ABSTRACT

This is a story about a context of writing that is often invisible to many across the academy: the visa application, a core part of the (often grueling) material conditions of labor that more than 1.5 million of our fellow colleagues and students navigate in (K-20) schools throughout the United States. The ways our colleagues and families navigate visa processes reveal an ongoing and profound labor inequity. This chapter reflects on how and why I designed, and for the last 11 years continue to teach, a transnational First-Year Writing class in which students in the United States and students in Colombia write U.S. visa applications together. Called PBM, Proyecto Boston Medellín, our class designs and hosts an art exhibition in the United States and cities throughout the Americas. This article is a call to action for education to move from a national to a transnational planetary imaginary by redefining belonging and expertise.