“Where We Are Within That”: Chuj Sovereignty and Belonging Across Overlapping Settler Borders

Abstract

This article centers two “zones of sovereignty” that Maya Chuj youth organizers and educators in Guatemala and the United States created from within and across nation‐states and settler colonial projects. It highlights how these spaces supported Chuj young people and educators as they navigated and (re)imagined relationality and belonging across transnational and diaspora spaces in ways that refused and challenged settler colonial and imperialist nation‐state logics and boundaries.

Understanding the Mobilities of Indigenous Migrant Youth across the Americas

“…Hemispheric forms of institutional inequality has prompted scholars to identify how Indigenous youth foster forms of resilience, which simultaneously redefine cultural understandings of what it means to be Indigenous and a youth approaching adulthood (Cruz-Salazar 2012; O'Connor and Canizales 2023). Indeed, as Allweiss (2023) identifies in her research, Indigenous Maya youth in Guatemala and the United States create spaces that nurture forms of solidarity, which defy nation-state centered notions of belonging and the "immigration" enforcement measures used to inflict violence toward the Indigenous (Heidbrink 2022).…”

Resisting exclusion: DACAmented Latinx youth workers' facultad and conocimiento in community‐based educational spaces

“…Even though the goals and mission of CBES vary widely, these spaces can offer additive educational opportunities for Latinx immigrant youth in that they build on youths' knowledge and cultures, and actively engage them in a collaborative learning process (Salas Pujols, 2020; Ventura, 2018; Villarruel et al, 2005). CBES that engage in critical youth development and youth organizing recognizes their capacity for knowledge production and agency in personal and social transformation (Allweiss, 2023; Kirshner, 2015). This reframing of youth is a conceptual shift from youth as “future citizens” to present “civic actors” (Ginwright & Cammarota, 2002).…”