Ep. 168 - ‘All We Want Is to Live’

The Commonweal Podcast · Sep 17, 2026 · 53m

By now, many of us are familiar with the realities of the Trump administration’s violent campaign of mass deportations. But how often do we listen to the stories of some of the most vulnerable victims—young children and teenagers separated from their families?

Gabrielle Oliveira, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, did just that. For her ethnographic study Now We Are Here, she followed sixteen migrant families from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and her native Brazil from 2018 to 2021.

All of Oliveira’s subjects experienced some form of family separation as a result of…