DACAmented Latina Students’ Testimonios About Their Educational Journey Against the Backdrop of Racist Nativist Discourse in Washington State

ABSTRACT

During the anti-immigration climate of the Trump administration rooted in racist nativist rhetoric, the feeling of vulnerability became palpable for Undocumented and DACAmented students. Racist nativism, however, is not a new phenomenon; it existed long before the Trump Effect. This study presents the testimonios of seven Undocumented and DACAmented Latinas as they grow up in central and eastern regions of Washington State. These testimonios reflect the lived experiences in the intersections of racism, nativism, and classism. A LatCrit framework with an analysis of racist nativism is used to illustrate the ways racism intersects with other facets of discrimination as these students navigate their high school and college educational trajectories. Using this framework provides a window for understanding how K-16 educators normalized and legitimized racist nativist discourses during the period of 2000 to 2010. This study also highlights the ideological complexities as these discourses intersect racism, nativism, and classism. Finally, this study calls for policies to address racist nativist discourses in the educational system and address Undocumented and DACAmented students’ educational needs, primarily to mitigate the negative impact of the last four years’ extreme political rhetoric on this vulnerable but empowered group.

KEYWORDS:

• Racist nativism discourses
• LatCrit
• Undocumented
• DACAmented
• education K-16
• college
• Washington State

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Racist nativism is a conceptual tool that has been developed from critical race theory (CRT) and Latinx critical theory (LatCrit) to understand the experiences of Latinax at the intersection of race, immigration status, class, gender, and other marginalized positionalities. This concept is further explained in the theoretical framework (Pérez Huber et al., 2008).

² I am using the word American here intentionally to focus on a population that acts in accordance with racist nativist ideologies.

³ DACA, an acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is a policy that protects around 800,000 young people – known as “DREAMers” – who entered the United States unlawfully as children. The program does not grant them official legal status or a pathway to citizenship, but it does allow them to apply for a driver’s license, social security number, and work permit.

⁴ I use Latinx to be inclusive of all Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x.

⁵ Undocumented is a term used for people living in the United States without U.S. citizenship or other legal immigration status. An estimated of 11 million Undocumented reside in the U.S. in 2021. Following Lindsay Pérez Huber (2010), I capitalize the term Undocumented as a grammatical move toward empowerment and racial justice. I do not capitalize the term white in this article, rejecting the standard grammatical norm and the grammatical representation of power capitalization brings to the term white.

⁶ A term often used to refer to DACA recipients (see Gonzales et al., 2014).

⁷ Generally, the term hegemony refers to the work of Antonio Gramsci (1971, as cited in Pérez Huber, 2011) who used the term to describe how an elite ruling class could politically and economically control the working-class segment of a capitalist society through ideological coercion. Specifically, he links the role of language in the process of ideological domination. In a nutshell, a hegemonic discourse is the story that the ruling class tells to dominate.

⁸ To remind the reader of the historical, economical, and political discourses around Immigrants and how these affects Undocumented and DACAmented students, I purposely use Immigrants instead of Dreamers in this paper. I capitalize the I in Immigrants as a grammatical move toward empowerment.

⁹ Confianza (trust) is key to developing strong relationships and serves as a cultural support system that consists of making oneself vulnerable and willing to engage in social transactions of trust (Solórzano & Yosso, 2001).

¹⁰ The word deslenguada has a literal translation of “un-tongued,” “de-tongued,” or “without-tongue”; however, its connotation conveys the violence of linguistic terrorism and the physical epistemic violence through the literal and figurative meanings of the word lengua (tongue).

¹¹ ESL which is usually referring to development-level instruction in English language skills for non-native speakers.