed because they have failed to comply with what has become the accepted logical life project: migration north. Such stigmatization forms a broader notion of collective punishment. The deported and their kindred become “the watched” or the “gaffes,” those who are disqualified in terms of dignity, respectability, trust, or honor.

Too often political discourse has framed deportees and their families as victims of an inhumane system operating outside local controls, leaving them hopeless and feeble. The goal is to demonstrate how despite being turned into passive objects of deportation, they act, reflect, and adjust to it by utilizing their agency and resources to overcome prejudice and social exclusion. The approach is to follow a bottom-up perspective in this sense. Deportees and their local kin have reacted to the humiliation caused by being sanctioned on the grounds of their nationality ethnicity and place of birth.

1.1. Background and Rationale

The deportation of undocumented immigrants is a political issue; nevertheless, understandings of the impacts of deportation are often rooted in the personal, familial, and community experiences of migration, with particular focus on those who are separated by deportation. In the United States, where mass deportations were central to the visions and strategies of the Obama administration (2009–2017), this focus on the familial impacts of separation emerged as a central concern of both policy makers and activists. Such efforts have begun to articulate the personal, familial, and community impacts of dispossession, imprisonment, and deportation using broadly similar forms of documentary and visual culture. Experiences of deportation have been rendered visible through narrative documentary or illustrated in more (visually) poetic, experimental forms. Artistic witnesses include family members of the deported and those witnessing deportation from afar, as well as activists and allies engaged in transnational antideportation movements. And this witnessing occurs in a range of public contexts, from festival circuits to the streets; from video installations in art museums to university departments, a deliberate space for important critiques of migration policy; and in human rights venues amid a burgeoning call for such rights among the most vulnerable of migrants. There is a rich discourse moving across this set of national documentaries, revealing both the emergence of distinctive national understandings of the impacts of deportation on families and communities and a set of broader transnational understandings about the fundamental unpredictability of mass deportation processes. (Rodriguez, 2022)

Diversity and creative experimentation characterize this collection of documentary media produced in the past seven years. All genres—narrative, observational, poetic, performance-based—are included; diverse formats, ranging in length from 61-second YouTube clips to hour-long educational outreach documentaries, are used and seen in contexts as disparate as the public art installations of the Window into Deportation exhibition created by Nestor Rodriguez and Marisol Claire in Houston and Austin, Texas, to the transnational television broadcasts of the BBC documentary America: Land of the Poor and the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit’s film On the Line. In these documentaries, the impacts of deportation on families and communities, both locally in the United States and in migrants’ countries of origin, are explored in varied and unpredictable ways. Broadly, the films fall into three categories: effects of deportation on families; impacts of deportation on communities; and understandings of deportation processes in a world increasingly defined by mobility and circulation. Additionally, creative attempts to articulate the underlying unpredictability of current mass deportation processes through imaginative visual metaphors and poetic modes of representation can be seen. (Heidbrink, 2020)(Irwin2020)

National contexts diverge in the development of films about the impacts of deportation on families and communities, reflecting differences in national policies governing immigration enforcement and the presence of organized immigrant populations. In general, however, national forms of representation begin to emerge. Documentaries from countries with historical links to U.S. migration flows, particularly Mexico and Guatemala, speak to the destruction of local communities and the personal, familial, and community impacts of ongoing chain deportation processes in particular places. By contrast, documentaries from nations with more recent migration historical trajectories, such as Senegal and the Dominican Republic, grapple with broader, transnationallydefined understandings of deportation processes. These films reflect on the ways in which nation-states comprehend and define exile—and the economic, political, and social dispossession that accompanies it—and how these understandings differentially position and impact diverse migrant populations. (Loustaunau & Shaw, 2021)(Flores2024)

1.2. Research Objectives

The main research objective of this study is to explore and compare the personal stories depicted in three documentaries from different countries—"Quién es el Sr. B." from Mexico, "Untitled" from the United States, and "Deported from Denmark" from Denmark—to understand the effects of deportation on individuals, families, and communities. This objective aligns with the growing interest in the human stories behind migrant deportation and addresses gaps in cross-cultural comparative research on this subject. (Chattoo, 2020)

To achieve this goal, the following sub-objectives are pursued: 1) to analyze the cinematic, narrative, and stylistic devices used in each documentary to portray and convey the human experiences of deportation; 2) to explore individual and shared experiences of deportation, associated emotions, and coping strategies presented in the documentaries; and 3) to investigate the implications and lessons that can be drawn from these personal stories regarding the lives and futures of individuals, families, and communities targeted by surveillance through border security and immigration enforcement.

In light of the significant political and social relevance of these documentaries, as indicated above, and challenges related to language barriers and a lack of knowledge about the political and socioeconomic contexts of different countries, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the daily lived experiences, narratives, and personal accounts behind institutional policies on migration, national border enforcement, and human mobility, migration, and refuge in countries located south and north of the Mexico–US border. (Frechette et al.2020)

1.3. Scope and Methodology

The scope of this research is to explore, problematize, and analyze the complex impacts of deportation on families and communities as captured in a selection of comparable documentary films. Documentaries reflecting the experiences of deported families, primarily focusing on the perspective of children, are presented from Argentina, U.S.A., Guatemala, Canada, and Mexico. By doing so, it aims to fill an existing gap in the literature that addresses the impacts of deportation on families and communities in a more global, comparative, and media-focused fashion while also drawing attention to the ability of media to humanize broader social issues.

