UC Santa Barbara

In California, Latina/o/x youth make up more than half of the 2017-2018 K-12 student population. While recent ethnographic studies of Latina/o/x high school youth highlight the multiple ways this student population continues to underperform and teachers and school personnel continue to scrutinize youth for speaking “improper” or “mashed” forms of Spanish and English, my dissertation adds to the growing body of literature that contends that Latina/o/x youth are in fact sophisticated language users. Indeed, bilingual education in California has a politicized standing and often raises assimilative questions and concerns about immigrant children learning English. My dissertation analyzes how raciolinguistic ideologies of Spanish-language influence the educational experiences and linguistic practices of “academically promising” Mexican-origin high school youth in Santa Ana, California. Santa Ana, located 32 miles from Los Angeles, houses one of the highest proportions of working class, immigrant Latina/o/x families in the state. This project is locally situated and contextualized, paying close attention to the city’s history of segregation that sediment within local and contemporary understandings of race and education in working class communities. The student participants were all enrolled in the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) program – a college readiness program designed to help students develop the skills they need to be successful in college. My research largely focuses on the “Proposition 227” generation, or students who were never offered an opportunity to maintain their home language despite attending overwhelmingly Mexican-dominant schools. In order to understand how learning sites can function as spaces for socialization as well as sites of contestation, an engaged school ethnography composed chiefly of Mexican, immigrant, and working-class students demonstrates the resiliency of Latina/o/x youth. My ethnographic approach and research design uncover how knowledge of and access to Spanish language impacts Latina/o/x youth. This is especially important as the students are what I am referring to as the Proposition 227 generation; they are those who have had their entire K-12 education influenced by English-only policies. My findings reveal how validating Latina/o/x student engagement and funds of knowledge within educational settings, especially in relation to their linguistic repertoires and practices, can produce spaces and opportunities for students to contest oppressive assumptions about their native language. Students further develop navigational capital by connecting their linguistic abilities to their educational experiences. This research informs future discussions about critical pedagogies, English Language Learning programs, Latinx “push out” rates, and sociocultural linguistic justice.