TY - JOUR
T1 - “Everything Went Boom”
T2 - Kinship Narratives of Transfronterizo University Students
AU - O'Connor, Brendan
N1 - Funding Information:
My profound thanks to my undergraduate coresearchers, Grecia García and, especially, Valeria de León, from whose wisdom and hard work I have benefited tremendously. Thanks also to all the student participants, especially those who appear in this article: your bravery, creativity, and good humor continue to inspire me. An early version of this article was presented at the panel “Anthropology of Education, Meet Kinship” at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. I am grateful to my fellow panelists for their conversation and comradeship in pursuing this line of inquiry. Additional thanks are due to Mary Good, who contributed invaluable feedback at an early stage, three anonymous reviewers, who provided useful suggestions for revision, and Linda J. Seligmann, who steadily guided the article toward publication. My own kin, Jennifer and Ellenor O’Connor, provided everything else. This study was funded in part by a Scholarship of Community Engagement Mini-Grant from the University of Texas at Brownsville Center for Civic Engagement.
Funding Information:
My profound thanks to my undergraduate coresearchers, Grecia Garc?a and, especially, Valeria de Le?n, from whose wisdom and hard work I have benefited tremendously. Thanks also to all the student participants, especially those who appear in this article: your bravery, creativity, and good humor continue to inspire me. An early version of this article was presented at the panel ?Anthropology of Education, Meet Kinship? at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. I am grateful to my fellow panelists for their conversation and comradeship in pursuing this line of inquiry. Additional thanks are due to Mary Good, who contributed invaluable feedback at an early stage, three anonymous reviewers, who provided useful suggestions for revision, and Linda J. Seligmann, who steadily guided the article toward publication. My own kin, Jennifer and Ellenor O'Connor, provided everything else. This study was funded in part by a Scholarship of Community Engagement Mini-Grant from the University of Texas at Brownsville Center for Civic Engagement.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - This article explores the interrelatedness of cross-border mobility, kinship, and higher education among transfronterizo, or border-crossing, university students in South Texas. Analysis of chronotopic (time–space) contrasts in students’ kinship narratives reveals that changes in mobility, occasioned by sociopolitical upheaval and students’ educational choices, were linked to fears about cultural change. Students referred to the replacement of traditional Mexican-origin kinship, exemplified in a childhood chronotope of cross-border gatherings of extended family, with a “more American” way of being family. The participants explored various understandings of risk and the implications for kinship practice and discussed the material difficulties of maintaining ties to extended family across the border. Beyond expressing anxieties about cultural change, the students, as emerging adults, used the narratives to position themselves in complex ways with respect to social and cultural transformations in the borderlands, considering their own complicity in these changes and reasserting their legitimacy as cross-border subjects. [educación, Estados Unidos, lingüística, México, migración transfronteriza, parentesco].
AB - This article explores the interrelatedness of cross-border mobility, kinship, and higher education among transfronterizo, or border-crossing, university students in South Texas. Analysis of chronotopic (time–space) contrasts in students’ kinship narratives reveals that changes in mobility, occasioned by sociopolitical upheaval and students’ educational choices, were linked to fears about cultural change. Students referred to the replacement of traditional Mexican-origin kinship, exemplified in a childhood chronotope of cross-border gatherings of extended family, with a “more American” way of being family. The participants explored various understandings of risk and the implications for kinship practice and discussed the material difficulties of maintaining ties to extended family across the border. Beyond expressing anxieties about cultural change, the students, as emerging adults, used the narratives to position themselves in complex ways with respect to social and cultural transformations in the borderlands, considering their own complicity in these changes and reasserting their legitimacy as cross-border subjects. [educación, Estados Unidos, lingüística, México, migración transfronteriza, parentesco].
KW - Mexico
KW - United States
KW - education
KW - kinship
KW - linguistics
KW - transborder migration
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053600100&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85053600100&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/jlca.12346
DO - 10.1111/jlca.12346
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85053600100
SN - 1935-4932
VL - 24
SP - 242
EP - 262
JO - Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
JF - Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology
IS - 1
ER -