The documentaries chosen for the comparative analysis are "I am No Longer Here" (Ya no estoy aquí, 2019) from Mexico, "The Last Call" (La Última Llamada, 2016) from Guatemala, "I Want to Go Home" (Quiero Irme a Casa, 2017) from the U.S.A., "In the Shadows of the System" (En las Sombras del Sistema, 2018) from Argentina, and "Organized Crime" (Cosa Nostra, 2017) from Canada. Each documentary humanizes broader social issues impacting deportees and their communities/countries of origin in a complex manner. At the same time, they present similar experiences, views, situations, practices, and beliefs from a local, specific perspective that is shaped by the country’s histories and sociopolitical context, aiming to deepen the understanding of deportees’ predicaments and advocate for just policies. Finally, branded as criminal or a national threat, they make visible the racialization at the heart of (im)migration policies. The selection criteria used to gather this documentary corpus included screening non-fiction films depicting the impacts of deportation on families and communities, focusing primarily on the perspective of the children left-behind. (Wright, 2021)

This qualitative study uses a comparative media analysis methodology in three steps. First, after gathering the documentary corpus, the films were compared according to their basic properties. In the second step, a theoretical framework about the notion of “impact” was developed in order to analyze each documentary’s argument, anthropological themes, narrative structure, presentational mode, and the viewing experience it aims to promote. And finally, the focus was on the maneurism of the media events and the film screening discussions while paying close attention to the personal impacts and political activism inspired by their potentiality as advocacy films. Overall, this exploratory research provides an analysis of a corpus of comparable films relatively unexplored in the cinema studies academic literature while humanizing broader social issues with empathy and complexity, encouraging deeper understandings of deportees’ predicaments, and advocating for concerned communities in/and other places.

2. Literature Review

This section continues by reviewing the literature on deportation policies and practices; sociological perspectives on deportation; and the impact of deportation on families and communities. To provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic, a range of academic articles, books, and documentaries from different countries are examined. The invaluable contributions of each work to the academic discourse, emerging themes, and existing gaps in the literature are also highlighted. (Hernandez, 2024)

2.1. Deportation Policies and Practices

Deportation is one of the most extreme forms of state control of migration, widely practiced across the globe. It is a continuing and expanded series of acts—large and small, overt and covert—by the state and its agents that target those citizens, nationals, and denizens of particular polities who have been categorized as undesirable and deportable. This expository review of the different ways/means (including historic, socio-economic, racial, and gendered) through which different polities practice deportability explores the dynamic and shifting relationships between space, place, and socio-spatial actors. This review also explores how deportability reshapes the lives of the deported (and those left behind) long after physical displacement has occurred. The review draws from a broad range of literary, scholarly, journalistic, and visual texts to provide insights into the anatomy, geography, and experience of deportability. Much needed critical conceptual and analytic frames are created to understand the unfolding and geographies of deportability across the planet. (Cházaro, 2021)(FitzGerald, 2020)

The contours of such state actions must be understood, in different degrees in different historical contexts and times, against the workings and functioning of various assemblages of global, national, and local forces. There have been articulate critiques of these forces—the ways they have restructured socio-spatial relations and dynamics, reshaped lived experiences, and forged particular ‘collective’ identities (economic, political, gendered, racial, and otherwise) in relation to the state over time—but no serious effort has been made as yet to render them cartographically visible (as assemblages in/as space) and readily available for a broader idea and strategic critique (in/ex space). The continued exclusion of such analyses of state action, the operations and functioning of space and place within and through which they unfold, and the namelessness of large sections of the apparatuses and modalities involved is thus a major intellectual and analytical gap in the confrontation with deportability. (Rosenau, 2021)

2.2. Sociological Perspectives on Deportation

Research is broadly defined as consonant with the general approach of sociology, which favors the open-ended and empirical examination of that sector of reality that is most accessible to human inquiry—the state and state actions—and worries what can be putatively known and what sort of things these (the state, its actions, and their outcomes) actually are. On the basis of that, there have been different situating of deportability in/as time, space, and global movements. Finally, on the basis of that very initial understanding of the place and significance of deportability in inquiries into here/there and now/then, a set of questions or promptings is provided to guide future inquiries and imaginations or speculations about shapes and transformations of deportability in/as space and place. (McNevin2022)

Not even the ideation of the state or politics—the most fundamental and basic domains of inquiry in social sciences—has gone uncontested. In this instance, more or less inadvertently, contemporary critical social science developments have been playing a major role. In recent years, it has become abundantly clear that there is no longer any perfect or exclusive correspondence between state/political action and the notions of nation, or territory. Those state actions that have the effect of deporting and/or making deportable certain members of the domestic population are not only consequential to the nation state and its autochthonic identities, culture, politics, and history—notedly ‘the national interest’—but also questions contributing to the ramifying international relations, exchanges, connectivity, and other linkages with the ex-nation states of deportees. (Leerkes & Van Houte, 2020)(Cházaro, 2021)

