Identity Negotiations of a Transnational Mexican American College Student

• In Event: Identity Negotiations of a Mexican Transnational in the Rio Grande Valley: Crossing the Border Daily

Abstract

This paper targets the cultural positionings of a US-born Mexican American college student who traverses the border weekly to attend a south Texas university. Her life is viewed via a transnational lens, for “transnationalism allows educators to grasp the greater complexity of many immigrant students’ lives” (Kasun & Sánchez, 2012, p. 77). While she now lives with her family in northern Mexico, she attended school in the US. Her positioning is further complicated by her love of Korean dramas and studying abroad for a summer in China. Using Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of cultural hybridity and Anzaldua’s (1987) ideas on border identities, we studied her complex senses of belonging via coding and analyzing observations and semistructured interviews.

Authors

• Xiaodi Zhou, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley
  Presenting Author

• David Martinez-Prieto, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley
  Presenting Author