Becoming Transnational Youth Workers contests mainstream notions of adolescence with its study of a previously under-documented cross-section of Mexican immigrant youth. Preceding the latest wave of Central American children and teenagers now fleeing violence in their homelands, Isabel Martinez examines a group of unaccompanied Mexican teenage minors who emigrated to New York City in the early 2000s. As one of the consequences of intractable poverty in their homeland, these emigrant youth exhibit levels of agency and competence not usually assigned to children and teenage minors, and disrupt mainstream notions of what practices are appropriate at their ages. Leaving school and family in Mexico and financially supporting not only themselves through their work in New York City, but also their families back home, these youths are independent teenage migrants who, upon migration, wish to assume or resume autonomy and agency rather than dependence. This book also explores community and family understandings about survival and social mobility in an era of extreme global economic inequality.

Becoming Transnational Youth Workers contests mainstream notions of adolescence with its study of a previously under-documented cross-section of Mexican immigrant youth. Preceding the latest wave of Central American children and teenagers now fleeing violence in their homelands, Isabel Martinez examines a group of unaccompanied Mexican teenage minors who emigrated to New York City in the early 2000s. As one of the consequences of intractable poverty in their homeland, these emigrant youth exhibit levels of agency and competence not usually assigned to children and teenage minors, and disrupt mainstream notions of what practices are appropriate at their ages. Leaving school and family in Mexico and financially supporting not only themselves through their work in New York City, but also their families back home, these youths are independent teenage migrants who, upon migration, wish to assume or resume autonomy and agency rather than dependence. This book also explores community and family understandings about survival and social mobility in an era of extreme global economic inequality.

In Exiled Home, Susan Bibler Coutin recounts the experiences of Salvadoran children who migrated with their families to the United States during the 1980–1992 civil war. Because of their youth and the violence they left behind, as well as their uncertain legal status in the United States, many grew up with distant memories of El Salvador and a profound sense of disjuncture in their adopted homeland. Through interviews in both countries, Coutin examines how they sought to understand and overcome the trauma of war and displacement through such strategies as recording community histories, advocating for undocumented immigrants, forging new relationships with the Salvadoran state, and, for those deported from the United States, reconstructing their lives in El Salvador. In focusing on the case of Salvadoran youth, Coutin’s nuanced analysis shows how the violence associated with migration can be countered through practices that recuperate historical memory while also reclaiming national membership.

"Framed by the theoretical work of Gloria Anzaldúa, this volume focuses on the cultural and linguistic practices of Mexican-origin youth at the US 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"--

Long before the COVID-19 crisis, Mexican Indigenous peoples were faced with organizing their lives from afar, between villages in the Oaxacan Sierra Norte and the urban districts of Los Angeles, as a result of unauthorized migration and the restrictive border between Mexico and the United States. By launching cutting-edge Internet radio stations and multimedia platforms and engaging as community influencers, Zapotec and Ayuujk peoples paved their own paths to a transnational lifeway during the Trump era. This meant adapting digital technology to their needs, setting up their own infrastructure, and designing new digital formats for re-organizing community life in all its facets—including illness, death and mourning, collective celebrations, sport tournaments, and political meetings—across vast distances. Author Ingrid Kummels shows how mediamakers and users in the Sierra Norte villages and in Los Angeles created a transborder media space and aligned time regimes. By networking from multiple places, they put into practice a communal way of life called Comunalidad and an indigenized American Dream—in real time.

In the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Princesa of the Periphery explores this Disney property using multiple case studies to understand its approach to girlhood and Latinidad. Following the circuit of culture model, author Diana Leon-Boys teases out moments of complex negotiations by Disney, producers, and audiences as they navigate Elena’s circulation. Case studies highlight how a flexible Latinidad is deployed through corporate materials, social media pages, theme park experiences, and the television series to create a princess who is both marginal to Disney’s normative vision of princesshood and central to Disney’s claims of diversification. This multi-layered analysis of Disney’s mediated Latina girlhood interrogates the complex relationship between the U.S.’s largest ethnic minority and a global conglomerate that stands in for the U.S. on the global stage.

Centered around the idea that literacy teaching is more than the transmission of strategies and skills, this volume serves as a foundation for approaching literacy from an identity perspective. Through incisive and accessible chapters from top scholars, it introduces readers to the concept of literate identities, examining them across ages and grade levels to present an overview of how scholars and educators can use this concept in their research and teaching. Organized by developmental level with sections on early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, and cross-age research, contributors reveal how literacy can be framed as an identity practice to engage students and support their development. Applying a range of theoretical perspectives and frameworks, each chapter identifies the identity theory used, explains the relevant methodology and research questions, covers implications for practice, and includes questions or prompts for discussion. The volume reveals how understanding literate identities is at the heart of effective and inclusive literacy instruction by addressing key topics, including culturally relevant pedagogy, intersectionality, and transnationalism, among others. Illuminating multiple pathways to understanding students as readers and writers, this book is essential for teachers, scholars, and researchers in literacy education, research methods, and multicultural education.