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

Session Type: Virtual Working Group Roundtable

Abstract

This session addresses a paper targeting 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.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education

Chair

• Xiaodi Zhou, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

Papers

• Identity Negotiations of a Transnational Mexican American College Student - Xiaodi Zhou, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley; David Martinez-Prieto, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

• Estás conmigo, o contra de mí: Rigid Ideologies Regarding Academic Spanish in U.S. Academia - David Martinez-Prieto, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley; Xiaodi Zhou, University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley

Discussant

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