ABSTRACT
Historically homogenous, Christian, and working-class, many small towns in the American Midwest have undergone dramatic demographic and political shifts due to changing economic conditions and an increase in immigration. Prior research indicates that youth conceptions of citizenship are informed by a sociohistorical materiality of a place, where certain bodies have been granted access to full citizenship and others have been marked as unable to fully belong. Drawing from a year-long, critical ethnographic study in a rural, small-town, American high school, this chapter explores the everyday intersectional practices of othering that emerge in its public education system and highlights how three Black youth experience belonging and conceptualize citizenship within hierarchical conditions in formal and informal educational spaces and throughout the community. A focus on youth narrative, alongside observations of educational spaces and historical accounts of the town, reveals how longstanding dominance of exploitative labor practices and white supremacy in the United States emerge in the youths’ everyday lives and influence their conceptions of citizenship. The emphasis on how rural youth experience belonging, and the conditions inhibiting citizenship, offers a more nuanced understanding of how intersectional power structures are entrenched across the community and suggest where these structures might best be challenged.
