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The Speculative Transborder Literacies and Civic (Re)Imaginings of Elementary School Students

Sat, April 26, 11:40am to 1:10pm MDT (11:40am to 1:10pm MDT), The Colorado Convention Center, Floor: Meeting Room Level, Room 708

Abstract

Objectives:
Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of seeing youth as speculative dreamers and creators, whose literacy practices reflect the racial injustices of their civic realities and also envision distinct, more equitable futures (Mirra & Garcia, 2020, 2022). This study seeks to understand the lesser-explored area of the speculative literacies of elementary-school students from border-crossing families as they grapple with and reimagine the curricular notions of citizenship, borders, and belonging found in school, as well as how educators can engage these students’ knowledges, literacies, and speculative dreaming. This study asks: 1) What speculative transborder literacies are young students enacting as they draw on transborder knowledges to think and talk about citizenship, borders, and belonging?; and 2) How can educators learn from the ways young students push their teachers toward more speculative thinking around citizenship and immigration?

Framework:
This study is grounded in the view of literacy as a critical practice, which attends to questions of power and inequity and strives toward justice (Freire, 1970; Morrell, 2008). We draw on the theoretical frameworks of speculative literacies, which recognize how youth literacy practices examine inequities and envision distinct futures that are rooted in liberation (Mirra & Garcia, 2020, 2022), and decolonizing transborder approaches, which contest the delegitimization of knowledges and experiences on the margins (Degollado et al., 2021, Dyrness & Sepúlveda, 2020; Mignolo, 2000) to illuminate the skilled literacies of youth and families who navigate imposed borders (Gallo & Adams Corral, 2023). We extend these frameworks to describe speculative transborder literacies: students’ spoken and written interactions around texts that plan toward futures that undo borders and the citizenship restrictions of nation-states.

Methods and Data:
This paper draws on a yearlong ethnographic study conducted in 2022-2023 with two upper-elementary classrooms in socioeconomically distinct districts in the Northeast, both with border-crossing students from a range of racial, economic, and national backgrounds. Data includes field notes from weekly participant observation during the entire school day, video recording and audio logs with focal students, interviews with teachers, student focus groups transcripts, and artifacts of student work.

Results:
Findings demonstrate how young students—inherently “speculative designers” (Wargo & Alvarado, 2020)—undo and rewrite the static ideas of imposed borders and nation-state belonging that are prevalent in school curricula around citizenship and immigration. They instead contest mononational approaches as they draw on their fluid, subaltern experiences to ask questions, plan for distinct, speculative futures, and push their educators to reconsider curricular assumptions.

Significance:
This paper draws attention to the speculative transborder literacy practices of young students from a range of border-crossing backgrounds as they negotiate and contest the ways “citizenship” and “immigration” are taught in school, which are often in stark contrast with their fluid, subaltern, and multi-directional experiences. We contribute to speculative literacies scholarship by highlighting how young students with immigrant backgrounds write and enact speculative transborder literacies and demonstrate the need for educators to engage students’ speculative transborder literacies as they reconsider curricula and pedagogies around citizenship, immigration, and belonging that are dominant in schools.

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