I Basically Just Walked Out: Theorizing the Invisible Labor of Black (Transnational) Women in Education

• In Event: 63.075 - Invisible Labors of Black Women Educators: Negotiating Institutional and Situational Racism in the Education Workforce

Abstract

According to Harris, Gutiérrez, & Flores Niemann (2012), women of color in academic spaces are often “presumed incompetent.” Harushimana (2010) similarly found that Black, African-born educators experience linguistic and racial oppression in the educational spaces they navigate in the United States. Given these understandings, the second presentation will employ the concept of ‘invisible labor’, which Crain, Poster, & Cherry (2016) define as “labor that occurs within formal employment relationships, but is not conceptualized as work and so remains hidden from view - sometimes in the public imagination, sometimes from consumers, and sometimes from the workers themselves” (p. 3). Black transnational women, meaning Black women born and raised outside of the U.S., who maintain close ties to their countries of origin, often experience multiple forms of oppression steeped in racism, sexism, and xenophobia. In addition to teaching, Black transnational women who are educators, then, must reckon with, resist, and understand these systemic forms of oppression in order to navigate their professional lives.

The second presentation will frame the concept of invisible labor in teaching and learning through an anticolonial framework (Dei & Kempf, 2006) that takes into consideration global forces, such as neoliberalism and gendered forms of labor (Goodman, 2013). For this purpose, it will draw narrative of one Black, STEM, middle-school teacher, who is a recent immigrant from Jamaica and has been teaching in the South of the United States. In so doing, the presentation seeks to expand theoretical approaches to the notion of invisible labor, as it is embedded in gendered practices of work in educational spaces as it relates to the work of Black women educators. Therefore, the individual narrative is tied to the theoretical concepts of invisible labor within global context.

The narrative data stem from a larger study on the identities, literacies, and lives of Black transnational women, who are educators and students. In this study, I conducted a series of conversational, in-depth interviews with each of the 7 adult immigrant women (ages 25-35) in this study. Each women self-identified as Black in the context of the United States, and has reckoned with their positionality and changing identities within U.S. educational spaces. This work was conducted in an effort to frame the transnational, racialized, and gendered experiences of Black transnational women as they relate to educational spaces. The interview and observation data were coded based on themes and analyzed using a personal scholarly narrative approach and transnational methods (Nash & Bradley, 2011; Amelina, Faist, & Nergiz, 2014). Results from this study showed the myriad of ways the women had to learn to navigate various systems of oppression to pursue their versions of academic, professional, and personal success in the United States. This notion is directly linked to the idea of invisible labor, as the participants are evidently required to know and understand their positions and identities in their home countries, and negotiate how this may diverge in the United States. This becomes labor, as they are teaching and learning in U.S. spaces and must find ways to complete their visible labor whilst engaging in invisible labor.

Author

• Tanja Burkhard, Washington State University