Bridging Borders And Barriers: Transforming U.S. Higher Education for International Student Mothers of Color

• In Event: Latina Women in Education

Abstract

This embodied feminist autoethnography explores the experiences of a mestiza, Latina, international scholar, and solo parent of an autistic child while navigating U.S. higher education. Grounded in Chicana/Latina feminist epistemologies, it offers a situated critique of the institutional and structural forces that shape the lives of international mother scholars of color. Drawing from experiences as a master's and PhD student at a U.S. university during the Biden and Trump administrations, this work critically reflects on the university not as an isolated site, but as one entangled with federal immigration regimes, visa constraints, and racialized academic labor expectations. It calls for policies and practices that center care and plurality, where lived realities of international student-parents in academia shape policy and practice.

Author

• Marynes CastilloEspinoza, Pennsylvania State University