Search

In this article, we examine fugitivity and fugitive literacies as they are enacted by transfronterizx youth--young people who cross and experience life on both sides of the border between Mexico and the United States. Through a community-based literacy project located on the border between El Paso, Texas, USA, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, this article focuses on storytelling and multimodal creation, what we refer to as multimodal cuentos. Findings illustrate the ways in which Chicanx/Latinx "transfronterizx" youth exhibit, build, and sustain their ways of resisting white, Western, hegemonic definitions of literacy through communication and creativity. We theorize the notion of fugitivity on the border and share potential implications for language and literacy education for Chicanx/Latinx border crossers.

Argues that sustainability is a process that links social equity, economic growth, and environmental protection; therefore, sustainable consumption is a mode of consumption congruent with this meaning of sustainability. (Author/CCM)

Using critical theory and an analysis of missionary reports and documentation describing education in colonial Puerto Rico and Mexico, the authors cross borders and time periods to socially and historically situate Spanish colonial educational methodologies and their contemporary use in one low-income Latino community in urban Detroit, Michigan. By invoking associations from the colonial past to shed light on contemporary struggles, this study problematizes US educational reform initiatives such as high stakes testing and school turnaround policies. The authors found that when the playing field is not equal, such reform efforts are but another in a long line of colonial and neo-colonial methodologies that further disenfranchise Latino youth and push them out of school.

Mobile devices are highly portable, easily distributable, substantially affordable, and have the potential to be pedagogically complementary resources in education. This study, incorporating mixed method analyses, discusses the implications of a mobile learning technology-based learning model in two public primary schools near the Mexico-USA border in the state of Baja California, Mexico. One school was located in an urban slum and the other in a rural village community. Empirical and ethnographic data were collected through a series of achievement tests, observations, surveys, and interviews involving 160 grade school children recruited by convenience sampling. The general technology infrastructure, distinctive features of mobile learning to supplement literacy development, profound contextual phenomena arising from the two uniquely underserved communities, and social factors possibly influencing the educational experiences are discussed. The findings suggest that students in the rural village, seriously lacking educational resources and technology exposure, may have benefited substantially more from mobile technologies than urban school students possibly due to their relatively higher socio-economic status and higher parental involvement and interest in education. In contrast, there was no evidence of interaction with parental education levels, the experience of teachers or school principals, or the teacher's perception or preparation of the technology. Overall, the mobile learning technology adoption was rapid, seamless, and actively driven by the students rather than the teacher. The challenges of the phenomenal migratory nature of most families in this unique geographical region are also discussed to benefit future studies.

Mexicans living in the United States frequently rely upon popular healing to address a broad spectrum of physical, psychological, and spiritual ailments. They practice Mesoamerican healing ways including using herbal remedies, employing nutritional health promotion and illness remediation, over the counter pharmaceuticals, prayer and religion, and visiting expert healers. In this article, we utilize Brigitte Jordan's theory of "authoritative knowledge," to show how Mexican immigrants' ancestral and ecological-based healing knowledge travels with them through migration. Based on original ethnographic research in the Southwest borderlands, we expand an understanding of the factors that support the continuity of authoritative knowledge spatially and temporally. Mexicans' healing knowledge persisted north of the border because it (1) incorporated a wide array of healing techniques and materials that remained accessible post-migration, (2) enabled immigrants to heal according to Mesoamerican worldviews that privileged natural modalities and a holistic approach to body, mind, and spirit, and (3) remained relevant by allowing immigrants to remedy daily health stressors inherent to Mexican migration, including the border crossing, detention and deportation, and daily fear provoked by undocumented status. While lay practices have often been interpreted as problematic by medical professionals, we conclude that Mexicans' authoritative healing knowledge serves as a survival mechanism during the challenging circumstances of binational migration., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)