Narrative Work Matters Now More Than Ever For Immigrant Communities
📷 credit: National Parks Gallery
In today’s political landscape, immigration isn’t just a matter of policy; it’s a matter of narrative. Who gets framed as a threat? Who gets left out of the story altogether? And who gets to decide?
The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia offers a chilling example. A longtime Maryland resident, Kilmar was deported this month despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering his return. He was labeled a gang member without formal charges, detained in a Salvadoran mega-prison, and turned into a political talking point. A single tweet from the administration dismissed his humanity and mocked the court’s decision: “He’s not coming back.”
This is what happens when narrative overrides due process. When a person becomes a symbol, justice is treated like a suggestion.
Narratives are not just stories. They’re tools that are crafted, deployed, and weaponized to shape public opinion and justify state violence. Nowhere is this clearer than in the national conversation about immigration.
Across the country, raids are staged for social media. Cabinet members are cosplaying in tactical gear for cable news. Deportations are framed as reality TV content, with families ripped apart to send a political message.
In an age where policy is shaped as much by public perception as by facts, the narratives we share and fund carry immense power. Anti-immigrant sentiment is sharply on the rise. In today’s political climate, immigration enforcement is packaged as entertainment, and communities are criminalized for existing. For those of us committed to justice in immigration, this moment demands more than just a defense against harmful policies. It calls for reshaping the cultural and political terrain we have shaped.
If we want to protect immigrant communities, not just from policy, but from public erasure, philanthropy must get serious about narrative change.
Why Funding Narrative Change Is Essential
Narratives shape who is seen as deserving of protection, dignity, and belonging. For decades, immigrants in the U.S. have been confined to narrow roles: As “good workers,” “criminals,” or “burdens.” Flattening millions of complex lives from hundreds of countries into palatable, uniform soundbites.
We have seen how devastating the flattening of stories can be. Like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Andry Hernandez Romero, a Venezuelan asylum seeker and artist, was deported to a Salvadoran mega-prison after being accused of gang affiliation based on tattoos and social media posts. In both cases, due process was bypassed, and narrative became the rationale.
The strategy of cruelty isn’t accidental. As Silky Shah argues in Unbuild Walls, the dehumanization of immigrants is deeply intertwined with the broader expansion of incarceration systems.
When the public is conditioned to see immigrant families as threats or lawbreakers, it becomes easier to justify draconian policies: the rollback of Temporary Protected Status, the arrest and deportation of legal residents, and even the attempted revocation of birthright citizenship.
These stories are not anomalies. They are warnings. Narratives scaffold policy; by changing the story, you begin to change what is possible.
How Funders Can Support Narrative Change
Resource Immigrant-Led Storytelling
Many groups like Define American and Opportunity Agenda are already disrupting dominant narratives, lifting up the lived realities of immigrants in ways that resonate across cultural and political divides. Investing in these efforts amplifies stories that counter fear with truth.
Fund Local Media Ecosystems
Narrative change doesn’t just happen in major media outlets. It happens in local newspapers, community radio, street art, and digital campaigns. These are the places and sources of information where anti-immigrant policies are most aggressively pushed, particularly in migrant communities. Funders can support creative, multilingual, and community-centered approaches to storytelling that foster solidarity rather than division.
Reject the “good immigrant” narrative:
Too often, funding strategies reinforce the binary of the “deserving” vs. “undeserving” immigrant. Framing some immigrants as more deserving than others reinforces harmful binaries that leave entire communities behind. Funding strategies must support organizations pushing back against respectability politics and advocating for full, unconditional dignity and belonging.
Invest in Long-Term Culture Change
Narrative change is a marathon, not a media cycle. As organizations like Four Freedoms Fund have recognized, a lasting cultural shift requires a long-term commitment to frontline organizations, rapid-response infrastructure, and the artists, content creators, and strategists who can build new public consciousness.
Philanthropy must be prepared to weather the backlash and keep showing up year after year.
Philanthropy’s Role in Shifting Cultural Conditions
Immigrant communities are targeted not just by policy but by narrative. They are being erased, criminalized, and turned into a spectacle. Unless funders intervene, these stories will continue to shape the cultural and political terrain for years. They will continue to degrade institutional trust and pit neighbor against neighbor.
The current moment is a stark reminder that policy does not exist in a vacuum. It grows from the stories we tell, or fail to tell, about who belongs, who deserves care, and whose lives matter. In the face of coordinated media attacks and state violence, investing in narrative change is not ancillary to immigrant justice work; it is central to it.
Philanthropy has a responsibility to help shape the cultural conditions where justice can take root. If we want to build a future where immigrants are seen not through the lens of fear, but through the full scope of their humanity as core members of our communities and a critical part of our society, then we must invest in the storytellers, organizers, and visionaries working to shift the narrative.