"My Family Away From Home": Transformative Resistance of HMong Students and Student Organizations

• In Event: Transforming Schools: Centering HMong Agents, Belonging, and Inclusivity

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper examines how university student organizations and its members transform their university and educational experiences. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the HMong Student Organization and HMong undergraduate students as critical agents in shaping and transforming their university. In this process of transformative resistance, they create a space in the university that centers on their identity, culture and sense of belonging.

Theoretical Framework:
The frameworks guiding this paper draws from critical race theories specifically, Asian Critical Race Theory (Museus & Iftikar, 2013) and Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005). Together, both conceptual frameworks allow us to 1) understand how race, racism, and whiteness operates in HMong students’ educational experience and 2) position HMong students as possessing valuable cultural capital pertinent to their education.

Methods and Data:
The data for this paper comes from a larger critical ethnographic study that focused on the experiences of U.S. HMong undergraduate students. Specifically, data on the HMong Student Organization and its members were selected for this paper. These included the semi-structured student interviews and participant observations with audio recordings and field notes, conducted over an academic school year.

Results:
Findings show a common emergent theme across all interviews that space, or rather a “home” within the university was important for them. Findings also show the HMong Student Organization and its members as being critically aware of their positionality as HMong within the university and how they chose to transform both their university space and, in turn, their educational experiences. The findings point to HMong undergraduates’ agency toward shaping their educational experience while bringing themselves, peers, and institutions critical awareness and actionable plans to imbed a sense of ethnic history, culture, and identity in Higher Education. The findings also counteract existing conditions of marginalization HMong students experience by focusing on their contributions in Higher Education.

Significance:
This paper calls attention to the underlying deficit and damage-centered research in which disrupting the Model Minority Myth meant positioning HMong students as examples of low high school graduation rates and bachelor’s degree attainment. This paper contributes to recent education scholarship that shifts the conversation of HMong students to focus on their strengths and assets by considering their active transformational agency and resiliency as critical to institutional efforts towards inclusion and equity. Moreover, this study shows the importance of centering HMong identity, culture and success at the core of universities who serve HMong and many diverse students.

Author

• Kaozong Nancy Mouavangsou, University of California - Merced