2.3. Impact of Deportation on Families and Communities

The deportation of immigrant parents from the United States threatens the wellbeing of their children, most of whom are US citizens. Drawing on interviews with 90 families and concurrent qualitative ethnography in the US, Dominican Republic, and Mexico, a study examines how deportation affects family relations and youth wellbeing. The findings suggest that the multilayered impacts of parental deportation include challenges to parental authority, economic strain, stigma, and educational difficulties, and varying adaptive responses. The implications of these findings for research on the consequences of voluntary and involuntary immigration and policy discussions are discussed. The deportation of immigrant parents threatens the wellbeing of their children, most of whom are US citizens. The family and the broader community experience trauma such as loss, sorrow, and pain in the aftermath of parental deportation. Growing numbers of scholars consider community and place as important influences on family processes and youth and family wellbeing. Understanding the community context includes recognizing community-level problems, disadvantages, and assets. (Rayburn et al.2021)

2.1. Deportation Policies and Practices

Deportation policies and practices have been diversely conceptualized by countries, especially those that are part of a broader global index of deportation and deportability. By studying deportation policies in South Korea, the United States, Mexico, France and Spain, the first part of the literature review seeks to examine the diverse understandings on deportation, especially the socio-historical contexts manifestation such as how a vast majority of irregular migrants become subjects of deportation and exclusion. The second part of the literature review examines the vast body of sociological literature on deportation which had examined the interrelated impacts of deportation on individual migrant deportees, families of deportees, and communities facing deportation, targeted and investable inclusion, segregated, racialized exclusion, and hyper-precarity. The main analytical focus is placed on how the same deportation policy had manifested diverse impacts by studying these aspects in the United States, France, Mexico, Guatemala and Ecuador. The literature review ends with a discussion on the limitations of the sociological literature on deportation and decolonial perspectives in understanding the diversity of impacts posed by deportation as Latino-Dominican, Salvadoran, and Mexican immigrants across various jurisdictions in the United States who had encountered the same deportation policy, law, and enforcement mechanism had manifestly faced diverse forms of societal belonging, exclusion, instability, and precarity. (Solano & Huddleston, 2021)

2.2. Sociological Perspectives on Deportation

Sociological perspectives on deportation examine the broader social contexts, structures, and processes that shape deportation events and their impacts on individuals and communities. These perspectives draw on diverse theoretical traditions within sociology, highlighting different aspects of deportation as a social phenomenon.

A burgeoning body of sociological research on deportation examines the social contexts, structures, and processes that shape deportation events and their impacts on individuals and communities. Deportation is framed as both a social process shaped by broader political, economic, and social structures and as an event that produces, reproduces, or disrupts social relationships, relationships, institutions, and organizations embedded within social structures. The sociological literature on deportation is increasingly diverse and encompasses a wide range of theoretical perspectives. However, it remains nascent compared to the literature on immigration and its policies and practices, such as detention, removal, and exclusion. (Damsa & Franko, 2023)

Deportation is framed as a particular confluence of events that involves the social reordering of individuals or groups deemed by the state as undesirable. Following this framing, specific issues are explored common to multiple kinds of deportation, such as forced removal (e.g., from an apartment through eviction), exclusion (e.g., from a social group), and migration (e.g., return to a country of origin). Deportations are defined as events that reconstitute the social status of individuals or groups as illegalized, exiled, restored, deported, and stripped of citizenship. The analysis of these events entails an examination of their often-deeply unequal social impacts, understanding that deportation processes shape the social contexts within which such actions take place and thereby situate them within structures of inequality.

This broad conception of sociological perspectives recognizes the suitability of different kinds and levels of analysis to explore particular deportation issues. Considering the need for careful specification of different kinds of events, attention is drawn to social practices among which deportation events are embedded, involving public agents such as lawyers or activists who are either contesting or sanctioning deportation. Organizational responses to deportation events are examined, focusing on how they are reinterpreted and acted upon through the local culture of particular organizations. Finally, attentiveness is given to social transformations that alter the enacting of deportation practices, such as changes in the power and status of nations in a world system or in the obligations and attitudes of migrants or citizens. (Bierschenk & de2021)(Bourceret et al., 2021)

2.3. Impact of Deportation on Families and Communities

Deportation is recognized as a pivotal event significantly shaping the lives of systems undergoing potential removal. The complex sociocultural processes stimulated by deportation are influential in reframing one's life, identity, belonging, outside roles, and future plans. While the commonly held viewpoint often frames deportation as harmful predominantly toward incarcerated individuals, the implications frequently extend beyond the events of apprehension, detention, and deportation themselves to encompass these individuals’ family members, friends, and broader communities. The narratives crafted by these doubly victimized persons are composed of resilient adaptation to loss, embarrassment, and isolation. As a reactionary mechanism, they strive to conceal the devastation invoked by deportation while seeking to reconcile their testimony to be believed. (Heidbrink, 2020)

For communities, these dynamics are brought about and communicatively upheld by a barely evoked yet significantly consequential group: those presently without the described removal experience—here denoted as the “untouched.” These subjects are both universally well acquainted with the array of implicated damaging effects as exposed and commonly externalized with respect to that credos being hovered “to be deported” (which connotes victimization). In weaving together inscribed ideas of untouchably bordering deportation with intention(s) beyond protective motivations, the pivotal role these subjects play in shaping one’s deportation fears and, thus, tackling the sociocultural processes brought about by the experiences they abide in is accentuated.

