Transfronterizo Children’s Literacies of Surveillance and the Cultural Production of Border Crossing Identities on the U.S.–Mexico Border

Nuñez, Idalia; Urrieta, Luís

doi:10.1111/aeq.12360

Cited by 23 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Las escuelitas did not serve as out-of-school practices but were the participants’ first school, sanctioned by the parents to teach Spanish literacy. As discussed in more recent work by Nuñez and Urrieta (2021) and de la Piedra and Guerra (2012), las escuelitas depict a shift in ways of knowing and being in the borderlands that counter macro discourses and practices of English hegemony. Border people blur national boundaries and languages, drawing from complex and dynamic “unofficial” literacy practices and subaltern knowledge—such as border-crossing, religious, and musical literacies—in tandem with schooling literacy experiences, to assume and enact bilingual and biliterate subjectivities (de los Ríos, 2017; Harvey-Torres & Degollado, 2021).…”

Section: Descents and Emergences: Toward Border Thinking Epistemologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

Degollado

Bell

Harvey‐Torres

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Background/Context: Historically, the literature on access to quality education for Mexican Americans has been wrought with injustices committed on them because of the racist and deficit thinking of the time. This includes, but is not limited to, access to literacy in English and Spanish. This article focuses on las escuelitas, or little schools, as sites of resistance that fostered Spanish literacy as an extension of the home before official schooling in all English public schools. These little schools were community-based initiatives that taught Texas Mexican children Spanish literacy and Mexican culture from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s in the borderlands. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: Drawing on nepantla and border thinking as theoretical frameworks, we argue that biliterate subjectivities emerge(d) from geographically contingent ideologies rooted in colonizing codes of power. We asked: (1) How do participants describe their early literacy experiences in las escuelitas? (2) How do the discursive characterizations of participants’ early literacy experiences inform our understanding of emerging discursive biliterate subjectivities? Research Design: Employing a Foucauldian genealogical analysis, this article examines the experiences of nine escuelitas attendees. Oral histories were collected form a group of Mexican Americans who attended las escuelitas in the 1940s and were from the same graduating high school class, though they did not attend the same escuelita. Alongside their narratives, we draw on historical accounts of las escuelitas and broader Mexican American history of education of the southwestern United States. Other data include poems and textbooks provided by the participants themselves. Foucauldian genealogical analysis offered a more nuanced story in which to situate their narratives. Findings/Results: The findings demonstrate how biliterate subjectivities were produced ideologically as the participants lived and made meaning in a time when official biliteracy was not only inconceivable, but effectively outlawed by English-only laws governing public schools. We go on to consider the clandestine biliteracy of escuelita attendees of the early 20th century, in contrast to the growing popularity of official forms of biliteracy for (some) contemporary students in schools today. To do so, we detail how participants engaged in complex and contradictory discursive characterizations that revealed their nepantla and border thinking as a way of reading and writing the world. Thus, las escuelitas provide historical insight into not only the ingenuity of communities to resist English hegemony, but also how present-day bilingual education often reinscribes marginalization. Conclusions/Recommendations: The discursive narratives demonstrate the complexity of forming subjectivities in relation to biliteracy. We reveal the ways in which their biliterate subjectivities of reading the word informed the ways in which they also read the world. Thus, their subjective formations emanated nepantla and border thinking as a facet of their biliteracy. We also find that their biliteracy stories echo present discursive formations of who is considered biliterate through official manifestations like the Seal of Biliteracy. Finally, their stories indicate that biliteracy as a subjective possibility has always been rooted in communities of color whose lives and knowledges often go unrecognized.

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Section: Descents and Emergences: Toward Border Thinking Epistemologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

Degollado

Bell

Harvey‐Torres

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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“…Scholars have demonstrated how birth certificates, passports, and other identification cards are the texts—papeles—that facilitate (or inhibit) movement across nations and institutions (Mangual Figueroa, 2012; Nuñez & Urrieta, 2021; Vieira, 2016). Papeles are written texts requiring a specific set of literacy skills to access tangible rights.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transborder Literacies of (In)Visibility

Gallo

Adams-Corral

2023

Journal of Literacy Research

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Drawing from an ethnography with mixed-status families residing in Mexico, we examine what we term transborder literacies of (in)visibility, or diasporic people's innovative interactions around texts that prepare them to move across incompatible mononational institutions divided by borders. Through close attention to the literacy practices families engaged in as they applied for their children's U.S. passports from Mexico, we demonstrate how these literacies were not just about expanding authentic ways of reading and writing to include both U.S. and Mexican ways, but instead required unique transborder literacies across mutually unintelligible, racializing mononational systems so that children could (re)access their rights on both sides of the border. We argue that recognizing families’ complex transborder literacy practices of (in)visibility could offer a novel anti-oppressive lens to transform how educators make sense of the complexity of immigrant families’ literacies, movements, and educational supports across borders and national schooling systems.

