Transnational and Immigrant Youth Belonging and Their Entryways to an Anti-Oppressive Education

Existing research captures a grim state of affairs for immigrants in schools who arrive in the U.S. in their teenage years. Schools are ill-equipped to support them with quality education that considers their linguistic and transnational richness and that contends with the social precarity they experience both in and out of school. In light of these conditions, this critical ethnographic and collaborative dissertation theorized belonging (RQ1) from the perspectives and experiences of transnational and immigrant youth. In addition the study called to question what an anti-oppressive education for teenage immigrants would look like when informed by them (RQ2). The research took place in one senior social studies classroom in a NYC high school for recently arrived immigrant youth that was already focused on social justice oriented approaches to working with immigrants. Data were collected almost exclusively online because the research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in the form of fieldnotes from online class observations; interviews and focus groups with ten students and three parents; fieldnotes from collaborative meetings with the focal teacher; and interviews about pedagogical choices with the focal teacher and four other teachers that youth said were particularly supportive to them. The study findings center youth migration stories in arguing that for schools to move away from assimilationist concepts of education, they need to better understand how youth transnationalism works and trouble the idea that transnational and immigrant youth are “new” to the U.S. The study found that teenage immigrants gauge their belonging by their access to opportunities both in and out of school. The study also captured the dynamics of race, language, culture, and immigration that young people experience, how these relate to educational belonging, and how these problematize anti-oppressive pedagogies. Lastly, youth appreciated justice-oriented lessons, but their interactions with these lessons suggested they wanted to better engage in praxis for social change and utilize their transnational lenses in the process. Overall this dissertation argues that transnational and immigrant youth are not passive recipients of their education and their perspectives provide clear steps for schools to center their belonging.