Given mainstream narratives that depict the borderlands as a place of fear and violence, this study offers alternative visuals that highlight how transfronterizx children view their language and literacy practices in relation to their experiences in the Texas–Mexico borderlands. The study draws on borderlands biliteracies and critical childhood studies to analyze the children's fotografías and photo-elicitation interviews. The findings demonstrate how the children were reading and writing the world through the lens of borders and border crossing. These perspectives and worldviews have implications for how schools can more responsively and humanely serve children who live and learn across—and within—boundaries of social, cultural, and physical geographies.
BeckerH. S. (1998). Categories and comparisons: How we find meaning in photographs. Visual Anthropology Review, 14(2), 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1525/var.1998.14.2.3
6.
BejaranoC. (2010). Border rootedness as transformative resistance: Youth overcoming violence and inspection in a US–Mexico border region. Children’s Geographies, 8(4), 391–399. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2010.511004
BurkeC. (2008). Doing visual research with children and young people. In ThomsonP. (Ed.), Doing visual research with children and young people (pp. 23–36). Routledge.
9.
CannellaG. S.ViruruR. (2004). Childhood and postcolonization: Power, education, and contemporary practice. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203463536
10.
Clark-IbáñezM. (2004). Framing the social world with photo-elicitation interviews. American Behavioral Scientist, 47(12), 1507–1527. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764204266236
11.
CorsaroW.EverittJ. G. (2023). The sociology of childhood. Sage.
12.
Delgado BernalD. (2001). Learning and living pedagogies of the home: The mestiza consciousness of Chicana students. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 14(5), 623–639. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518390110059838
13.
De la PiedraM. T.AraujoB.EsquincaA. (2018). Educating across borders: The case of a dual language program on the US-Mexico border. University of Arizona Press.
14.
de los RíosC. V. (2018). Toward a corridista consciousness: Learning from one transnational youth's critical reading, writing, and performance of Mexican corridos. Reading Research Quarterly, 53(4), 455–471. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.210
15.
del VecchioD.ToomeyN.TuckE. (2017). Placing photovoice: Participatory action research with undocumented migrant youth in the Hudson Valley. Critical Questions in Education, 8(4), 358–376.
16.
EscamillaK.HopewellS.ButvilofskyS.SparrowW.Soltero-GonzálezL.Ruiz-FigueroaO.EscamillaM. (2014). Biliteracy from the start: Literacy squared in action (pp. 25–26). Caslon Publishing.
17.
EsquincaA.AraujoB.De la PiedraM. T. (2014). Meaning making and translanguaging in a two-way dual-language program on the US-Mexico border. Bilingual Research Journal, 37(2), 164–181. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2014.934970
18.
FreireP.MacedoD. (2005). Literacy: Reading the word and the world. Routledge.
19.
GalloS. (2022). Mixed-status siblings now in Mexico: How U.S. documentation and transborder experiences shape pathways across borders. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 53(1), 47–64. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12398
20.
GalloS.LinkH. (2015). “Diles la verdad”: Deportation policies, politicized funds of knowledge, and schooling in middle childhood. Harvard Educational Review, 85(3), 357–382. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.3.357
GhisoM. P. (2016). The laundromat as the transnational local: Young children's literacies of interdependence. Teachers College Record, 118(1), 1–46. https://doi.org/10.1177/016146811611800108
23.
GonzalesL.YbarraM. G.& Fugitive Literacies Collective. (2020). Multimodal cuentos as fugitive literacies on the Mexico-US borderlands. English Education, 52(3), 223–255. https://doi.org/10.58680/ee202030597
24.
GuerreroM. D.FarruggioP. (2012). Neoliberal teacher preparation: Conceptualising a response in the US borderlands. Education Inquiry, 3(4), 553–568. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v3i4.22053
25.
HamannE. T.ZúñigaV. (2011). Schooling, national affinity(ies), and transnational students in Mexico. In VandeyarS. (Ed.), Hyphenated selves: Immigrant identities within education contexts (pp. 203–213). Rozenburg Publishers & UNISA Press. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/teachlearnfacpub/109/
JamesA. L.JamesA. (2012). Key concepts in childhood studies. Sage.
28.
JonesS.ThielJ. J.DávilaD.PittardE.WoglomJ. F.ZhouX.BrownT.SnowM. (2016). Childhood geographies and spatial justice: Making sense of place and space-making as political acts in education. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 1126–1158. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216655221
29.
KleynT. (2017). Centering transborder students: Perspectives on identity, languaging and schooling between the US and Mexico. Multicultural Perspectives, 19(2), 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/15210960.2017.1302336
30.
KwonJ. (2022). Understanding transnational childhoods through young immigrant children's photographs. In JainR.YazanB.CanagarajahS. (Eds.), Transnational research in English language teaching: Critical practices and identities (pp. 13–27). DeGruyter.
31.
LuttrellW. (2019). Children framing childhoods. Policy Press.
32.
Mangual FigueroaA. (2024). Knowing silence: How children talk about immigration status in school. University of Minnesota Press.
33.
McQuillanJ.TseL. (1995). Child language brokering in linguistic minority communities: Effects on cultural interaction, cognition, and literacy. Language and Education, 9(3), 195–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500789509541413
34.
