Applying Anzalduan Frameworks to Understand Transnational Youth Identities

Bridging Culture, Language, and Schooling at the US-Mexican Border

G. Sue Kasun, Irasema Mora-Pablo, G. Sue Kasun, Irasema Mora-Pablo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000548099
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Framed by the theoretical work of Gloria Anzaldúa, this volume focuses on the cultural and linguistic practices of Mexican-origin youth at the U.S. border to explore how young people engage in acts of "bridging" to develop rich, transnational identities.

Using a wealth of empirical data gathered through interviews and observations, and featuring perspectives from multinational and transnational authors, this text highlights how youth resist racialized and raciolinguistic oppression in both formal and informal contexts by purposefully engaging with their heritage culture and language. In doing so, they defy deficit narratives and negotiate identities in the "in-between." As a whole, the volume engages issues of identity, language, and education, and offers a uniquely asset-based perspective on the complexities of transnational youth identity, demonstrating its value in educational and academic spaces in particular.

This text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in the sociology of education, multicultural education, and youth culture more broadly. Those interested in language and identity studies, as well as adolescence, schooling, and bilingualism, will also benefit from this volume.

Part 1 Resistance, Language, and Identity Among Mexican-Origin Transnational Youth

Chapter 1 Travesía and Resistance Across Borders. Achieving Nepantilism?

Nelly Paulina Trejo Guzmán

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191575-3

Introduction

The Mexico–U.S. border represents a unique case of international migration. It has been, for several decades, the largest and most active border in the world. According to Durand (2000), the massive migratory flows across both countries have created a complex interdependence among them that has been characterized as a set of deeply intertwined symbolic and material inequalities. Heyman (2017) contends that societies along the Mexico–U.S. border cannot be any longer viewed as discrete homogeneous cultural entities that coexist on each side of a geopolitical border. These societies have created complex networks of interactions in multiple arenas generating a space filled with tensions, contradictions, connections, and diversity. Similar assertions were made in the late 1980s by Anzaldúa (2012) in her foundational work “Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza,” where she defined this space as “una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country—a border culture” (p. 25). Her writings proved to be so empowering for those of diverse backgrounds that they were among those banned in Arizona’s public school system.

Cantú and Hurtado (2007) succinctly put forward the idea that Anzaldúa’s literature “is dangerous only because it has the power to change minds, to disturb complacencies” (p. 3). It is that power that I intend to use to better understand the transnational experiences of four young people. The present chapter employs an Anzalduan analytical framework to investigate the life histories of four transnationals whose lives have taken place on both sides of the border. It specifically applies El camino de la mestiza/The Mestiza Way metaphor to depict the identity transformations that participants undergo during each migratory transition in their lives. The present chapter includes a reflection that revolves around the following questions:

• What impact do the discourses regarding language and nationality that young migrants encounter across borders have on their individual identities?
• What characterizes the selves and subjectivities of young migrants who remain in la resistencia?
• What characterizes the selves and subjectivities of young migrants who embark on la travesía (an increment of consciousness, a step forward) to achieve nepantilism?

A Blurred Border

Traditionally, much emphasis has been placed on the migratory movements of Mexicans to the United States. A search in databases revealed vast amounts of information on this issue. The most salient topics include illegal immigration (Hanson, 2006; Donato & Perez, 2017), drug-related violence (Borges et al., 2011; Heyman, 2018), language learning and educational attainment (Miller, 2016; Feliciano & Lanuza, 2017), and high-skilled migration (Tuirán & Ávila, 2013; Wise, 2015). In addition, there is a binational project run by Universidad de Guadalajara and Princeton University which has investigated Mexican migration to the U.S. for almost 40 years (https://mmp.opr.princeton.edu).

