Racial microaggressions are racial slights and subtle insults aimed at people of color.  Such affronts, though often unintentional, have been documented to come at great psychic, emotional, and physical cost to the targeted individuals.  The term microaggression is also applied to women or other groups in society who experience oppression.  These insults have been documented in the context of education for years. Though it has been established that students of color often face racial microaggressions on their home campuses, this phenomenon has not been explored in the context of study abroad.  How this experience is further complicated by the intersection of gender, race, and other aspects of social identities was the premise of the following study that utilized the Black feminist construct of intersectionality to explore the experiences of 19 African American women who studied abroad through community college programs in three regions: the Mediterranean, West Africa and the British Isles.  Findings include experiences of microaggressions by U.S. peers, in-country hosts and in several instances, situations of sexual harassment.  Implications and recommendations for study abroad practitioners include discussion of the diversity of community college students, the extension of campus climate to the study abroad program, and the urgent need for critically reflexive staff and faculty equipped to respond effectively to microaggressions.

This qualitative study counters deficit narratives about first generation Latinx students by exploring multi ple forms of community cultural wealth (CCW; Yosso, 2005) that 25 students leveraged and increased during service activities and homestays in Costa Rica. Through longitudinal data and with CCW as a conceptual framework, three key themes emerged First, s tudents were able to leverage their linguistic and familial capital to connect quickly and meaningfully with locals. Additionally, students drew upon their linguistic, familial, aspirational, and resistant capital while abroad to deepen their engagement. Finally, student interaction with their forms of CCW appeared to deepen their bicultural identities, strengthen their resistance to injustice, and instill a strong desire to inspire other Latinx students to pursue international education. Implications fo r practice include an integrated approach to recognizing and rewarding students’ CCW related capital in the advising, application and preparation processes. Implications underscore the importance of using strengths based pedagogies in the design of educat ion abroad programs.

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