The Construction of Smartness in the College Transition Experiences of Bilingual Latinx Youth

• In Event: Migrants and Migrations Across the Americas: An Educational Perspective Against Borders

Proposal

For many transnational youth, the transition to college is another border in a long history of border crossing. Literature has highlighted the gatekeeping mechanisms to college access for first-generation transnational youth in the forms of standardized test scores, the SAT, (Harry & Klingner 2014; Hatt 2007, 2012, 2016) financial aid, and documentation status (Arredondo, 2018; Gomez and Pérez Huber 2019). While scholarship, policy, and school district initiatives often position increased access to college as synonymous with equity, access alone will not lead to equity if the voices and nuanced experiences of transnational youth experiencing the transition to college are not amplified. This paper adds to the growing body of scholarly work that aims to subvert deficit discourse around transnational youth by inviting them to author their own stories about their experiences in the transition to college. I highlight findings taken from a larger dissertation study that explored the research question: How do first-generation Latinx bilingual students experience the transition from high school to college?

Using Chicana Feminist epistemologies and a pláticas methodology, I conducted pláticas, fluid, informal conversations in which trust between participants and the researcher is foregrounded (Fierros & Bernal 2016; Fierros 2017; ), with 4 first-generation Latinx college students about their experiences from high school to post-secondary life. Data collection involved 3 sessions of individual pláticas with each participant and a fourth session for a group plática.

For this paper, I will be focusing on one particular theme that emerged that was related to the construction of “smartness” and the impact it had on participants’ experiences in their post-secondary journeys. In a discourse of college and career readiness for all, how does “smartness” act as a bordering regime, to filter out who belongs/who deserves to belong? The social construction of “smartness” and its connection to whiteness as a tool of white supremacy has been documented by many (Hatt, 2016; Leonardo and Broderick 2011; Skiba 2012). The data from this study made visible the hierarchical orientations of academic “potential” that were at odds with efforts of a culturally sustaining pedagogy. My findings suggest (1) the interconnection of “smartness” and language, where participants were characterized as “smart” or more “college ready” particularly based on their command of English and traditional school-based literacies, (2) how “smartness” reified conditions of insider versus outsider that participants experienced upon entering college, and (3) how the pressures to be “college ready” or to prepare students in order to gain access to college resulted in teachers glossing over the individual nuanced experiences and circumstances of students and their migration journeys.

Author

• Lauren K McCoy, Manhattan Academy for Arts and Language