Latinx Youth in the Borderlands: A Co-Constructed Narrative Examining Literacy Practices in Negotiating Self-Identity, Enacting Resistance, and Navigating Mexican-ness

This co-constructed narrative was undertaken to gain insights into youth perceptions about schooling in Arizona, given the sociopolitical climate during 2020, to learn about how youth navigate multiple borderlands to establish their racial and cultural identities, and to consider their literacy practices in the work of navigating their identities. The two research questions guiding this study were: (1) How do Mexican/Chicanx/Latinx Arizona high school youth in the Borderlands work to engage with and preserve their culture, both in educational and personal spaces? (2) How are literacy practices enacted in students’ everyday cultural engagement? This work is situated at the center of Borderlands research, critical theories, and counterstorytelling. Youth participated as co-analysts and co-writers of portions of this work, designed as five individual case studies with each of five participants. This work was done with five youth between 15-18 years old who lived in Southern Arizona within 75 miles of the Mexican border, recruited via purposeful sampling. Data was collected remotely, and our work together spanned from May 2020 through May 2021. Data collected included recorded interviews, instant messages, media and artifact collection, and think-aloud sessions. Validity of findings was established through triangulation across these multiple data sources. Guiding frameworks were used to interpret data and codes developed using an inductive approach, and youth participants served as co-researchers who helped develop our codebook and guide our findings and narrative. Participants worked with me individually; they did not work with each other, but built on each other’s ideas as we progressed through analysis and development of themes and findings. Three themes that emerged included: (1) Negotiating self-identity, (2) Enacting resistance, and (3) Mexican-ness in the Borderlands. As youth negotiated their identities, they demonstrated that they were deliberate in their selection of and purpose for sharing texts; they deliberately consider and adjust the ways in which they represent themselves in public and social spaces; and they establish their identities in multiple borderlands and are aware of how they use these liminal spaces to negotiate who they are. In enacting resistance, youth engaged in conscious resistance as well as unconscious resistance, and they attempted to be deliberate in how much they engaged with political events—though this was not always possible. And finally, in considering Mexican-ness in the Borderlands, they thought deliberately and enacted agency in choosing whether, when, and how to perform Mexican-ness; they demonstrated a critical awareness of local and national issues; and they each were deliberate in the ways they crafted their narratives in this piece and in our work together.PHDEducational StudiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/171433/1/jlsawada_1.pd