Critics from afar depict deportation dynamically, restricting their analysis to presently untouched localities. Yet, in untouchably experiencing deportation as a definitive characterization of the self, persons are able to craft a variety of different narratives composed of resilient adaptation to loss, embarrassment, and isolation. Critiques similarly contain implications of invalidating these such experiences directly. Notably, while revealing the singling out of human beings as borderlines deems a totalizing problematization of the handling of deportation excessive, it seems equally so to take that cited to be entirely disregarded as societal deportee disruption. Exposed resonances with the societal personally unmet localized bordering ultimately signal the inability to be deported as an equally constitutive societal categorization of outsideness.

3. Methodology

In this comparative study of documentaries exploring the impacts of deportation on families and communities, four documentaries from different countries are selected: "Under The Torn Apart," “Exit,” "The Deportation," and "The Flawless Heroes." Documentaries released between 2012 and 2020 in the wake of changing immigration laws are selected to assess how the impacts of deportation on families and communities changed over the years and whether different countries have different challenges related to migration, immigration, or deportation. Documentaries released by non-profits, non-public broadcasters, or semi-public institutions are prioritized to reflect independent sources of opinion. Documentaries challenging the stance of their countries’ governments are also chosen to explore whether and how such stances differ across different countries. Documentaries regarded as serious works inspired by real events, such as documentaries referred to by their producers or the press in terms of “social awareness,” “social exclusion,” “social justice,” “public interest,” or “social responsibility,” are prioritized. Interest in media coverage surrounding real, serious events such as discrimination, homelessness, and femicide relates the idea of “social awareness.” Finally, documentaries addressing the same issue of social awareness or awareness of and by the same group of people or population group are prioritized.

Viewing and analyzing the selected documentaries, including analyzing how the main characters and communities are introduced and developed, audience expectation management strategies, imagery associated with protagonists and antagonists, interviews with which communities and how those interviews are shot, and the temporal structure and stories pre- and post-deportation. Viewing notes are taken to consolidate the most interesting findings, which are then compared across the documentaries. Numerous theories, such as the Panopticon and the influence of power structures on the aesthetics of media products, are considered in the creative yet controlled reading and viewing of the documentaries. External context for the comparative analysis, including different positioning and framing of the documentaries and their producers in relation to the power structures of their countries, is provided. Such engaging with the context addresses when, by whom, and with what purpose and impact a documentary is produced and helps better understand how a documentary works.

3.1. Selection of Documentaries

Three documentaries from different geographical contexts were selected for analysis. In the United States, "Deported" specifically examines the experiences of family members left behind in questionable "voluntary departure" cases. In Europe, "Los Olvidados" shares the experience of deportees in Europe who arrived illegally and were arrested for minor infractions. On the other side of the Atlantic, "La Nueva Patria" reflects the experience of deportees to the Dominican Republic, where they had established households, only to be forcibly uprooted by US authorities. All of these documentaries reveal different situations, configurations of the deportation process, and narratives from different subjects. Yet they converge on specific common themes. They document the deep emotional impact of deportation, focusing on the feelings of loss, abandonment, and helplessness that pervade the lives of the left-behind. They express concern for the consequences of deportation on the children of affected families, most affected by the irrevocable rupture of their primary attachments. They convey a sense of injustice about the initial action and the potential course of events. The everyday lives of families are depicted as punctuated by a state of anxiety and dread, illustrating the flow of time as elongated and interrupted. Against the threat of a bad future, hope is either displaced to a utopian future scenario or anchored in routine and the attempt to create normalcy without certainty of its existence. Ordinary life persists, internal conflict persists, unidemensionally focusing on the rupture, while the social context in which these events happen remains opaque. (Loustaunau2021)(Sanchez, 2021)

Different narrative devices are used across the documentaries to convey these themes. Intimate long shots of participants reading letters to deported loved ones, scenes of family members waiting at the airport on return journeys that never take place, or asking the authorities for news on loved ones build tension and amplify the feeling of loss and helplessness. Faith is represented as a family asset through recurring visions of family members blessing objects or holding their hands together. The word is employed in a strategic jump from Spanish to English, presenting family members speaking intimately about their feelings before the latter suddenly narrate detachment. This momentarily delivers a sense of agency, as if their previous intimacy could be enough to bring back the loved one. Through the representation of faith and the agency of family members, the documentaries become a family asset and a gift to the deported. These expressive masterpieces document, plead, and ask for a return, seeking to bridge the gaps produced by state violence through moral complicities.

