"I Walked All the Way Back to L.A.": An Intersectional Analysis of Queer Youth Migration

• In Event: 35.082 - Roundtable Session 14
  In Roundtable Session: 35.082-14 - Queer of Color Critique as a Critical and Postfoundational Perspective in Educational Research

Abstract

Queer Latino youth who have migrated to the U.S., often labeled “unaccompanied minors,” tell stories about their lives in ways that intersect multiple, often simultaneous oppressions. The theoretical labor of women of color, whose work centers intersections of identity, power, and the queer brown body, offer educational anthropologists a rich analytical framework to engage these complex narratives. The contribution of coalitional pedagogies, remediation, intersectional analysis, and the critique of categorical logic (Lugones, 2003; Hill Collins, 2000; Sandoval, 2000; Crenshaw, 1995; Moraga & Anzaldua, 1981) are central themes in women of color theorizing and offer important insights in multi-layered, intersectional problems that current frameworks are unable to nuance. This failure to recognize the theoretical contributions of women of color thought is a problem in educational research, and its misrecognition as essentialist narratives and not as theories of relations of power further contributes to marginalize work that centers these offerings (Scott, 1991; Butler, 1992). This paper links the problem of the legibility of women of color thought with the narratives of queer Latino youth. Using data collected from an ethnography of queer street youth, this presentation outlines a practice of women of color thought that centers coalition, remediation, and analysis, where the multifaceted stories of migration and displacement that come from youth crossing multiple borders reflects an engagement with the world that is unavoidably theoretical.

Author

• Cindy Cruz, University of California - Santa Cruz