Constructing Notions of Race and Citizenship in Law, Practice, and Testimonio

• In Event: Navigating Race, Immigration, and National Identity in Transnational Educational Contexts

Abstract

Informed by her forthcoming ethnography of Latina girls growing up in mixed-status families in New York City (Knowing Silence, University of Minnesota Press) and inspired by Gloria Ladson-Billings (2011) Brown lecture in Education Research, Figueroa will speak about the intersections between race and citizenship in the U.S. Throughout our conversation, she will weave in examples from over a decade of ethnographic research conducted alongside undocumented and mixed-status families, draw upon Ladson-Billing’s argument about shifting constructions of citizenship and the connections between race and literacy, and make reference to the Fourteenth Amendment as the legal basis for granting citizenship to freed slaves in 1868 and for granting access to public schooling for non-citizen and undocumented children a little over a century later (in 1982). Taken together, Figueroa will simultaneously center the unique experiences of race and citizenship lived by children from mixed-status families with origins in Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic while also lifting up points of solidarity between African-American and Latin American communities.

Author

• Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Graduate Center - CUNY