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Teaching The American Dream: The Unintended Consequences For Latinx Students Conducting Participatory Action Research, Jennifer Lucko Oct 2019

Teaching The American Dream: The Unintended Consequences For Latinx Students Conducting Participatory Action Research, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

In this paper, I draw on my ethnographic fieldwork with Latinx English language learners in Northern California to consider how schools inadvertently contribute to internalized racism by teaching the ideal of an American meritocracy while obscuring issues of social justice affecting students and their families. In what follows I will briefly cover four main points. First, I explain the conceptual framework guiding my analysis of the relationship between school policies and practices and internalized racism. Second, I outline my fieldwork site and the research methods used during my study. Third, I describe how educational policies and practices at the Latinx …


Crossing The Street: Civic Engagement And The Politics Of Belonging Among Latino And Jewish Middle School Students In Northern California, Jennifer Lucko Oct 2019

Crossing The Street: Civic Engagement And The Politics Of Belonging Among Latino And Jewish Middle School Students In Northern California, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

In this paper, I draw on 10 months of fieldwork with English language learners in Northern California to explore the possibilities and limitations of Participatory Action Research (PAR) in schools doubly segregated by race and class. Today much of the progress integrating American public schools that occurred in the decade following Brown vs. Board of Education has been reversed—even as the overall population of public school students has become increasingly diverse (Orfield et. al. 2014). During the 2011-2012 academic year, 55% of Latino students and 45% of Black students in California attended intensely segregated schools (i.e., 91-100% minority students), and …


If They Tell Their Stories And No One Hears Them, Does It Challenge The Status Quo?: The Role Of Audience, Listening And Dialogue In Storytelling, Jennifer Lucko Oct 2019

If They Tell Their Stories And No One Hears Them, Does It Challenge The Status Quo?: The Role Of Audience, Listening And Dialogue In Storytelling, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

Storytelling is cultural practice long used by African Americans, Latinxs and Native Americans to understand and resist American structures of inequity and oppression. In this paper, I explore the relationship between the social context of storytelling and the construction of Latinx student identities using ethnographic data gathered during 8 months of fieldwork with nine middle school students from Spanish speaking immigrant families in Northern California. This group of students was invited to join an after-school program together with eight students from a private Jewish day school located across the street. Although one aim of the program was to facilitate intercultural …


Tracking Identity: Academic Performance And Ethnic Identity Among Ecuadorian Immigrant Teenagers In Madrid, Jennifer Lucko Sep 2019

Tracking Identity: Academic Performance And Ethnic Identity Among Ecuadorian Immigrant Teenagers In Madrid, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

This article examines Ecuadorian students' attempts to contest immigrant stereotypes and redefine their social identities in Madrid, Spain. I argue that academic tracking plays a pivotal role in the trajectory of students' emergent ethnic identity. To illustrate this process, I focus on students who abandon their academic and professional ambitions as they are tracked into low‐achieving classrooms, and in the process participate in social and cultural practices that reify dominant stereotypes of Latino immigrants.[academic tracking, identity, immigration, ethnicity, Spain]


"Here Your Ambitions Are Illusions": Boundaries Of Integration And Ethnicity Among Ecuadorian Immigrant Teenagers In Madrid, Jennifer Lucko Sep 2019

"Here Your Ambitions Are Illusions": Boundaries Of Integration And Ethnicity Among Ecuadorian Immigrant Teenagers In Madrid, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

This study analyzes the relationship between a discourse of integration in the European Union and the ways in which the ethnic boundaries of segregated social groups of immigrant children are conceptualized in one working-class and immigrant neighborhood in Madrid, Spain. I use qualitative data gathered during sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork among Ecuadorian immigrant teenagers to explore the unintended consequences of European efforts to promote the integration of immigrants in member states. My argument is that the pervasive discourse of integration in the European Union is central to a racialized process of subject formation occurring in Madrid through which the …


"We Didn't Have Courage": Internalizing Racism And The Limits Of Participatory Action Research, Jennifer Lucko Sep 2019

"We Didn't Have Courage": Internalizing Racism And The Limits Of Participatory Action Research, Jennifer Lucko

Jennifer Lucko

This article follows a group of Latino/a English language learners conducting Participatory Action Research in a segregated school. I examine how students’ perspectives on civic engagement shifted after they joined an after‐school initiative that brought them together with students from a private Jewish day school located directly across the street. Even as students formed new perspectives on civic engagement throughout the year, internalized racism framed how they understood their capacity for civic action.