Transnational Civic Engagement of a West African High School Student

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

Abstract

Popular media representations of Africa ignore the diversity of routes African migrants take to reach the United States, and their roots as members of the African Diaspora (Watson & Knight-Manuel, 2017, Ukpokodu, 2017). This paper explores how West African migrant youth engage in everyday civic practices amidst polarizing discourses of Muslims and African migrants as threatening and dangerous (Kiramba et al., 2020; Ghaffar-Kucher, et al., 2021). Utilizing theoretical lenses from transnationalism (Glick-Schiller, et al., 1992) and Diaspora studies (Lukose, 2007; Dei, 2011) this paper illustrates how migrant youth draw upon transnational care networks and intersecting identities as West African, female, and Muslim to engage civically. Data is drawn from a larger study of migrant youth civic belonging using a critical participatory visual research methodology (Rose, 2012).

Amidst continued anti-immigrant rhetoric and Islamophobia, civic education in the U.S. remains stubbornly rooted in conceptions of citizenship that condition belonging on assimilation into liberal democratic norms and procedures (Banks, 2008; Dyrness & Abu-El-Haj, 2020). This presentation has important implications for educators and researchers regarding how West African migrant youths’ transnational Diasporic ties foster unique forms of civic engagement that transcend Western notions of citizenship as tied to a single nation-state (Knight & Watson, 2014). Educators in the U.S. can learn from and build on the civic engagement and socio-political consciousness of West African migrant youth to benefit democratic citizenship preparation for all students.

Author

• Patrick Keegan, Purdue University - Northwest
  Presenting Author