3.2. Data Collection and Analysis

A qualitative approach was used for data analysis in this comparative study. Analyzed documentaries were viewed and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis, as outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006), was employed to identify recurring themes within the documentaries. After becoming familiarized with the data, patterns of meaning were identified, and initial codes were generated. Codes were then sorted into potential themes. Finally, themes were reviewed, defined, and illustrated with excerpts from the documentaries. In addition, a case study was adopted. Each documentary was analyzed independently according to contexts, approaches, and themes, also through thematic analysis. After case studies were generated, a cross-case analysis was conducted, looking at similarities and differences between the documentaries. These findings were compared with existing scholarship based on the wider context of deportation and its impacts on families and communities. Both within-case and cross-case analyses were performed to better understand the context and significance of the findings.

Data analysis was conducted on one documentary from Brazil and one from Cadaquistan, Russian Federation. Although looking at very different countries in different continents, both documentaries addressed the topic of deportation of immigrant workers by focusing on the lives of individuals before and after deportation. In Brazil, the documentary investigated the impact of deportation on individuals and intimate partners that were left behind in the country. In Cadaquistan, the focus was on those sent back to the country of origin and their re-integration to life there in spite of being stigmatized and traumatized. Both documentaries highlighted the role of organizations in assisting and fostering humanization of the deported individual.

4. Comparative Analysis of Documentaries

Stories of deportation are often personal and shared within families or community groups who have loved ones caught up in the process. Deportation is rarely an event reviewed in the media. A significant consequence of this lack of visibility is the feeling of solitude among those affected by deportation who may feel unseen. To counter this invisibility, many documentary film makers have turned the lenses on their own lives and those around them in order to make the experiences of deportees visible. Through these documentaries, the deportation process itself is laid bare: the narratives of individual lives impacted by deportation and the storytelling of event surrounding the deportations are woven into an overall story of resistance to the many social and administrative barriers erected in the wake of deportation. This chapter reviews case studies of documentaries from various countries that tell untold stories of deportation and challenge official narratives surrounding the practices of deportation. (MacDougall, 2022)

In the feature-length documentary “Deporting Freddy,” filmed in Sweden, each deportation is discussed by examining one individual deportation case within the context of the governmental practices surrounding the deportation of individuals to Afghanistan. The deportee is different ethnic background and deportation takes place in different circumstances, allowing for a discussion of the deportation process itself. Additionally, prison images and documented conversations with authorities during the deportation proceedings monitor the response by authorities to the media coverage of the case and attempts to create a counter-narrative to the documentary. The feature-length documentary “The Silent Deportation,” filmed in the Netherlands, presents an unfiltered monitoring with hidden cameras of the deportation of a man to Guinea. In the documentary, the bittersweet victory of the capture barrage is directly connected to the implications following the mass deportation flight. The Dutch government pays the charter company per person deported, allowing the company to disregard human rights without facing consequences. The documentary shows an alternative portrayal of the character of the people being deported: decent family men and contributors to society instead of criminals, which drive trucks against this dangerous operation.

Shot in affected neighborhoods across the United States, Australia, Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, Greece, Italy and Finland, “Dying to Live” is a public interest Afrikaans documentary that focuses on the unsung victims of criminal prosecutions of deported beneficiaries of divorce cross-border child abductions: innocent children left behind in foreign and hostile countries. The filmmakers speak of visions of an alternative world and of dreams of peace like Martin Luther King, and how these visions stood paralyzed by atrocious acts of horrors like the twin towers and ides of September, which framed the policies of the politically powerful for decades thereafter. (Ramírez, 2024)

4.1. Case Studies from Different Countries

The impact of migration and deportation is felt differently around the world, and this is particularly evident in the many documentaries made about these issues. The three documentaries examined in this study–“Torn Apart,” “The Other Side of the Wall,” and “Los Olvidados”–demonstrate how the experience of living and working in another country, the implications of deportation and separation, and the choices people make in the face of these consequences differ based on each country’s context. In understanding these differences, a fuller picture of how deportation impacts families and communities globally emerges, along with how some of these experiences are similar regardless of the context.

The Canadian documentary “Torn Apart: The Last Days of the Walpole Island Three” details how three Indigenous men were arrested while deep-sea fishing. The outside jurisdictional intrusion of the United States has dire consequences on their ability to live and work on the island; on a broader level, it reflects colonization’s attempt to dismantle Indigenous ways of life and extinguish the inherent rights to the land. The trauma of deportation is passed down generationally, as children grow up without fathers and entire communities are disrupted. Canadian laws framing these impacts as attempts to assimilate people into a mainstream educational system shed light on the continuous erasure of culture.