MignoloW. (2000). Introduction: From cross-genealogies and subaltern knowledges to nepantla. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(1), 1–8. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/23878
35.
MollL. C.AmantiC.NeffD.GonzalezN. (2006). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. In GonzalezN.MollL. C.AmantiC. (Eds.), Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms (pp. 71–87). Routledge.
36.
MollL. C.SaezR.DworinJ. (2001). Exploring biliteracy: Two student case examples of writing as a social practice. The Elementary School Journal, 101(4), 435–449. https://doi.org/10.1086/499680
37.
NuñezI. (2018). Literacies of surveillance: Transfronterizo children translanguaging identity across borders, inspectors and surveillance. The University of Texas at Austin.
38.
NuñezI. (2021). “Because we have to speak English at school”: Transfronterizx children translanguaging identity to cross the academic border. Research in the Teaching of English, 56(1), 10–32. https://doi.org/10.58680/rte202131341
39.
NuñezI. (2023). Embracing transnational knowledge and literacy: Latinx families narrations of critical biliteracies. Reading Research Quarterly, 58(4), 475–494. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.512
40.
NuñezI.DegolladoE. D.Cervantes-SoonC. G. (2025). Dreaming of borderlands biliteracies: A framework for recognizing the critical literacies of racialized bilinguals. Reading Research Quarterly, 60(3), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.70037
41.
NuñezI.UrrietaL. (2020). Transfronterizo children's literacies of surveillance and the cultural production of border crossing identities on the U.S.-Mexico border. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 52(1), 21–41. https://doi.org/10.1111/aeq.12360
42.
NuñezI.XuS.LiQ. S. (2025). Indigenous and transnational Latinx children writing with the arts: A placemaking-justice pedagogy. Language Arts, 102(3), 185–198. https://doi.org/10.58680/la20251023185
43.
O’ConnorB. H. (2018). “Too much cream on the tacos”: Narrative and moral personhood in transfronterizo experience. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 12(2), 153–181. https://doi.org/10.24974/amae.12.2.398
44.
OliveiraG.Lima BeckerM.SegelM. (2021). Constructing the (un) readiness of Brazilian immigrant children in one elementary school. Multicultural Perspectives, 23(4), 206–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/15210960.2021.1986334
45.
OtheguyR.GarcíaO.ReidW. (2019). A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review, 10(4), 625–651.
46.
OrellanaM. F. (2009). Translating childhoods: Immigrant youth, language, and culture. Rutgers University Press.
47.
OrellanaM. F.PhoenixA. (2017). Re-interpreting: Narratives of childhood language brokering over time. Childhood, 24(2), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.1177/0907568216671178
48.
OsorioS. L. (2018). Border stories: Using critical race and Latino critical theories to understand the experiences of Latino/a children. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(1), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1195351
49.
PachecoM.HamiltonC. (2020). Bilanguaging love: Latina/o/x bilingual students’ subjectivities and sensitivities in dual language immersion contexts. TESOL Quarterly, 54(3), 548–571. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.585
50.
PahlK.RowsellJ. (2010). Artifactual literacies: Every object tells a story. Teachers College Press.
51.
Relaño PastorA. M. (2006). On border identities: Transfronterizo students in San Diego. Diskurs Kindheits-und Jugendforschung, 3, 263–277.
52.
RomoJ. J.ChavezC. (2006). Border pedagogy: A study of preservice teacher transformation. The Educational Forum, 70(2), 142–153. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131720608984885
53.
RosaJ.BurdickC. (2017). Language ideologies. In GarciaO.FloresN.SpottiM. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of language and society (pp. 103–123). Oxford University Press.
54.
SalinasC.Jr. (2020). The complexity of the “x” in Latinx: How Latinx/a/o students relate to, identify with, and understand the term Latinx. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 19(2), 149–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1538192719900382
55.
SkerrettA. (2012). Languages and literacies in translocation: Experiences and perspectives of a transnational youth. Journal of Literacy Research, 44(4), 364–395. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296x12459511
56.
SpyrouS. (2018). Disclosing childhoods: Research and knowledge production for a critical childhood studies. Palgrave Macmillan UK.
57.
SpyrouS.ChristouM. (Eds.). (2014). Children and borders. Springer.
58.
TempletonT. N. (2020). “That street is taking us to home”: Young children's photographs of public spaces. Children’s Geographies, 18(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733285.2018.1550573
59.
TempletonT. N.VellankiV. (2022). Decentering the adult gaze: Young children's photographs as provocations for place-making. Language Arts, 99(4), 227–239. https://doi.org/10.58680/la202231740
60.
VenkenM.KaistoV.BrambillaC. (2021). Children, young people and borders: A multidisciplinary outlook. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 36(2), 149–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2021.1898447
YatesL. (2010). The story they want to tell, and the visual story as evidence: Young people, research authority and research purposes in the education and health domains. Visual Studies, 25(3), 280–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2010.523281
63.
YoonH. S.TempletonT. N. (2019). The practice of listening to children: The challenges of hearing children out in an adult-regulated world. Harvard Educational Review, 89(1), 55–84. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-89.1.55
