Fighting for Our Rights: Examining African Immigrant Youth's Civic Engagement Through Youth Participatory Action Research

• In Event: Vice-Presidential Session. African Immigrant Youth: Schooling, Education, and Civic Engagement in the African Diaspora

Abstract

Over half of the 164,000 African immigrants living in NYC relocated from West Africa (Gambino, Trevelyan, & Fitzwater, 2014). They bring a rich diversity of languages, and cultures. However, in the past few years, ICE deportations, vitriolic anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-black sentiment embodied by the U.S. election cycle (Raff, 2017), and viewing African migrants seeking asylum as a new face of crisis at the southern border (Solomon, 2019) highlight many tensions Africans/African immigrants have experienced. Mwangi’s (2017) review of studies on Black immigrants draws attention to a critique of the “universal black experience,” and over-reliance on assimilationist theoretical framings to address Black immigrants’ heterogenous educational, social, and language experiences as they intersect, for example, by country, social status and religion. Notwithstanding the reasons for immigrating or pre-migration status, African immigrants to the U.S. may be subject to racism that did not exist in home countries (Harushimana & Awokoya, 2011). The purpose of our study is to investigate such experiences, perspectives, and tensions surrounding educational and social injustices among 21 1.5- and second-generation youth from West Africa who participated in an after-school African Club from 2017-2019.
We draw on an interdisciplinary framework grounded in a culturally relevant-sustaining framework (Ladson-Billings, 1995, Paris & Alim 2017) and Sankofan approach to disrupt inequities affecting immigrant youth from West African countries (Dei, 2000, 2012; Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017). We examine three themes which illuminate how 21 West African youth exercised socio-political consciousness to challenge educational and social injustices through their YPAR/literacy projects: (1) experiences with colleges/universities, (2) safety and surveillance, and (3) relationships among Africans and African-Americans.

Authors

• Michelle G. Knight-Manuel, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Natacha Robert, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author

• Sibel Akin-Sabuncu, TED University
  Presenting Author

• Nicole Limperopulos, Bank Street Graduate School of Education
  Presenting Author

• Michelle P. Burris, The Century Foundation
  Presenting Author