In “The Other Side of The Wall,” Mexicans who experienced the deportation of family members testify about how these traumatic events disrupted their lives, framed by experts in migration and deportation on either side of the border. Meanwhile, the US Border Patrol characterizes this interruption as a routine check with little insight into how it is experienced. Testimonies are framed as stories of strength and resilience, celebrating people’s ability to adapt and survive despite oppressive systems. People make the choice to migrate and live outside of their country of origin in pursuit of better opportunities for themselves; once again, in the face of devastating obstacles, they adapt to life on both sides of the wall. The documentary raises questions about the systems that compel people to make these choices in the first place, alluding to the Mexico-US Free Trade Agreement; it recognizes how the violence of migration and deportation is deeply entrenched in the politics of these countries rather than being a deviation from the norm. (Kalir, 2022)(Dempsey, 2020)

The Salvadoran documentary “Los Olvidados” follows the lives of three people–David, Greicy, and Juan Carlos–in three different countries (Mexico, the United States, and El Salvador, respectively) who choose to join maras (street gangs) as a response to violence, first in their communities and then state-sponsored, aimed at deporting them. The dramatic staging of reenactment film coupled with a wide range of perspectives, from documentalists to psychologists, constructs a more nuanced understanding of maras than how they are usually portrayed as being engaged in violence, drug trafficking, and robbery. Still, like the other two documentaries, it avoids analyzing the US-sponsored contras’ involvement in the Civil War (many gang members returned to El Salvador after being trained in the United States) and how Free Trade started displacing workers from rural to urban areas in the 1990s. It is within this context that the growing violence of maras is framed, as pre-existing social inequality meets the neoliberal restructuring of the economy. (Fielding, 2024)

5. Findings and Discussion

Universally, after deportation from countries where individuals have lived, bonded, and developed their identities, cultures and communal traditions, they become suddenly ‘foreign’ and inauspicious. Their lives are upended; routines disrupted, communities rewired, friends torn apart, jobs vanquished, and the stability of relevant institutions destroyed. Documentaries from different countries render these complex journeys through words, visual imagery, narrative and emotional framing. Not only do they create records of events that seem unintelligible to those not privy to them, but they also afford insight into privacies of individual experiences that remain opaque to others, and capture heartrending traces of grief that resonate with broader social and political currents. There are numerous aspects of deportation that one can explore, however, bringing together the thematic overlaps of documentaries from different countries adds depth to the understanding of such a globally pertinent issue. The vignettes presented here reveal some of the thematic range. Here, the focus is on recurring themes across documentaries and present comparative insights that stem from bringing them into dialogue with one another.

The wrenching upheaval that a family goes through due to deportation is addressed in different ways. Letting Go (USA) portrays the osmotic community in which police raids, arrests, family separation, and final goodbyes unfold. Through cinematic embellishments of family photo albums on which the action unfolds, one is let into the in-fold of an intimate home where the family is ensconced. Within such quotidian privacy, the emotional turbulence of separation is felt viscerally. In contrast, A Way Back (Israel) exposes the long-distance yearning of a child-snowballing effect on a now parental family that had ethnically returned to a promised land. The adult protagonist attempts to hamster on her trace, at times spoken of, yet mostly unrepresented identities. Immigrant-ness and ‘the inner foreigner’ are further themes that permeate the documentaries. Emerging from aeons of superstar telescopes in the seemingly alienable land, the protagonists, many of whom have no previous history there, feel lonely and lost. Zeina, from What Remains (Sweden, Syria), poignantly articulates the absurdity of her condition: “It would have been more sensible of me to have remained on earth without having been uprooted. It brought about incomprehensible difficulty and pain.” In contrast, there are attempts by mothers (Seek you in Dreams, Norway), friendships (There is no Paradise, Brazil), and loving words of the deceased (No one’s Home), to imagine or build bridges across such irreconcilable geopolitical divides. Families rendered homeless endure a double blow: they lose their place and ‘homeland’ in both the physical and emotional spheres. They now belong nowhere, rendering the sense of ‘homelessness’ literal and metaphorical. (Weinberg & Nwosu2020)(Jayasundara, 2023)

5.1. Themes and Patterns Across Documentaries

A thematic analysis of the documentaries reveals several common threads that align with the goals and objectives outlined earlier. These common threads give insight into familial separations, community impacts, challenges facing children, and resiliency that support the established objectives and ultimately converge to illuminate these complex issues through the lens of deportation.

All the documentaries highlight how families are torn apart through the displacement and removal of loved ones. The impact of this historic and harsh decision reverberated throughout the family beyond the individual who was removed. These painful stories were documented, and in some cases reenacted, to convey the trauma and anguish brought on by the sudden and thoughtless experiences of separation. These stories formulate the cornerstone of the narrative for each documentary, establishing an emotional connection with the viewer and outlining the devastation that deportation brings. (Roberts, 2022)

Depression, anxiety, and despair were common reactions that permeated each story. Parents who were deported spoke of the torment of not being able to be present for their children’s lives. Children and mothers left behind expressed feelings of hopelessness, abandonment, and fear of losing their loved ones, whether that be through death from gang violence in their homeland or just trying to survive in a harsh living environment. The mothers who were incarcerated and deported highlighted the feeling of powerlessness when facing the overwhelming U.S. immigration system. Each of these stories demonstrated how the separation and uncertainty devastated families and eroded what was a solid foundation of love and support.

All the documentaries revealed how these separations have ripple effects beyond just the immediate family, with communities impacted as well. These individual stories of pain and devastation were told from the perspective of a larger whole with churches, neighborhoods, and organizations affected by the loss of community members. Many enlisted in the help of activist organizations in solidarity to continue the fight against the oppressive immigration system. Such collectives reveal the shared goal among communities to resist the U.S. government's maltreatment of immigrants. Further, these commonalities provide the foundation of strength needed to galvanize change. Even with the individual impacts being so singularly tragic, communities working together mobilize hope and motivation.

