Tracing Asian American Youths’ Transnational Civic Literacies through Youth Participatory Action Research

• In Event: Unforgetting Multiple Histories and Imagining Multiple Futures of Asian(American) Im/migrant Literacies

Abstract

While Asian American (AsAm) youth are often dismissed as docile and disengaged civic actors, their transborder lifeworlds position them to cultivate rich literacies about the tensions and possibilities of democratic life (Yu et al., 2024). Yet, little research has explored how critical educational opportunities can nurture these practices. This paper accordingly explores the following question: how, in a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) community, did nine AsAm youth draw on literacies rooted in their transnational lives for civic inquiry and action? Framing AsAm youth as transborder civic meaning-makers, this work also examines how literacy-infused YPAR programs can foster their democratic empowerment.
This paper builds on Kwon, Ghiso, and Martínez-Álvarez’s (2019) conception of transnational funds of knowledge to conceptualize the experiential resources underpinning youths’ literacies. This underscores AsAm youths’ wisdom that emerges from their “transnational experiences and connections” (Yu et al., 2024 pp.9-10). The paper also utilizes AsianCrit (Iftikar & Museus, 2018) to contextualize youths’ racialized civic identities in White supremacist, colonial, and capitalist conditions. Finally, it extends critical sociocultural literacy perspectives (Luke, 2012; Street, 2003) to conceptualize the critical interpretive and expressive practices they mobilized for YPAR-based learning.
This paper highlights data from a virtual YPAR study that we (a South Asian American faculty member, an Indian PhD student, and a Chinese PhD student) facilitated alongside 9 diverse AsAm youth in a northeast U.S. metropolitan area. YPAR is a participatory research and educational method in which youth explore civic issues through inquiry and action (Mirra & Garcia, 2017). From Spring 2024 to Summer 2025, youth researched social issues they cared about (e.g., minority tokenization; xenophobia) and shared their findings during a public-facing May 2025 showcase.
Our analysis relied on YPAR session recordings, youths’ artifacts, and our field-notes. Informed by our theoretical framework and research question, we used multiple rounds of coding and analytic memo-writing to explore how AsAm youth drew on their transborder literacies for civic inquiry (Saldaña, 2013). We first found how youth summoned transnational funds of knowledge-rooted literacies to conceptualize civic issues at a transnational scale. Across sessions, youth consistently used their literacies to explore the cross-border reach of social issues they cared about – thus revealing civic perspectives that transcended national borders. This was clear when, for example, a Vietnamese American student researching anti-Asian hate during COVID-19 used her oral and written literacies to conceptualize this issue as a global phenomenon. Next, we found how youth positioned their immigrant families as civic learning resources. For example, another student drew on her experiences growing up in a Taiwanese American household to write reflectively about her chosen YPAR topic: AsAm parents’ transcultural child-rearing strategies. This finding shows how youths’ cross-border family networks were rich resources for their civic inquiries.
Illustrating how AsAm youth drew on funds of knowledge-rooted literacies for YPAR-based learning, this paper will foreground AsAm youth as critical democratic analysts and actors. In line with the AERA 2026 theme, it will elucidate how literacy-infused YPAR programs can help us “unforget histories” and “imagine futures” alongside them.

Author

• Ankhi Guha Thakurta, Boston College