Page 99 of my dissertation, “Language, Identity, and Belonging: An Ethnography of Deaf Immigrants in the Northeast United States,” falls towards the end of its first ethnographic chapter. It is in this chapter that I detail some of the story of Isabel, a deaf woman and mother of three who was born and raised in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States as an adult. Through a position in the Deaf Services department of an independent living center in a northeastern city of the U.S., I worked with Isabel as she navigated the U.S. naturalization process. Page 99 comes after my description of the day when Isabel, following years of paperwork, scheduling setbacks, preparation, and studying, successfully passed the naturalization interview/test to become a U.S. citizen.

The chapter (and the dissertation as whole) are meant to emphasize a few things. First, the dense policies and procedures of the U.S. immigration/naturalization process are simply the newest in a longer legacy of policies that have excluded deaf and disabled people from the United States. Second, contrary to notions of deaf immigrants as linguistically impoverished, my interlocutors had varied and flexible semiotic repertoires and demonstrated an ability to navigate communicative encounters with an immense degree of proficiency. Third, and what the heart of Page 99 really entails, is that the social and interpersonal dimensions of communication are as significant, if not more so, than the linguistic dimensions. Working with emerging ASL-users, I found that the affordances of sign languages (such as their iconicity) enabled cross-linguistic communication in ways not possible through spoken language, but much more important to deaf immigrants’ capacity to navigate communicative encounters were collaborative language brokering practices and a moral orientation towards establishing understanding across and despite difference. Particularly in sites where the stakes for effective communication were high, like in encounters with the U.S. immigration regime, moments of language brokering or informal interpretation emerged as crucial enactments of a deaf solidarity and relationality that enabled my interlocutors to better navigate a system designed to exclude them.

I find myself feeling appreciative of the opportunity to revisit my dissertation in this current moment as I am reminded that practices of collaboration and intentional care work have been (and will continue to be) crucial in an age of increasing intolerance towards those whose bodies/minds have been deemed nonnormative.