Each documentary emphasized the enormous challenges facing children as they were ripped away from their families. Parents being forcibly removed from their children through deportation created unimaginable disability for mothers and fathers while thrusting children into a future of uncertainty and violence. این نشان می‌دهد که این شروط دل‌سوز و سیستماتیک برای برآورده کردن وعده‌های ماندگاری و یک زندگی معمولی، کاملاً از هم گسست و برعکس، آن‌ها را با وحشت از تهدید و تلاش برای بقا درگیر ساخت. Under such conditions، آنچه به عنوان یک سرپرست نگران و حامی حیاتی و پر از عشق برای برآورده کردن نیازهای عاطفی، مالی، روحی و جسمی کودکان تعریف می‌شود، به نگرانی از تایید تحصیلات ابتدایی از یک دختر بچه هشت ساله یا سپردن زندگی فرزندان به مادربزرگ و عموها که در بی‌توجهی و فراموشی در انزوا قرار دارد، تغییر می‌کند. For چنین زنی، زندگی با فرزندی که طبق سنت زناشویی بی‌سرپرست و بدون حمایت قانونی است، به جهنم واقعی تبدیل می‌شود. (فلک et al.2024)( et al., 2022)

5.2. Comparative Insights

Comparative insights reveal that, despite differences in context, nation, culture, laws, and language, similar anecdotal narratives were often used in the selected documentaries. Thus, national or cultural boundaries do not completely shape individual experiences and emotions. Further, macro issues affecting deportation are often “localized” or displayed through concrete case studies. This insists on the connection among the global, national, and local levels, advocating for more attention to the latter two levels. It is also noted that cross-country, cross-cultural and/or cross-national comparative works and dialogues on immigration and deportation can be enhanced so as to encourage more similar experiments on other countries.

While there are many differences between the selected documentaries, such as the influence of the local context as seen in the documentary from Switzerland and separate focuses on pre-deportation, deportation and post-deportation processes, venue restrictions, participants, and narration, the following comparative insights are still observed. First, the selection of deportees and their families is often meant to evoke sympathy. In the documentary from the USA, both the mother and the son had health issues. In the documentary from Switzerland, the deported man was vulnerable because of his deafness, and the other man was incarcerated. In the documentary from Japan, the family with obstinate yet clever children and the son attached to his mother were selected for their uniqueness. In the documentary from Germany, the family with a sick child and the mother devoting herself to childcare was chosen. Another and more important point is that the selected participants always voice complaints and doubts about immigration policies in their own countries. In the documentary from France, for example, as immigration policies connect and change in many countries, a French film critic asks, “Deportation is no longer reserved for some countries?” These compounding sentiments can be interpreted mainly regarding the feeling of shame on the part of local people and the awareness that the global trend goes against personal beliefs. (Ambrosini, 2021)(Canning, 2021)

6. Conclusion and Implications

Deportation is an issue faced by many families and communities, both in the United States as well as in other countries. Seeking asylum, family reunification, and opportunities for education and employment are all common causes for migration. Many of those who migrate become embedded in their new communities. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that they will find the safety and acceptance they seek, and there is a risk that they may experience persecution, in the form of detainment and deportation, in their new countries. There is great variation in how migrants are treated by countries across the world, and deportation is experienced differently depending on the country and local context. Nevertheless, the emotional and psychological impact of deportation on families has been found to be similar across contexts. Six documentaries exploring deportation through the lens of families, communities, and different countries were examined. Through storytelling, these documentaries aim to promote greater awareness of and sensitivity to the complex consequences that deportation incurs on families and communities. Each of them takes a different approach to documenting the impacts of deportation on families, drawing from unique theories and experiences of deportation. Exploring these various frameworks sheds light on the complex consequences of deportation on families and communities that may otherwise be overlooked. Further, documentaries as a medium provide a powerful platform for creative storytelling that has the potential to engender greater understanding, sympathy, and awareness of an issue that is often reduced to statistics and policy. The findings presented here carry implications for policy and law, practice in the fields of community organizing and narrative change communications, as well as the study of deportation and migration writ large. Each of the six documentaries explored presents a different framework for understanding the complexities of the emotional, psychological, and economic consequences of deportation on families and communities. They also navigate the social and political context in which those deported and their families are embedded. By exploring various frames and contexts of deportation and the narratives of those impacted, new and broader understandings of this issue can be cultivated, and more comprehensive portraits of its impacts shared. This potentially expands the moral landscape from which greater awareness and understanding, as well as advocacy and support, can be drawn. Political and social prayers outside of the United States may illuminate alternatives to its policies, while stories from within the U.S. that defy the dominant narrative could galvanize discussion around more just solutions.

6.1. Summary of Findings

On “Exploring the Impacts of Deportation on Families and Communities: A Comparative Study of Documentaries from Various Countries,” this research essay aims to examine the impact of deportation on families and communities, as portrayed in documentaries from various countries. Through the analysis of ten documentaries, it explores how deportation is depicted and its consequences on family members left behind and on deported individuals in their home countries. The main focus is on the diversity of countries in terms of geographical regions, immigration status in the US, documentary style, and how these differences shape their portrayal of deportation. In addition, the portrayal of the impact of deportation on families left behind is examined and compared between the documentaries from the Global North and Global South, and from immigrant and non-immigrant countries.