In contrast, little attention is paid to the flows of U.S. citizens to Mexico. A search in the same databases showed scarce results. Most of the research found focuses on the U.S.-born children from Mexican parents who returned to the country in large numbers since 2009 (Jacobo & Jensen, 2018; Masferrer et al., 2019; Montoya Zavala et al., 2020), and retirees (Dixon et al., 2006; Lizárraga Morales, 2008). However, an important issue is being overlooked by the literature: U.S. citizens have been the largest immigrant population in Mexico for more than 30 years (Montaño & Cervantes, 2017). According to the most recent statistics regarding the number of international immigrants to Mexico, authorities registered a total of 1,705,462 immigrants in the country (Encuesta Nacional de la Dinámica Demográfica [ENADID], 2018). The ENADID points out that 75% of immigrants in Mexico are U.S. citizens, making a total of 799,123 persons, and most of these are young people under 20. However, the U.S. State Department estimates that 1.5 million U.S. citizens live in Mexico (www.state.gov/countries-areas/mexico/). The reasons behind this sharp difference have not been investigated by academia, but several press publications have reported that many of these U.S. citizens may be living illegally in Mexico with an overstayed tourist status (Knobloch, 2020; Mark, 2019). This issue has been known to Mexican authorities since 2015, as government official data and Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary confirm (Consejo Nacional de Población [CONAPO], 2016; Sheridan, 2019; Fry, 2019; Rojas, 2019). In contrast to the data reported by ENADID (2018), press sources indicate that U.S. citizens in Mexico are currently employed, belong to age groups between 35 and 50, and have created strong bonds among themselves and Mexican citizens (Knobloch, 2020; Fry, 2019; Rojas, 2019; Sheridan, 2019).

This analysis brings light into a phenomenon that is not sufficiently highlighted by the prevailing discourse in academia, which is the fact that large numbers of both Mexican and U.S. populations perceive the neighboring country as a place where they have the possibility to improve their quality of life, and that both populations, documented or undocumented, are making significant economic, social, and cultural contributions to their receiving countries. This circumstance that is taking place despite borders, migratory regulations, and discourses of difference among Mexicans and U.S. citizens bears similarity with Anzaldúa’s concept of nepantla, through which she celebrates the possibility of cultural and spiritual hybridity through fruitful and eclectic alliances (Anzaldúa, 2012; Cantú et al., 2010). Anzaldúa uses the Nahuatl word nepantla or mental nepantilism to mean “torn between ways” (p. 100). In line with this mental nepantilism, previous research on transnationals has pointed out that the place of birth does not determine the ascribed nationality of individuals (Mora Vázquez et al., 2018). These findings highlight the possibilities of nepantilism that subsist within individuals that are in contact with more than one language and culture.

However, a word of caution is similarly valid here to not romanticize nepantilism. Transnationals, or those who migrate across borders, face racialized and gendered discourses (Bourdieu, 1991; Lotman, 2009) that shape their identities and levels of agency (Block, 2013; Norton, 2013). The experience of a white middle-class Anglo individual migrating to another country stands in structural asymmetry with that of a multiracial working-class Spanish-speaking person, regardless of whether this migration takes place northward or southward, legally or illegally. There is ample evidence in the literature of the historical repression and racism experienced by Mexicans in the U.S. (e.g., Brack, 1970; Menchaca, 1993), the institutional racism prevailing in immigration law enforcement (Provine, 2013), and the impact of racial barriers on the identities of Mexican-Americans (Ortiz & Telles, 2012). Similar issues are faced by dark-skinned people in Mexico (Aguilar Pariente, 2011).

El Origen de La Frontera

Bourdieu (1991) makes a critique about the origin of borders, and regional and ethnic identities. He understands them as social constructions that are imposed on societies by groups in power “to make and unmake groups” (p. 221). Furthermore, he places special emphasis on the role played by educational systems in the production of cultural differences and the legitimation of an “official language” (p. 45), all these with the pretense of erasing historical memories and creating consensus around the idea of sharp differences among social groups on each side of “a legal act of delimitation” (p. 222) of a non-existent natural border that is initially constructed ideologically. Borders are therefore the result of power struggles in which the political will of the most powerful, in this case the white Anglo, is imposed to erode historically constructed cultural and linguistic realities.

