“Nobody Don’t Really Know What That Mean”: Understandings of “Queer” among Urban LGBTQ Young People of Color

ABSTRACT

Drawing from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 40 urban LGBTQ young people of color, I explore their uses, understandings, and meanings of “queer.” With several notable exceptions—those who at least occasionally self-identified as queer—most of the young people avoided using the term altogether. Although the majority expressed confusion about what “queer” meant, many understood it to be somehow related to sexuality or being gay, but considered it potentially insulting. I discuss the relevance of these findings for work in queer fields, where research participants may not explicitly identify as queer or make use of the word.     

On not ‘being there’: Making sense of the potent urge for physical proximity in transnational families at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper investigates transnational families’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak and the accompanying sudden and unexpected travel restrictions. Our data consist of written stories collected in April–June 2020 from migrants with ageing kin living in another country. For many respondents, the situation provoked an acutely felt urge for physical proximity with their families. By analysing their experiences of ‘not being there’, we seek to understand what exactly made the urge to ‘be there’ so forceful. Bringing into dialogue literature on transnational families with Jennifer Mason's recent theoretical work on affinities, we move the focus from families’ transnational caregiving practices to the potent connections between family members. We argue that this approach can open important avenues for future research on families—transnational or otherwise—because it sheds light on the multisensory and often ineffable charges between family members that serve to connect them.     

Crossing borders in initial teacher education: mapping dispositions to diversity and inequity

In this article, we share a study focused on engaging teacher candidates with multiple forms of diversity and inequity to study emerging patterns of dispositions. Our primary concern is in understanding the processes through which societal inequity becomes reconstituted through teacher education. Our study attempts to deepen discourses of ‘equality’ and ‘equity’ in education, to consider the ways teacher candidates relate to broader systems of power and global and local inequities through their role as educators. Inspired by both decolonial and Western critical theories, we frame this as research that seeks ‘otherwise’ as we invite teacher candidates to ‘cross borders’ to what is ‘other’ to themselves. In this article, we share our study’s priorities, methods, methodological/theoretical framework, data analysis and findings. Our findings identify a significant gap between the priorities of social equity to which teacher candidates state they commit and the educational practices that would affirm those commitments.