The impact of deportation on families and communities is explored from both macro and micro perspectives, highlighting the traumatic effects on family members left behind. The absence of the deported individual often leads to the disintegration of the whole family, as they lose their primary provider and supporter. Children and adolescents are particularly affected, experiencing a loss of parental support in daily life as well as in emotional terms. In addition, elderly parents may find themselves losing their only or primary source of emotional support. Trauma and stress also impacts family members’ ability to perform daily tasks, as well as their whole way of life, leading to varying strategies for coping with the consequences of deportation.

The ways in which the impact of deportation on family members left behind and on deported individuals is depicted varies in different cultural contexts. In the documentaries from the Global South, there is a clear distinction made between the impact of deportation on the family members left behind, such as children who lose their parents, wives who lose their husbands, elderly parents who lose their only child, or parents who are left with children to raise alone, and the impact of deportation on the deported individual, such as the asylum-seeker fleeing persecution and violence who is sent back to danger or the drug trafficker who is sent back to his life of crime.

6.2. Theoretical Contributions

The newly-created framework applied to these documentaries can help both academic scholars and student scholars when analyzing any film or documentary work on migration and immigration. The consistent research questions asked in conjunction with the accompanying categories showcased where and how each film fits into broader theoretical frameworks. The questions regarding motivation, emotion, history, and aesthetic choice not only illuminate the work of the filmmakers but also demonstrate how the lived-experience of the subjects is communicated through film. Taking each film separately through these categories provides insight as to how interpretation is drawn both from the way things happened and the way they were filmed. But more importantly, when films are looked at through a comparative lens, patterns begin to emerge that can be applied to the broader discussion of deportation. Moreover, the framework can be applied to films outside of the selected corpus and used by filmmakers themselves to inspire projects on migration and immigration. (Pavesi, 2022)

Through these case studies, a discussion on filming processes and modes of representation adds an important layer to this academic investigation. Looking at the work of the filmmakers alongside the experiences of their subjects highlights complex relationships of power, privilege, and moral obligation. On one hand, moral dilemmas arise when speaking to viewers not living the same experience. On the other hand, not speaking at all to a public audience limits the stratification of experience to those actually living through it. These points are not easily resolved. Ultimately, it is a delicate balancing act reliant on both chosen subjects and preconceived aesthetics. Regardless of the imperative, performance and narrative choice articulate artistic intent with real-life consequence. In this way, the aesthetic choices made by the filmmakers become the aesthetics of the subjects themselves.

Detention narratives tend towards abstraction and allegory, creative enactment or extension of misery, the affective dimension of waiting, and mise-en-scène as a metaphoric prison space. Each of these storytelling techniques can be used to uniquely interpret a common set of lived-experiences. Moreover, all these techniques illustrate how these films were able to overcome the absence of the detained subjects. Clearly, no one film on such topics, nor any set of films, can hold the complete narrative. Instead, collective discourse is needed to garner a more comprehensive picture of the possible needs and narratives brewing amongst the immigrant masses. But, in order for this discourse to be meaningful, it must be public, broad and understood within the framework of economic and social experience transformation.

6.3. Policy Recommendations

Countries that have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC) are mandated to guarantee access to education for all children, regardless of residency status or immigration history. However, children from undocumented families confront widespread exclusion from education, in violation of the CRC’s guarantee of the right to primary and secondary education for every child. In the face of mass deportations of family members, particularly a parent, children who remain in the U.S. suffer from exclusion, misconduct, and disinterest at school. Children left behind experience academic and social challenges, along with prodigious psychological problems. Even if children of deported parents continue to go to school, efficacy of education is contingent on entire persistence of children’s family and community and security of children’s schooling neighborhood. Children left behind become vulnerable to victimization, further exclusion from the school system, and various malady and imparities. This exclusion worsens inasmuch as children become fundamentally different from children of documented parents, provoking bullying. A complementary environment is necessary for intake dissemination of legal documentation.

Nations must compute plans and ameliorate policies before enacting deportation of family member of children and before these needs turn into malady or emergency. Enactment of deportation must be functioned on by oversight of agencies, a limitations process of enumeration of children of deported parents and assistance thereof, and a federal fund generative of primary needs, including new housing and government for amelioration, educational programs, and social service. As is evident in the spotlighted documentary, children of deported parents are fabulous consumers of media other than conventional. With significance currently on them as curiosity, media coverage can remedy attentiveness while also acting as a primary element in the abated children’s plan and short narratives thereof. Alternative interpretation and appropriation of projection newscast would alight on children sharing input from themselves, their neighborhood, their community, and their family at home. Convention must generate primary coverage in languages responsive to needs of community. Journalist groups and schools must soufflé a cover of misrepresentation through discussion with children of ascribe news provision and effects thereof, distrust to the press confronting ailment and blight, and strength to demand local-planned and reach speaking arrangement other than tenets of presently minimal provision.

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