Understanding the Development of a Collectivist Latinx Parent Identity and Conscientização Amid an Anti-Immigrant Climate

• In Event: Toward a Community-Based Approach to Leadership: Amplifying the Voices of Racially Marginalized Students and Families

Abstract

Objective
Given the current anti-immigrant context it is critical to understand how individuals, in this case (un)documented parents, lead organizing efforts within oppressive structures and policies. This study examines how parent organizing helped forge a collectivist identity among Latinx parents in an elementary school in the Midwest. Specifically, this study analyzes the processes and actions of a Latinx parent group that led to the establishment of a collectivist identity and the activation of a collective conscientização/critical consciousness amid an anti-immigrant climate. This study explores two primary questions: How did a collectivist Latinx identity emerge in a school amid an anti-immigrant climate? And, how did school officials’ respond to the emergence of a collectivist Latinx identity?

Theoretical Perspective
We relied on a Freirian perspective to better understand the development of Latinx parent collectivism and a collective critical consciousness. We utilized Freire’s (1970/2010) notion of conscientização to understand how collective Latinx identity was developed, activated, and nurtured through Latinx parental organizing (Jasis & Ordóñez-Jasis, 2004). We like Freire urge readers to “read the world” in which conscientização exists. For research participants, their world was surrounded by anti-immigrant rhetoric; therefore, within this context, we situate a Freirian lens to explore Latinx parent collectivism via the activation of conscientização.

Methods
This study emerged from a larger year two and a half year critical ethnography (Guajardo & Guajardo, 2002) with Familias Unidas en la Vecindad/Families United in the Neighborhood (FUV). Data sources included interviews, focus groups, photographs, field notes, and documents. We conducted a multi-layered analysis to explore tacit meanings and findings. This approach allowed us to analyze the nuances of FUV organizing within national and local anti-immigrant contexts, while identifying tensions between FUV and school officials’ responses to Latinx parent organizing.

Results
Our research suggests that critical consciousness was activated among FUV in three stages: (1) Stage 1 describes the strategies FUV took to develop a collective critical consciousness; (2) Stage 2 details how FUV activated (i.e. enacted) their collective critical consciousness; and (3) Stage 3 discusses FUV’s ongoing efforts to nurture a collective critical consciousness. To provide context to how FUV’s work was being perceived (and influenced) within each stage, we also surfaced school officials’ responses. Taken together, FUV’s organizing narrative highlights the ways in which parents, in this case undocumented immigrant parents (mostly mothers), developed a collective identity and critical consciousness while also navigating school officials’ various responses to their work.

Significance
By contextualizing Latinx parent experiences and actions, this study centers their narratives and knowledge. FUV’s organizing counterstory combats oppressive, marginalizing, and prevailing academic and public parental involvement discourse, which traditionally focuses on the school-centered experiences of white middle-class parents (Author, 2016; Authors, 2017; López, 2001; López & López, 2010; Olivos, 2006 and more importantly combats the anti-immigrant rhetoric that publicly shapes the immigrant U.S. experience. As a result, this study purposefully and strategically brings to the forefront the counterstory of an often overlooked and backgrounded people, Latinx immigrant parents.

Authors

• Érica Fernández, Miami University

• Katherine C. Rodela, Washington State University