Not Just Black, Not Just Immigrant: Intersectional Racialization and African Immigrant Students Experiences

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 4:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Intersectional Racializations, Gendering, and Caste Across Schooling Contexts

Abstract

This paper introduces the framework of intersectional racialization to analyze how African immigrant students are racialized in U.S. schools. Based on a qualitative study conducted in New York City during the 2021-2022 school year, this paper demonstrates how race, ethnicity, and immigrant status intersect to produce context-specific and contradictory racial positions. African immigrant students are simultaneously valorized as model minorities, ostracized as cultural outsiders, and subjected to structural anti-Blackness. By grounding the framework in youth narratives, the paper offers an analytic tool that moves beyond additive or binary models of identity. This theory contributes to research on race, migration, and education by illuminating how U.S. schools produce fractured and contested meanings of Blackness for immigrant youth.

Author

• Mercy Agyepong, New York University