Border Brokers: Teachers and Undocumented Mexican Students in Search of Acompañamiento |
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| Authors: | Enrique Sepúlveda III |
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| Institution: | Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado Boulder, USA |
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| Abstract: | This article examines the deployment of border conocimiento and the subsequent cultural production of third spaces for transnational Mexican youth by Chicano educators who I call “border brokers” at a northern California high school. It examines the micro-level insurgent actions on the part of a small group of educators at Bosque High to engage Mexican migrant youth through a different educational vision and narrative—a vision based on communal notions of learning and belonging and border epistemology, what I call Acompañamiento, where the meaning and scope of membership in the community in which one lives are addressed. Demonstrating a border epistemology, border teachers understood intimately the need to go beyond narrow constructions of academic success to join in the struggle for full realization of their students’ humanity and need to be in community. Using ethnographic data from a year-long study at a northern California high school and town, this paper examines the different ways that educators came together to claim space and create place for displaced transmigrants in what I call acts of acompañamiento—a fluid cultural practice of solidarity, advocacy, and relationship/community building based on cultural knowledge situated in border zones. |
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