¡Hay que hablar!: Testimonio in the everyday lives of migrant mothers

• Testimonio serves as a form of symbolic and strategic civic participation for undocumented migrants.
• Testimonio is an interactional narrative accomplishment among speakers and recorders.
• I examine the personal and political as well as formal and functional attributes of testimonio.
• Nuanced accounts of migrants lives can counter dehumanizing anti-immigrant discourses.

This article, which draws from an ethnographic study of mixed-status Mexican families living in the New Latino Diaspora, examines how two undocumented mothers both rehearse for and perform the act of giving testimonio during everyday conversations that take place in their home. The analysis identifies discursive and semiotic features of testimonio used by the mothers to develop an emergent narrative form situated within an increasingly anti-immigrant context. The findings indicate that giving testimonio is a symbolic and strategic substitute for participation in a legal system that affords migrants certain due process rights but denies them the civil rights afforded US citizens.