Learning from the Margins: Spacemaking and Radical Belonging among Bi/Multilingual Youth

• In Event: Re-imagining Equitable Inclusion: Immigrant and Refugee Parents and Youths’ Experiences of Dis-engagement

Abstract

Objective
Bi/multilingual youth, particularly Latinx and Hmong high school-aged youth, continue to face marginalization and isolation in schools (Marrero, 2016; Chiang et al., 2015). In this study, bi/multilingual high school-aged youth participated in focus group interviews that addressed their sense of belonging and their varied forms of participation, engagement, and involvement in their high schools. This paper was guided by the following research question: How do bi/multilingual youth create, defend, and transform space within schools that continue to marginalize them?

This data analysis examines how bi/multilingual youth engaged in transformational resistance (Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001) to create culturally affirming spaces within the traditional confinements of school. This paper offers a reframing of what it means for youth to “belong” in schools by emphasizing spatial and relational practices over school-driven exclusionary practices. Though these youth have traditionally been misrecognized as “dis-engaged,” this paper highlights how their practices constitute radical forms of presence, refusal, and community-making.

Theoretical Framework
The practices of bi/multilingual youth, such as claiming physical spaces within their schools, forming symbolic presences, protecting collective identities, and resisting traditional academic expectations for success, reflect spatial and representational acts of resistance. These acts can be understood through Solórzano and Delgado Bernal’s (2001) concept of transformational resistance and Soja’s (1996) notion of thirdspace, where youth co-create meaning and identity in school spaces that otherwise marginalize them. These frameworks help us identify how youth are actively reimagining school space and asserting their right to belong through creative and relational acts.

Methods & Data Sources
This paper draws on data from the larger study (see Paper 1). For this analysis, we undertook inductive coding of audio recording transcripts of two separate one-hour-long focus group interviews of bi/multilingual high school-aged youth, specifically Latinx and Hmong youth in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our units of analysis were the varied forms of participation, engagement, and involvement that the bi/multilingual youth described in the focus group interviews (Saldaña, 2021).

Results
Our analysis demonstrates the varied ways in which bi/multilingual youth created, defended, and transformed their spaces within their schools. Through our preliminary analysis, four common themes of youth practices emerged: (1) claiming physical and social space, (2) symbolic and visual spacemaking, (3) relational and collective resistance, and (4) refusal and redefinition of academic success. These youths’ acts of transformational resistance contributed to their spacemaking efforts to enact varied forms of radical belonging (Louie et al., 2022) within their schools.

Significance
Our preliminary analysis highlights the varied ways in which bi/multilingual youth collectively found ways to “belong” within the traditional social and physical confines of their schools. This paper calls for a shift in the narrative in what counts as belonging and succeeding in schools, recognizing youth’s spacemaking as critical pedagogy, and moving beyond recognition to redistribution by making resources available for youth to create their own institutions within their schools.

Authors

• Carlos Orozco-Wagner, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Taucia Gonzalez, University of Arizona

• Hetal Ascher Patel, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Andrea Espinoza, University of Arizona