Resisting Marketization and Losing a Sense of Place: Experiences of Latinx Adolescents With Gentrification and Displacement in Austin

• In Event: Race, Place, and the Marketization of Education: Understanding How Spatial Imaginaries and Structures Shape Schooling

Abstract

Gentrification is the process whereby an urban community is reinvested and redeveloped (Lees, Slater, & Wyly, 2013). This often results in the displacement of the longstanding residents to more remote communities (Lipman, 2011). Thus, gentrification likely invokes a systematic increase in adolescent mobility from their neighborhoods and schools. Mobility is detrimental to students’ academics and health (Coley & Kull, 2016). School choice policies also exacerbate gentrification (Pearman & Swain, 2017). These policies, specifically open district enrollment and charter school proliferation, have contributed to student mobility in Austin. The purpose of this study is to understand how Latinx adolescents in Austin experience displacement by gentrification.

This study contributes to the research on place, gentrification, and marketization of education. Specifically, it defines the construct of “student displacement,” providing a critical perspective of the neoliberal logic permeating schools and communities. This research advocates for coordinated policy and practice approaches to education and urban planning decision-making.

Gentrification and schools research has focused on the process of gentrification and its effects on the schools located in gentrifying communities (Cucchiara, 2013; Ewing, 2018; Posey-Maddox, 2014). Little is known about students who have been displaced. Displacement is experienced in a situated context, and although place-based, its entanglement with race exacerbates inequality (Cashin, 2014; Quarles & Butler, 2018).

The study is conceptualized from sociological and geographic traditions. Specifically, adolescents may experience displacement in the following ways: social-emotional effects and place attachment (Falola & Faria, 2018), social relationships (Frank, Muller, & Mueller, 2013), and community and school opportunities (Holme & Finnigan, 2018).

This study is a part of a larger project. For this study, I examine responsive interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 2012) that I conducted with four Latinx adolescents who were displaced from Austin within the last five years, and their parents. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and coded using a hybrid approach (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2015).

Findings suggest that adolescents experience displacement by gentrification in Austin in several ways. First, the families resisted the marketization of real estate and schools that encouraged their displacement. When first displaced from their homes, two of the families moved several times to other apartments in the same neighborhood. However, once their friends moved away, and the longstanding community culture changed, they also left. Another family immediately moved out of the district, but the mother used her social networks to obtain an inter-district transfer so her daughters could stay in their Austin school. Second, three of the families perceived that the Austin schools contributed to the cultural displacement of the community. Although the adolescents attended dual-language programs, they believed the school was using the program as a marketing strategy to attract gentrifying families. After displacement from Austin, three of the adolescents moved to remote mobile home communities, although their parents continued to work in Austin. The adolescents had varied school experiences, including facing race-driven bullying and less-resourced dual-language programs, but they each used their social networks and technology to overcome obstacles, helping to mitigate the more painful experiences of displacement.

Author

• Michael R. Scott, National Education Association