Racialization of 'ESL students' in a diverse school and multilingual Latina/o peer mentors

Past research connects pervasive anti-Latina/o stereotypes to school practices and teacher-student interactions. However, there is less work on how Latina/o students negotiate and adopt such pervasive stereotypes when interacting with their immigrant peers. Using work on racialization and Bourdieu&#...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Race, ethnicity and education ethnicity and education, 2024-11, Vol.27 (7), p.1010-1030
Main Authors: Gast, Melanie Jones, Chisholm, James S., Sivira-Gonzalez, Yohimar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic departments
bilingual students
Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002)
Classroom communication
Cultural values
English as a second language
English as a second language instruction
ESL students
Hispanic Americans
Immigrants
Language attitudes
Latin American cultural groups
Latina/o students
Mentoring
Mentors
Mexican Americans
Motivation
Multilingualism
Negotiation
peer mentoring
Peers
Racial stereotypes
Racialization
Secondary school students
Secondary schools
Social justice
Spanish language
Stereotypes
Students
symbolic violence
Teachers
Violence
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Summary:Past research connects pervasive anti-Latina/o stereotypes to school practices and teacher-student interactions. However, there is less work on how Latina/o students negotiate and adopt such pervasive stereotypes when interacting with their immigrant peers. Using work on racialization and Bourdieu's (1989) concepts of misrecognition and symbolic violence, we analyze language surrounding Mexican, Caribbean, and Central American 'ESL students' in Peers Making Change (PMC) - a peer-mentoring program initiated by social-justice-oriented multilingual students in a U.S. Southern high school. The school's racial and academic divisions and PMC's focus on student 'motivation', coupled with broader racialization of Latina/o students, enforced divisions between multilingual mentors and 'ESL mentees' and hindered social-justice-oriented program goals. Educators and Latina/o multilingual student mentors unknowingly participated in symbolic violence as they circulated racialized language about (Spanish-speaking) 'ESL students'' presumed 'cultural values' and 'lack of' academic skills and motivation, indicating the micro-negotiations unfolding during responses to racial stereotypes and hierarchies in U.S. schools.
ISSN:1361-3324
1470-109X
DOI:10.1080/13613324.2022.2069737