“We are Not All Named Maria”: Building Transnational Identities in a United States International Baccalaureate High School

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this study, we use discursive analytic tools to understand how transnational high school students in one suburban high school in the United States Pacific Northwest describe their social and academic experiences in school. The majority of the students from this study were born in the United States and therefore do not fit with the traditional, geographically based conception of transnational. However, we argue that they experience cultural, social, and linguistic transnationalism in a variety of ways, and that their alignment with these complex identities influences their day-to-day interactions in school. We examine how these youth used language to position themselves racially and linguistically relative to others in their school community, and the figured worlds they drew on in the process. We find that 15 students expressed the complexity of their experiences as both insiders and outsiders in this school, sometimes engaging—and other times rejecting— the identities others ascribed to them.