Borderlands Childhoods: Exploring Transfronterizx Children’s Fotografías

• In Event: Toward Literacies of Agency: Centering Transnational and Transfronterizx Communities and Their Knowledges

Abstract

Purpose & Significance
Education on the Texas-Mexico borderlands, where transfronterizx children and youth are, is discursively mainstreamed by media outlets and education reports as having low language and literacy levels, low academic achievement, and high dropout rates compared to the national average (Guerrero & Farrugio, 2012). This is due to a lack of relevant and meaningful curriculum for borderlands youth (de los Rios et al., 2015). To address this, transfronterizx community members such as children (and/or families) need opportunities to share their views and have input on a curriculum that reflects their border epistemologies. The purpose of our presentation is to center on how transfronterizx children image, through photography, their experiences with language and literacies on the borderlands.

Theoretical Framework
We draw on borderlands biliteracies and critical childhood studies to understand how transfronterizx children narrate their child-made photographs. Borderlands biliteracies refer to the border-crossing literacies from the perspective of the subaltern—an individual who has experienced marginalization through and by borders (Degollado, et al., 2021). Critical childhoods recognizes meaning as situated in children’s multicultural spaces and that children are agentic social actors in their own right. They are not simply passive recipients of a world with borders; rather, they also contribute to how borders are made and remade.

Methods & Data Sources
This paper draws from a larger study by Author 1 in 2016 that examined the language and literacy experiences of three transfronterizx children (all 8 years of age) from the borderlands. As part of the study, children made photographs with a digital camera and then engaged, with their mothers, in photo-elicitation interviews wherein the researcher asked them to discuss their multiple literacy and language practices associated to the narratives in the photographs.

Drawing from visual and participatory methods with children (Author 2, 2018), we explore how the children performed their biliterate identities through photographic encounters, including their choices in the images’ productions and narrations. Attending to the internal narrative (Banks & Zeitlyn, 2015) (e.g. where they take the camera, what gets included in their photos, who they ask to collaborate with them in making images) and the external narratives (e.g. what kinds of talk ensue from which images, what images hold affective power), we weave together stories that transfronterizx children tell about their biliterate lives.

Findings
The images created by the children were marked by the initiatives they took, investments they made, and their experiences with language and literacies on both sides of the US-Mexico border. There were three findings: (1) the photos depicted the border-crossings realities of the children emphasizing geographic space, connection, and mobilities; (2) the children were aware of how to read the texts that existed on the borderlands and that moved across borders; and (3) the children drew on their bilingual sensitivities to share about their relationships and care networks. The photos and narratives exemplified transfronterizx children’s worldviews. A view that highlights how the children see/understand their own childhoods, as not necessarily being fraught with tension or fear, as outsiders may be led to believe.

Authors

• Idalia Nunez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Tran Templeton, Teachers College, Columbia University