Andrea Dyrness and Enrique Sepúlveda III, Border Thinking: LatinX Youth: Decolonizing Citizenship

Abstract

Reviewed by: Border Thinking: LatinX Youth: Decolonizing Citizenship by Andrea Dyrness and Enrique Sepúlveda III Gabriela Buitrón Vera (bio) Andrea Dyrness and Enrique Sepúlveda III, Border Thinking: LatinX Youth: Decolonizing Citizenship. University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Pp. 278. In Border Thinking, Andrea Dyrness and Enrique Sepúlveda III examine the ways Latinx diasporic youth dismantle rigid notions of citizenship. The book exposes how colonial discourses of the West cast Latino youth as either threats to the nation or unable to assimilate into discourses of the nation-state. Dyrness and Sepúlveda challenge such binary narratives by drawing from decolonial, Chicano, feminist theory, and participatory action research, as they contend that “diasporic youths’ connection to homeland and host countries offers them a critical perspective on national citizenship” (10). Border Thinking proposes that Latinx diasporic youth are well-equipped to redefine citizenship, particularly through the nurturing of their democratic yearnings and critical perspectives within pedagogic spheres and collective action. The book’s makeup reflects various Latino diasporic youth experiences with migration (in Latin America, the US, the Caribbean, and Spain),1 and studies how experiences with migration give diasporic youth new perspectives in decolonizing citizenship. Dyrness and Sepúlveda examine these perspectives by drawing on an array of active participatory research practices. These methods of engagement include “testimonio, poetry, participatory research, role play, interviews group [End Page 277] dialogues, identity mapping, and more” (28). These methods help diasporic youth reflect on their personal experiences and connect that knowledge to the political and the communal. Border Thinking’s five well-connected chapters present acompañamiento (borderlands allyship) in the form of pedagogic or activist solidarity that generate la facultad, “the capacity to see in surface phenomena, the meaning of deeper realities.”2 Chapter 1, “Acompañamiento in the Borderlands,” for instance, examines the role of humanizing pedagogy. Drawing from thinkers like Freire, Valenzuela, Valencia, and Spring, this chapter challenges rigid notions of nation-state narratives of Otherness. The chapter addresses Mexican migrant youth experiences navigating high school in a Northern California institution. Later, it highlights how educators who are not trained to be borderland allies can reproduce a system of marginalization that casts their students as uncultured and problematic, instead of agents of change. Dyrness and Sepúlveda assert that it is through acts of acompañamiento that educators and borderland brokers honor the stories and complexities of the Latino diasporic youth. One way of honoring these rich cultural complexities, the chapter claims, is by decentering educational achievements as the only measure of success. Chapter 2, “In the Shadow of the U.S. Empire,” explores the impact of the US interventions in the lives of youth from El Salvador. Using an ethnographic lens, this chapter examines how two schools in San Salvador introduce or omit notions of citizenship in the classroom. Significantly, what Dyrness and Sepúlveda observed is that in both schools (an elite and a low-income institution) students were socialized to imagine themselves as either neoliberal entrepreneurs or future undocumented or TPS holders in the US. These forced classifications damaged students’ sense of self because they were led to imagine a future of dispossession. Yet, through participatory research practices, Dyrness and Sepúlveda challenged these binaries, and students voiced their democratic yearnings and articulated desires for their future through communal dialogue. The disciplining narratives of Spanish nationalism on immigrant youth identities (156) are explored in chapter 3, “Negotiating Race and the Politics of Integration.” This chapter specifically examines how diasporic youth negotiate race and politics of integration in Madrid. To analyze this, Dyrness and Sepúlveda conducted citizenship workshops for diasporic youth. The participatory methods they used helped migrant youth articulate the frictions they faced with educators and national discourses that explicitly denied racialized conflicts. This chapter sheds light on how immigrant youths’ experiences with racism were silenced and misunderstood by national and official discourses, rendering them as problematic or unable to assimilate. Chapter 4, “Transnational Belonging,” likewise, analyzes how Latinx youth migration narratives challenged nation-state binary discourses. The diasporic youths’ comprehension of their fluid identities becomes crucial to [End Page 278] challenging rigid notion of citizenship. The final chapter, “Feminists in Transition,” inspects how transnational...