For too long, the histories, experiences, cultures, and languages of students of color have been devalued, misinterpreted, or omitted within formal educational settings. In this article, the author uses critical race theory (CRT) and Latina/Latino critical theory (LatCrit) to demonstrate how critical raced-gendered epistemologies recognize students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. In doing so, she discusses how CRT and LatCrit provide an appropriate lens for qualitative research in the field of education. She then compares and contrasts the experiences of Chicana/Chicano students through a Eurocentric and a critical raced-gendered epistemological perspective and demonstrates that each perspective holds vastly different views of what counts as knowledge, specifically regarding language, culture, and commitment to communities. She then offers implications of critical raced-gendered epistemologies for both research and practice and concludes by discussing some of the critiques of the use of the...

Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Raced-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge:

Mexican migration to the US is distinguished by a seeming paradox that is seldom examined: while no other country has supplied nearly as many migrants to the US as Mexico has since 1965, virtually all major changes in US immigration law during this period have created ever more severe restrictions on the conditions of “legal” migration from Mexico. Indeed, this seeming paradox presents itself in a double sense: on the one hand, apparently liberalizing immigration laws have in fact concealed their significantly restrictive features, especially for Mexicans; on the other hand, ostensibly restrictive immigration laws intended to deter migration have nonetheless been instrumental in sustaining Mexican migration, but only by significantly restructuring migrants’ legal status as “undocumented.” Beginning in the 1960s— precisely when Mexican migration escalated dramatically—and ever since, persistent revisions in the law have made it virtually impossible for the great majority who would migrate from Mexico to do so in accord with the law and have thus played an instrumental role in the production of a legally vulnerable, undocumented workforce of “illegal aliens.”

The Legal Production of Mexican/Migrant “Illegality”

Given the vast scope and magnitude of the phenomenon of so-called “illegal” migration in the present historical moment, this article contends that phenomenologically engaged ethnography has a crucial role to play in sensitizing not only anthropologists, but also policymakers, politicians, and broader publics to the complicated, often anxiety-ridden and frightening realities associated with “the condition of migrant illegality,” both of specific host society settings and comparatively across the globe. In theoretical terms, the article constitutes a preliminary attempt to link pressing questions in the fields of legal anthropology and anthropology of transnational migration, on one hand, with recent work by phenomenologically oriented scholars interested in the anthropology of experience, on the other. The article calls upon ethnographers of undocumented transnational migration to bridge these areas of scholarship by applying what can helpfully be characterized as a “critical phenomenological” approach to the study of migrant “illegality” (Willen, 2006; see also Desjarlais, 2003). This critical phenomenological approach involves a three-dimensional model of illegality: first, as a form of juridical status; second, as a sociopolitical condition; and third, as a mode of being-in-the-world. In developing this model, the article draws upon 26 non-consecutive months of ethnographic field research conducted within the communities of undocumented West African (Nigerian and Ghanaian) and Filipino migrants in Tel Aviv, Israel, between 2000 and 2004. During the first part of this period, “illegal” migrants in Israel were generally treated as benign, excluded “Others.” Beginning in mid-2002, however, a resource-intensive, government-sponsored campaign of mass arrest and deportation reconfigured the condition of migrant “illegality” in Israel and, in effect, transformed these benign “Others” into wanted criminals. By analyzing this transformation the article highlights the profound significance of examining not only the judicial and sociopolitical dimensions of what it means to be “illegal” but also its impact on migrants' modes of being-in-the-world.

Toward a Critical Phenomenology of “Illegality”: State Power, Criminalization, and Abjectivity among Undocumented Migrant Workers in Tel Aviv, Israel

(2002). A Critical Race Counterstory of Race, Racism, and Affirmative Action. Equity & Excellence in Education: Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 155-168.

A Critical Race Counterstory of Race, Racism, and Affirmative Action.

In this article, Villenas and Deyhle use the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT) to examine Latino schooling and family education as portrayed in seven recent ethnographic studies. They argue that CRT provides a powerful tool to understand how the subordination and marginalization of people of color is created and maintained in the United States. The ethnographic studies of Latino education are filled with the stories and voices of Latino parents and youth. These stories and voices are the rich data by which a CRT lens can unveil and explain how and why “raced” children are overwhelmingly the recipients of low teacher expectations and are consequently tracked, placed in low-level classes and receive “dull and boring” curriculum. The voices of Latino parents reveal how despite the school rhetoric of parent involvement, parents are really “kept out” of schools by the negative ways in which they are treated, by insensitive bureaucratic requirements, and by the ways in which school-conceived parent inv...

Critical Race Theory and Ethnographies Challenging the Stereotypes: Latino Families, Schooling, Resilience and Resistance

This study analyzes the socioeconomic origins of the theory and practice of de jure segregated school facilities for Mexican-Americans, tracing the educational experience of several generations of Mexican-American children.

Chicano education in the era of segregation

A decade of political infighting over comprehensive immigration reform appears at an end, after the 2012 election motivated the Republican Party to work with the Democratic Party's immigration reform agendas. However, a guest worker program within current reform proposals is generally overlooked by the public and by activist organizations. Also overlooked is significant corporate lobbying that affects legislation. This updated edition critically examines the new guest worker program included in the White House and Congressional bipartisan committee s immigration reform blueprints and puts the debate into historical and contemporary contexts. It describes how the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO agreed on guidelines for a new guest worker program to be included in the plan. Gonzalez shows how guest worker programs stand within a history of utilizing controlled, cheap, disposable labor with lofty projections rarely upheld. For courses in a wide variety of disciplines, this timely text taps into trends toward teaching immigration politics and policy.Features of the New Edition"

Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States

Introduction 1. Chicano History: Transcending Cultural Models 2. Empire and the Origins of 20th Century Migration from Mexico to the United States 3. The Ideology and Practice of Empire: The U. S., Mexico and Mexican Immigrants 4. Agency, Gender and Migration 5. The Integration of Mexican Workers into the U. S. Economy 6. Denying Empire: The Journal of American History on the Ideological Warpath Conclusion: Chicano History into the Twenty-First Century

A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations and Migration

Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1. The 1910 Mexican Revolution, the United States, and Mexico de afuera Chapter 2. Organizing Mexico de afuera in Southern California Chapter 3. The Los Angeles County Strike of 1933 Chapter 4. The San Joaquin Valley Strike of 1933 Chapter 5. The Imperial Valley Strikes of 1933-1934 Chapter 6. Denouement and Renaissance Notes Bibliography Index

Gilbert G. Gonzalez

Papers

Chicano education in the era of segregation

Guest Workers or Colonized Labor?: Mexican Labor Migration to the United States

A Century of Chicano History: Empire, Nations and Migration

Labor and Community: Mexican Citrus Worker Villages in a Southern California County, 1900-1950

Mexican Consuls and Labor Organizing: Imperial Politics in the American Southwest