ABSTRACT
Latinas/os and Chicanas/os have long challenged dominant forms of schooling and education since the beginning of European colonialism some 500 years ago.1 The diaspora of Latinos/as is a millennium-old process of border crossings and challenges to Western-centric narratives of nation, citizenship, and belonging in a cultural borderland (Villenas, 2009). To speak of a diaspora is to remember the diasporic character of the pre-twentieth century Americas and to consider how U.S. Latinos/as and Chicanos/as shape and are shaped by the U.S. and their heritage homelands (MacDonald & Carrillo, 2010). To speak of a diaspora is to examine how families’ transnational practices of education and their schooling rupture geographies and borders. To speak of a diaspora is to explore these processes in new Latino/a destinations with old and new migrants (e.g., diverse Latino groups in North Carolina), and in old Latino/Chicano borderlands with new diverse communities (e.g., Mexicans in New York City) (Hamann & Harklau, 2010). The twenty-first century Latino/a diaspora is confronting new barriers and distinct ways in which diverse groups are incorporated and racialized into American society and its schools. Understanding these developments call for new concepts of culture, identity, and language, and new research methodologies and storytelling techniques.
