Civic Literacies in the New York City Borderlands: Transnational Youth Civic Interrogation and Innovation

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Amplifying Multilingual and Transnational Student Voices (Table 22)

Abstract

New York City has long been a key site for im/migrant communities. This paper theorizes New York City as a borderland, and utilizes Anzaldúan (1986, 2015) theories to examine the literacies of transnational youth living and learning there. Drawing upon Mirra & Garcia’s (2022) framework of speculative civic literacies, this work examines how transnational youth engage in both civic interrogation and civic innovation. Through interviews and co-constructed dialogues framed as pedagogical encounters (Vossoughi & Zavala, 2020), this work expands our understanding of where the civic can live. This research informs how educators serving im/migrant communities across various contexts may enact pedagogies that de-center the nation state and make space for youth’s speculative civic literacies.

Author

• Rita Kamani-Renedo, Stanford University