Abstract
Educational borderlands are the physical and/or conceptual landscapes where one must negotiate notions of cultural difference as she or he lives and learns—landscapes that envelop an array of pedagogical and cultural spaces, yet are typically guarded by exclusionary tactics. In this article, we examine how US immigrant youth navigate three educational borderlands: the geopolitical, institutional, and home community. We also discuss how educators’ biased ideologies and actions towards these youth solidify borders and increase inequity. Data from studies of California and North Carolina school communities allow us to extend border crossing theories and address how many immigrant youth confront and resist inequities, negotiate their cultural identities, and enact agency. While emphasizing that borderlands are sites of risk and transformation, we also suggest how educators can draw upon their relative power and privilege to cross borders too, advocate for immigrant youth, and ultimately improve education.
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Notes
Many researchers cited in this section do not explicitly identify themselves as border theorists, but we have drawn upon their work because they address the interconnections of social mobility, identity, and equity in a way that aligns with border theories.
Although the majority of US Latinos/as are Catholic, an unprecedented number are converting from Catholicism with figures estimating that one out of every seven Latino/as left the Catholic Church in the last 25 years (Levitt, 2002); thus, the California study is indicative of the growing religious diversity of Latinas/os.
Proposition 187 was deemed unconstitutional by the courts.
This data excerpt was originally published in Ek (2009).
This data excerpt was originally published in Cooper (2009), p. 705.
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Camille M. Wilson previously published under the name Camille Wilson Cooper, and she authored the works referenced under Cooper, C.W. in this article’s bibliography.
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Wilson, C.M., Ek, L.D. & Douglas, TR.M.O. Recasting Border Crossing Politics and Pedagogies to Combat Educational Inequity: Experiences, Identities, and Perceptions of Latino/a Immigrant Youth. Urban Rev 46, 1–24 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0246-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0246-5