| Popis: |
This dissertation is a feminist transnational cultural studies analysis of the discursive and material conditions of middle-class Latina youths’ identity and citizenship formations. It is part of a growing body of scholarship in the fields of educational research and girlhood studies that explores citizenship as a White cultural formation which influences the lives of racialized girls. Drawing from the theoretical perspectives of feminist transnationalism and cultural citizenship, this dissertation analyzes interviews, participant produced cultural productions, and U.S. visas and citizenship to explore the dual processes of how middle-class Latina youths who live in South Florida are made into and engage in self-making practices of “citizenship” and being “Latina.” There are four emergent themes in this study: (i) neoliberalism as the dominant discourse through which Latina youths are made into “American citizens;” (ii) stereotypical images and discourses on the “chonga,” “immigrant,” and “essential” identity as ways that Latina youths are made into “Latinas;” (iii) flexible citizenship and dissenting citizenship as Latina youths’ self-making strategies of citizenship; and, (iv) education and cultural pride as Latina youths’ self-making strategies of being “Latina.” Findings indicate that while middle-class Latina youths’ in South Florida are cognizant of dominant discourses on American citizenship and popular culture representations of young Latina women, they are also, and not necessarily in unproblematic ways, co-discursive participants in the construction of images of American citizenship and Latinas. |
