Tracking Identity: Academic Performance and Ethnic Identity among Ecuadorian Immigrant Teenagers in Madrid

Abstract

This article examines Ecuadorian students' attempts to contest immigrant stereotypes and redefine their social identities in Madrid, Spain. I argue that academic tracking plays a pivotal role in the trajectory of students' emergent ethnic identity. To illustrate this process, I focus on students who abandon their academic and professional ambitions as they are tracked into low-achieving classrooms, and in the process participate in social and cultural practices that reify dominant stereotypes of Latino immigrants. [academic tracking, identity, immigration, ethnicity, Spain]