ABSTRACT

Latin American Transnational Children and Youth focuses on understanding young people’s connection to nature and place within a transnational and Latin American context.

It serves to diversify, elaborate, and sometimes challenge the assumptions made in researching people and place, and unearths the complexities of a world in which the identity of many is not shaped by a single place or culture, but instead by complex interactions among these. Spanning across ages and geographies, the book explores the central themes of sense of place, identity, and environmental action, with an emphasis on Latinx and Indigenous communities. This book balances theoretical questions with geographically contextual empirical research. Each section is situated in current interdisciplinary research and provides geographically specific examples of children and youth’s perspectives on place relations, migration, transnationalism, and an emerging demographic of environmentalists.

Contributors from Latin America and the United States advance the fields of childhood and youth studies, environmental psychology, geography, sociology, planning, and education. This book looks across the Americas, to see how young people experience their worlds and constructively contribute to their places and environments.

chapter |12 pages

Across the Americas

An introduction to the chapters

part 1|66 pages

Perspectives on place

chapter Chapter 1|12 pages

Children's sense of place in transnational contexts

La querencia explored

chapter Chapter 3|16 pages

The notion of neighborhood

Children's perspectives on the city and sense of place in Mexico City

chapter Chapter 5|12 pages

Cultural hybridities in the multiethnic enclave

Generational perspectives on neighborhood identity in Wilshire Center, Los Angeles

part II|56 pages

Homeland, belonging, and transnational identity

chapter Chapter 6|9 pages

Belonging, place, and homeland nostalgia

chapter Chapter 7|13 pages

From the Cuchumatanes to the Plain of Flowers

Imagined nature and vivid nature among Indigenous children in Kuchumatán, Quintana Roo and Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero, Mexico

chapter Chapter 8|11 pages

In transit

The territory from a child migrant experience

chapter Chapter 9|11 pages

Across transited landscapes

Memories and experiences of terruño from young Mexican immigrants in the United States and Mexico

chapter Chapter 10|11 pages

Ways of being and belonging

Latina reflections on environmental identities

part III|88 pages

Learning and expressing care

chapter Chapter 11|12 pages

Rising voices

Participatory and anticolonial frames for realizing young people's rights

chapter Chapter 12|13 pages

In defense of Mother Earth

Rebel resistance of Zapatista children in Chiapas, Mexico

chapter Chapter 13|15 pages

Listening to Elders

Birds and forests as intergenerational links for nurturing biocultural memory in the southern Andes

chapter Chapter 14|10 pages

“When we cut them, they feel pain too”

Indigenous and Afro-descendent knowledges in science classrooms

chapter Chapter 15|13 pages

The emergence of concern for the natural environment

Farm worker children, pesticides, and direct experience in nature

chapter Chapter 16|12 pages

“I am an ecomestizo”

Significant life experiences of Latinx environmental professionals

chapter Chapter 17|12 pages

From paralysis to activism

Climate change and world care by young people

chapter |9 pages

Conclusion