To better understand the reasons behind transnationals’ interpretations of their individual histories, it is necessary to look at them through Anzaldúa’s eyes. Her historical reconstruction of the events which took place during the 1800s along the Mexico–U.S. border helps us to revolutionize the hegemonic perspectives that we have learned from official history curricula and look for alternative and more empowering narratives that can lead to transformed understandings of La Frontera’s social and cultural dynamics.

El destierro (Anzaldúa, 2012) recounts the illegal invasion of Anglos into Texas, which at that time was Mexican territory. She describes how “all manner of atrocities” (p. 28) were perpetrated against Tejanos to drive them away from their lands. Moreover, after defeating Mexican forces in 1846, Anglos seized the territory that today constitutes the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California. Despite signing a treaty that recognized Mexican’s ownership of the lands, it was never respected. “The Gringo, locked into the fiction of white superiority, seized complete political power, stripping Mexicans and Indians of their land while their feet were still rooted in it” (p. 29). This stands in sharp contrast with the Anglocentric depiction of the Battle of the Alamo, in which Mexicans are portrayed as cowards and villains and has served as a historical narrative to legitimize the invasion of Mexican territory. In Mexico, official textbooks (free texts that are distributed across the country that contain the national curricula for basic education) tell the story of a war that ends after a villain sold more than half of our territory to the U.S. in 1848, the country’s former president Antonio López de Santa Anna. This narrative leaves out important details that precipitated this war, such as the occupation of Mexican territory by undocumented farmers and adventurers from the U.S. since 1823, and how, in 1845, U.S. authorities offered to pay an alleged debt from the Mexican government to U.S. citizens who claimed that Mexican citizens who were the original owners of the land were in debt with them.

Anzaldúa (2012) questions the dominant narrative regarding the understandings of Mexican migration to U.S. territory, whether this is documented or undocumented and conceives it as “the return odyssey to the historical/mythological Aztlán” (p. 33), since she undertakes a historical analysis of this phenomenon without excluding events that took place before 1820 (Alcaraz et al., 1980). Anzaldúa additionally speaks strongly against rigidity or stagnation of the self, “la resistencia—resistance to knowing, to letting go” (p. 70), which entails avoiding the possibility of gaining knowledge and a better understanding of the self, condemning it to “death” (p. 100). She highlights that flexibility and the capacity of continuous transformation are two attributes that lead to increased levels of agency and stronger identities: “it is not enough to stand on the opposite riverbank, shouting questions, challenging patriarchal, white conventions” (p. 100). The mestiza consciousness transforms the ways individuals perceive reality and, therefore, the ways they act upon their world.

Methodology

This study adopts a phenomenological approach to analyze the ways in which young transnationals’ identities are transformed as a result of migratory transitions in their lives. Phenomenological studies enable deep understandings of common lived experiences of individuals (Moustakas, 1994). In this case, the phenomenon under study is the contact transnationals have with languages, discourses, and cultural practices across borders.

Data for the present study come from several conversations I held during the years 2018 and 2019 with former students of a B.A. program in applied linguistics and colleagues from a language center where I worked at the beginning of my career. These conversations were part of ongoing research that a group of colleagues and I from three different public higher education institutions—two in Mexico and one in the U.S.—had been carrying out on transnationalism, bilingualism, and interculturality. The participants whose conversations are analyzed in this chapter were selected due to the ample details they provided about their experiences and the depth of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• About the Editors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: When the Bridge Could Build Itself—Without Permission—Through Mexican-Origin Transnational Youth
• Part 1 Resistance, Language, and Identity Among Mexican-Origin Transnational Youth
• Part 2 Formal Schooling and Transnationalism From an Anzalduan Lens
• Part 3 Theorizing Transnationalism With Anzaldúa
• Conclusion: Expanding Transnational Bridges for a World Where Many Worlds Fit
• Index