Immigrant Youth Activism and Literacies of Agency

• In Event: Activist Literacies: Theorizing Literacy in and Across Communities of Practice

Abstract

Two years ago, in a large urban school district first generation Asian immigrant youth at a comprehensive high school found themselves victims of racial assaults. They resisted and exposed the discriminatory practices of the school district, instigating citywide dialogues and investigations around school violence. How was it that these newcomers, all English Language Learners, were able to develop leadership and negotiate the political terrain of district bureaucracy, the media, and government agencies? In other words, what kinds of literacy did these youth acquire and employ so that they were able to “read the world and the word-world” (Freire, quoted in Campos, 1990); engage in effective social action; and organize into a youth activist organization? What literacies supported the identities of these young people as nonviolent youth activists working for interracial solidarity and safe schools? I term these “literacies of agency”—namely, social practices that afford disenfranchised and marginalized groups the means to exercise meaningful social actions.

Since 2000 literature on youth activism has substantiated the positive impact of organizing and advocacy for youth of color precisely because it combines critical consciousness and social action in praxis (Freire, 1993), offering an analysis of the oppressive forces that affect youths’ lives and a sense of agency (Ginwright and Cammerota, 2002). In extending this work, I employ the theoretical lens of New Literacy Studies (Street, 1995) and critical feminist theory (Mohanty, 2004; Anzaldúa, 1987); analytical tools from critical discourse analysis (Gee, 1999b; Fairclough, 2003); and concepts, such habitus, capital, and field, from Bourdieu (Grenfell, 2008) to examine various public texts produced by members of the Asian activist youth organization: e.g., testimony and presentations at commission meetings, conferences and youth rallies; mission statements; and publicity flyers.

Findings suggest the importance of literacies as counter-practices (Authors 2 & 1, 2010): transmitting community histories of struggle for civil rights; acquiring a political framework for understanding inequality; undertaking coalition work; and accessing social agents with power in media and government fields. An understanding of youth “literacies of agency” in this local example contributes to the body of knowledge of how youth are able to deploy various forms of social, cultural and symbolic capital to disrupt the dominant discourses around negative youth identities, interracial conflict, and school violence.

Author

• Mary Yee, University of Pennsylvania