Centering Place in Ethnographies of “Latinx” Schooling: The Utility of a Multi-Sited Place Project for Revealing Emplaced Narratives

Abstract

This paper argues for a methodological approach, a multi-sited place project, to center place within ethnographies of schooling and facilitate deeper understandings of socialization into settler relations stemming from and supporting the white settler nation-state. This approach draws upon language socialization and critical place inquiry, tracing settler colonial narratives between schools and local history sites such as California missions, historic city walking tours, and township festivals. The multi-sited place project reveals emplaced narratives, stories that socialize people to particular relations and logics to and within specific places, connecting histories and identities to a particular place in the present, and in the process, shaping possibilities of who people can be in the future. Compelling this approach is a desire for greater understandings of incompatibilities within racialized peoples’ work towards liberation on Indigenous lands that are not our own. Its purpose is to bring together approaches for studies of schooling and place in ways that challenge rather than accept settler futures. A multi-sited place project carried out on unceded Ohlone territory illustrates the approach, advancing understandings of how “Latinx” youth and families, primarily of Mexican origin, were socialized into Californian settler histories and identities via a family day at a historic rancho.