Precarious Community: Mexican Boys, Exclusion, and the Struggle for Connection

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: From At-Risk to Bien Educados: The Educational Experiences of Latino Men (Table 6)

Abstract

This study examines Mexican American boys’ experiences navigating racial stereotypes, perceptions of school climate, and participation in a young men’s group to explore their sense of community at school. Through two years of participant observations and sixty-nine epistolary responses collected from students designated as “at-risk” by their school, this study explores how educators’ deficit-perspectives of them frames student experiences at school and how they maintain community despite disciplinary disproportionality and exclusion. Centering the voices of Mexican boys, findings illuminate how school climate facilitates a sense of exclusion and precarious belonging which the youth resist by fostering their own community outside of most classrooms. Paradoxically, this formation of an alternative community is disciplined, thus, reinforcing exclusion on campus.

Author

• Jonathan M. Ibarra, University of California - Santa Barbara