Undocumented Young Women Confronting Gendered and Racialized Illegality in School: Implications for Unafraid Educators

• In Event: AERA Virtual Poster Session
  In Virtual Poster Session: Division K - Teaching and Teacher Education Virtual Poster Session

Abstract

This paper examines the educational experiences of twelve Latina students who were undocumented. Latina students who are undocumented continue to lag behind their Latino and white peers as a result of historically built raced school structures of exploitation. Drawing on intersectionality theory, this ethnographic study seeks to understand from the women’s unique perspectives the specific ways that “illegality” and heteropatriarchy manifested, changed, or remained stagnant, interconnected with race and class, and how these cultural junctures were negotiated in undocumented spaces of resistance. Findings revealed that nationalistic discourses of citizenship were embedded in structures of white racist heteropatriarchy, in which these young women endured forms of racist gender violence, including sexual abuse. This study offers implications for policy and teacher education.

Author

• Rocío Sánchez Ares, Tufts University
  Presenting Author