Bilingual Identities in the Borderlands: Bilingualism and Mestiza Consciousness on the Path to College

• In Event: 44.047 - Explorations of Bilingualism and Biliteracy as a Resource Across School, College, and Career: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Objectives
Scholars across fields have documented the importance of home language support for emergent bilingual students’ access to academic success (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Cummins, 2007; García, 2009; Gutiérrez, 2008; Schultz & Hull, 2002; Valdés, 1996; Zentella, 2005). However, pervasive emphasis on monolingual-like English proficiency (Cook, 2016; Grosjean, 1989; May, 2014) and practices of academic profiling (Ochoa, 2013) in schooling continue to limit the opportunities available to Spanish-English bilingual youth. This persistent inequity stems in part from disembodied, cognitive, proficiency-based views of bilingualism in contrast to robust understandings of individually-situated and leveraged bilingualism that re-center cultural-historical contexts, relations of power, and intersecting fluid identities. Taking this view of bilingualism as a resource for situated identity work, this paper documents how Spanish-English bilingual youth leverage a critical awareness to navigate the differential values attributed to their bilingualism in schooling.
Theoretical Framework
I approach this inquiry from the perspective of Borderlands Theory (Anzaldúa, 1987), a culturally and historically-situated framework highlighting the metaphorical borders between social groups and the identity work implicated in border-crossing. From this dynamic identity negotiation arises what Anzaldúa calls mestiza consciousness, a critical awareness of social identities and one’s agency in relation to them. Drawing on the use of Borderlands constructs in educational research, I examine the position of bilingual ability in “what is considered the legitimate body of knowledge,” from the perspective of Spanish-English bilinguals (Delgado Bernal, 1998, p. 556).
Methods and Data Sources
In this work, ethnographic methods privilege the voices and analysis of six Spanish-English bilingual college students who identify as Latin@/Hispanic. I draw on their interviews, artifacts, and written reflections to respond to the following research question: How do youth perceive that their personal bilingualism and understandings of mestiza consciousness shape their transition to postsecondary trajectories?
Results
Foremost, participants identified the poignant challenge posed by disparate discourses about their bilingualism across different contexts. Specifically, while bilingual youth valued the connections between their languages and cultural histories, they also recognized and contested the implications of their bilingual cultural identities on ESL placement, academic tracks, and ultimately access to college. Additionally, while articulating the undervaluing of their bilingualism at school, they simultaneously invested in the projected value of bilingualism for their future career opportunities.
Scholarly significance
In this paper, I argue that participants’ negotiation of these differential discourses throughout their schooling experiences facilitated their strategic self-positioning for the transition to college. In this way, bilingual youth deploy an oppositional consciousness (Sandoval, 1991) to circumvent exclusionary monolingual proficiency expectations and inequitable tracking practices in school while maintaining a discourse of bilingual identity and ability valued for both personal cultural histories and future professional opportunities. By contesting dominant cognitive views of bilingualism in school and reframing bilingual cultural experiences as a source of mestiza consciousness, we can better understand bilingual youth’s context-specific stances toward bilingualism as they negotiate academic, social, and cultural challenges and, in turn, destabilize and transform educational inequities while navigating their paths to college.

Author

• Colleen Hamilton, University of Wisconsin - Madison