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“…A rich body of scholarship in anthropology and education exploring the language and literacy practices of transnational youths has shown that multilingual Latinx adolescents are often engaged in such practices outside of school spaces; these practices are not often recognized by or built upon in the classroom despite the potential they have for supporting students in bridging knowledge and experience. For example, examining the literacy and languaging practices of transfronterizo children—children who cross the U.S.–Mexico border and experience daily life on both sides of the border (Martínez, 1994)—Nuñez and Urrieta (2020) described how, as border crossers, these young children developed literacies of surveillance, or literacy knowledges needed for navigating surveillance and inspectors as they moved across borders. Nuñez and Urrieta noted that children relied on and utilized knowledge from across their linguistic repertoires in these encounters and experiences.…”

Section: Contextual Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintaining Connections, Cultivating Community: The Role of Transnational Translingual Literacy Sponsorships in One Adolescent’s Literacy Practices

Linares

2022

Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education

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Context: Transnational emergent multilingual (TEM) adolescents are young people who maintain emotional, social, economic, and physical connections and networks to more than one country, often a home country and a host country. Because of their linguistic identities and varied schooling experiences, when they enroll in U.S. public schools, many are designated as English Learners and subsequently positioned as “illiterate” or having “limited” linguistic and literacy skills through additional labels such as “limited/interrupted formal schooling.” Such linguistic and cultural erasure mirrors the systematic invisibility and intra-racial stereotyping that many adolescents, particularly those from Indigenous backgrounds, faced in their home countries. However, despite such positionings, many TEMs are highly literate and engage regularly in complex literacy practices. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to showcase the kinds of literacy practices that one TEM adolescent, Paula, engaged in, how, and to what end, as well as how those literacy practices reflected unique aspects of her multifaceted identity as an Indigenous transnational being. The languaging and literacy practices that TEMs like Paula engage in allow them to maintain their cultural and linguistic identities and social ties in multimodal, local, and transnational dimensions; yet, such practices and skills are not recognized or built upon in schools. As findings of this study indicate, TEMs’ engagement in such practices is also made possible through the support of both local and transnational “sponsorships” from individuals, including family, with whom TEMs actively maintain or establish relationships; yet, this kind of familial engagement often goes unrecognized by schools. Research Design: This article draws on ethnographic data gathered through sustained participation in the field. Data collection occurred across one school year and consisted of ethnographic observations, interviews, and artifact collection at a combined middle/high school newcomer school in an urban community. This article draws on a subset of data centered on Paula’s out-of-school literacy practices. Data analysis drew directly on the theoretical framework: Literacy sponsorship theory was used to identify who, if anyone, facilitated Paula’s participation in literacy practices and in what ways; translanguaging theory was used to identify how translanguaging was evident in the ways language was used and discussed; and border theory was used to identify the social significance of the literacy practices in Paula’s daily life, as well as how they embodied and represented her transnational identity. Such an analysis allowed for the understanding of how the literacy practices Paula engaged in reflected her life experiences as an Indigenous TEM, not only in terms of how she engaged in them, but also in terms of the significance they held in her day-to-day life. Conclusions: Findings indicate that Paula engaged in multimodal literacy practices, across languages, cultural contexts, and national boundaries, that were personally, spiritually, and intellectually sustaining. Outside the classroom, Paula was positioned as a sophisticated communicator who leveraged language and literacy knowledge to build relationships and meet the responsibilities of her daily life. Yet, the wherewithal and critical thinking visible in Paula’s life in her community were rarely visible or elicited in the classroom. As such, findings provide insights around how teachers and school personnel can better bridge the diverse community and classroom spaces TEMs navigate, thereby making school a more welcoming space for students and their families.

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Transfronterizo Children’s Literacies of Surveillance and the Cultural Production of Border Crossing Identities on the U.S.–Mexico Border

Cited by 23 publications

References 31 publications

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

“I Learned How to Read in Spanish”: A Genealogical Analysis of Biliterate Subjective Possibilities in South Texas Escuelitas and Beyond

Transborder Literacies of (In)Visibility

Maintaining Connections, Cultivating Community: The Role of Transnational Translingual Literacy Sponsorships in One Adolescent’s Literacy Practices

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