She wasn’t really racist but..”: Undocumented Latinx Secondary Education Students Racialization Experiences

• In Event: Navigating Access and Opportunity: Examining Challenges, Resistance, and Possibilities of Undocumented Students' Success in California

Abstract

Objectives, Framework, Significance. This paper explores reflections on the lived high school experiences of four undocumented Latinx students. Following the work of scholars who have begun to explore the connections between racialization and immigration in education (Arriaga & Rodriguez, 2021; Rodriguez, 2020, 2021), this study contributes to this emergent body of literature by illuminating how undocumented Latinx students navigated social and linguistic challenges while enrolled in their high schools. Specifically, this study employs Omi and Winant's (2015) concept of racialization which they define as “the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group” (p. 111). Participants’ experiences with school administrators and teachers, peers, and school policies contributed to how these students were racialized by the social practices and groups in their schools. Our contribution to the literature highlights the experiences where students felt marginalized through the racialization of language. We situated such experiences from a raciolinguistic perspective where we unpack the “co-naturalization of language and race” (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017).

Methods & Data Sources. Research data was drawn from a narrative inquiry qualitative research project conducted in 2021. We focus on participants’ experiences navigating racialization processes in their schools. This project employed a qualitative narrative inquiry approach that allowed us to use participants’ first-person stories as data.(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Convenience sampling was used to select participants, and the data was collected using semi-structured interviews (Brenner, 2006). A grounded theory approach was used to identify key patterns, themes, and significant processes in the data (Charmaz, 2006). This grounded theory approach involved two phases of analysis: 1) during the first coding phase, the authors independently analyzed the data to identify initial codes, themes, and areas for further exploration, and, 2) during the focused coding phase, the authors jointly identified salient codes and themes from the initial coding phase to organize and synthesize the data (Charmaz, 2006).

Results. Our study illuminates how racialization processes impacted immigrant students' experiences in high school. Omi and Winant’s (2015) concept of racial formations helped us analyze how these students experienced racialization processes as they navigated relationships with school administrators, teachers, and peers. Additionally, our findings highlighted how language was a major part of the racialization students encountered. For example, in one of the excerpts we analyzed, Rodrigo specifically states that his challenges were “all about language,” and he describes feeling ignored because he did not receive language support in mainstream classes like he received when he first enrolled in school and was placed in the English Language Development (ELD) program. Rodrigo felt ignored and unsupported because teachers assumed that he was fully proficient in English, but placement in mainstream classes does not erase his linguistic challenges. This instance of the racialization of language can be best understood though a raciolinguistic perspective to disentangle instances where race and language appeared to be intertwined (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017). The analysis of racialization of undocumented Latinx students through language is a key contribution of this work.

Authors

• Raul Meneses Samperio, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Eduardo Mosqueda, University of California - Santa Cruz