“Why Do I Have to Pledge the U.S. Flag? It's Not My Country!”: Latina Youths Rearticulating Citizenship and National Belonging

Abstract

Using interview data collected from high school students who attended school in Broward County, Florida, this article focuses on how first- and second-generation adolescent Latinas understand citizenship. The author explores participants’ citizenship formations using the conceptual frameworks of transnationalism and cultural dimensions of citizenship. Drawing richly from their voices, the author sheds light on the paradoxes of citizenship and national belonging by illuminating how Latina youth are positioned as ambiguous U.S. residents and citizens. She concludes with an exploration of the practical implications of attending to youths’ re-articulations of citizenship and national belonging.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Dr. Francisco Rios, Dr. Patricia Marshall, Dr. Özlem Sensoy, Dr. Anthony A. Peguero, and the anonymous reviewers for feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The author also thanks the Latina youth who made this research possible.

Notes

¹ I obtained institutional review board approval for this research project. All names used for the city, high school, and participants are pseudonyms.

² To keep the research site confidential, citations have been omitted and numbers and percentages approximated.