Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
Reframing immigrant families as transnationals, this article highlights transnational families’ ways of knowing. This study is based on a three year, multi-sited critical ethnographic set of case studies of four families in the US and Mexico. Transnational families in this study demonstrated Nepantlera knowing, or liminal, bridge-building knowing which continually endures remarkable transformations through oftentimes ambiguous and conflicting circumstances. Families experienced the world as liminal knowers, or people who lived the ambiguities of being in-between, and as shapeshifters who navigated that in-betweenness. They also knew the world through their bridge-building efforts, and through the risks, pain, and satisfaction of bridge-building work. Families managed multiple tensions of knowing in such an in-between space, and they were path-breaking in the ways they reached out to disparate groups by bridging differences. This article includes recommendations for educators and researchers toward creating a more democratic and equitable society by drawing from Nepantlera knowing.
Recommended Citation
Kasun, G. Sue, "Hidden Knowing of Working-Class Transnational Mexican Families in Schools: Bridge-Building, Nepantlera Knowers" (2014). Middle and Secondary Education Faculty Publications. 48.
https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/mse_facpub/48
Included in
Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Junior High, Intermediate, Middle School Education and Teaching Commons
Comments
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Ethnography and Education on 20 May 2104, available online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17457823.2014.911664.