THE TRANSNATIONAL NARRATIVES AND STRUGGLES OF AFRO-CARIBBEAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN TEACHERS IN NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL DISTRICTS

<p>Between 2001 and 2003, 1500 Caribbean teachers were recruited to teach in New York City’s low income and primarily immigrant/student of color school districts. Using ethnographic research methods through interviews, observations, focus groups, and document analysis, this dissertation documents the narratives of 10 Afro-Caribbean Immigrant women teachers. Using feminist and critical race theory (CRT) lens’, the researcher explores the experiences of Afro- Caribbean immigrant women teachers recruited to teach in New York City as an entry point to situate Black, immigrant, and professional experiences in an urban city in the United States of America. Through this research, race, gender, immigrant status and class as enacted through neoliberal hiring and professional experiences, are used as categories of analyses through the lived experiences of Afro-Caribbean immigrant women teachers. The Afro-Caribbean teachers’ hypervisibility as Black people and invisibility as immigrant is central to a system of racism, white dominance and nativism masked as patriotic values. Key findings include a deep analysis of agency which is a theme throughout the dissertation, neoliberal practices employed in the U.S. by corporations or state agencies to import women of color labor to the U.S., and a nuanced and complex understanding of race from a decolonial conceptual framework.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Cultural Foundations of Education

Year

2017

Author dc:creator

• Williams Brown, Kimberly Natalia

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dalia Rodriguez

• Afro-Caribbean women
• Critical feminisms (decolonial
• Black
• transnational)
• critical race theory
• Educational theories
• Immigration
• neoliberalism
• Education

Repository record dc:identifier

https://surface.syr.edu/etd/784

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:surface.syr.edu:etd-1785