Construyendo Spaces of Belonging for Latinx Youth: Understanding Race, Space, and Place

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This interdisciplinary panel brings needed attention to the study of Latinx youth by considering how they enact their cultural assets to navigate and cultivate spaces of belonging in and out of school. The four qualitative research studies of this panel highlight the ways Latinx youth make sense of the racialized spaces and boundaries in their lives. While each study examines the ways Latinx youth are policed, silenced, and misunderstood, significant attention is given to how they resist and grapple with the tensions of crossing the academic and social borders in their lives. In so doing, allowing educators and researchers entry points into considering the transformative possibilities of what centering Latinx youth worlds can do for a liberatory future.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Latina/o/x Research Issues

Chair

• Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Papers

• Latinx Student Leaders' Spatial Perspectives and Practices: Ascribing Enjoyment and Belonging to Urban School Space - Claudia Diera, California State University - Los Angeles

• Social Belonging (or Exclusion) in and Beyond a Suburban School Setting for Latinx Immigrant-Origin Youth - Guadalupe López Hernández, Loyola University - Chicago

• Critical Childhood Geographies: Latinx Memories Entre La Casa y La Calle - Norma A. Marrun, University of Nevada - Las Vegas; Marcela Rodriguez-Campo, Nevada State University

• Cultivating Lugares de Ambiente: Surveillance, Belonging, and Latinx Suburban Youth - Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Discussant

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis