“It’s about hearing and understanding their stories”: Teacher empathy and socio-political awareness toward newcomer undocumented students in the New Latino South

ABSTRACT

In this article the co-authors draw from three separate ethnographic studies in the U.S. South to expand the literature about how teachers understand and apply multiculturalism specifically when working with newcomer undocumented immigrant youth. The co-authors identify an implementation gap between what is known about critical multicultural education and how it is put into practice by educators, specifically in regions that can be characterized as constrained policy contexts. Findings from collective analyses of data across all three studies add to multicultural education literature by directly addressing the ways in which policies govern the everyday lives of newcomers and inform the practices of their teachers. Key findings that represent generative dispositions and practices among teachers of newcomer students were strategic teacher empathy and sociopolitical awareness. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for practice and future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Newcomer immigrant students
• New Latino South
• qualitative
• multiculturalism
• undocumented

Notes

¹ Throughout the article, we use the term “newcomer youth.” This is not to collapse all experiences of undocumented, unaccompanied, or refugee youth into one category, but for the sake of clarity, we use “newcomer” to refer to the populations we work with that are primarily undocumented and unaccompanied Latinx immigrants in the context of the New Latino South. We note, in some cases, where the literature does in fact lump all of these groups into one category of immigrant, and how that is problematic, since their experiences vary (Amthor & Roxas, 2016).

² The Latinx population of the South increased faster than any other portion of the country from 1990–2010. The New Latino South refers to the specific and unique context for burgeoning Latinx communities in an area that traditionally had a sparse Latinx presence (Kochhar, Suro, & Tafoya, 2005; Odem & Lacy, 2009; Salas & Portes, 2017).

³ For example, Section 59-101-430 of the South Carolina Code of Laws, as amended in 2008, bars undocumented students from attending public universities in the state. Private universities in South Carolina, such as the College of Charleston, have used this law to prohibit admittance to their institutions, as well “or any other benefit including, but not limited to, scholarships, financial aid, grants, or resident tuition” (College of Charleston Registrar’s Office, 2014, p. 2).

⁴ The Supreme Court decision Plyler vs Doe (1982) guarantees all children, regardless of legal status, the right to a public K–12 education. However, in contexts like the South, this right to schooling is paired with restrictive laws that negatively affect undocumented youth. Gonzales (2011) explains that Plyler v Doe invites undocumented students into quasi-legal status for their K–12 education, but as undocumented students transition into adulthood, they realize that their legal status excludes them from many facets of United States society.

⁵ According to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is a violation of the law to be retained in a grade for limited English skills. As a result, Marcelo was placed with age-level peers, despite the fact that he had never been to school.

⁶ For more recent research about detention centers and the complexities of state intervention and immigration, see Heidbrink (2014) and Patel (2012).

⁷ See Glenn-Levin Rodriguez (2017) about the fragility of unaccompanied children.

⁸ In one week during February 2017, ICE arrested 19 people in South Carolina (Marchant, 2017). Additionally, ICE presence increased in other parts of the country, underscoring the oppressive realities for Ava and Tim’s students; see, for instance recent ICE raids in rural Tennessee (Martinelli, 2018; Shoichet, 2018).