Landscapes of (Im)possibility: A Comparative Case Study of the Civic Identities, Literacies, and Learning of U.S. and Indian Urban Migrant Girls

This study explores the civic identities, literacies, and learning of urban migrant girls in India and the United States, the world’s two largest democracies. Though separated by factors like geography and culture, these youth face similarly intersectional barriers to civic belonging. Yet, little research has looked in and across India and the U.S. to chart 1) how they conceptualize their civic identities or 2) how education can support their sociopolitical flourishing. Comparative inquiry into these topics can enable the education field to better understand these youth as emergent civic actors, and to cultivate civic education programming that is responsive to their needs. Drawing on critical spatial studies, transnational girlhoods perspectives, sociocultural literacy studies, and critical pedagogical perspectives, my Comparative Case Study (Bartlett & Varvus, 2016) addressed these gaps. Using qualitative methods, I explored how girls from two U.S. and Indian urban migrant communities cultivated everyday understandings of the civic world. Next, using practitioner methods, I facilitated two separate virtual education programs for girls in each city to trace how they engaged with invitations for critical civic learning. I found, first, how girls from both cities comparably understood the terrain of public life through navigational civic literacies. These language and literacy practices reflected how, drawing on their identities and experiences, they conceptualized the civic world as a space of possibilities and tensions. Next, I found how youth from both cities comparably mobilized coalitional pathfinding literacies to engage with critical civic learning in the two education programs. These were language and literacy practices through which they negotiated understandings of the civic landscape alongside their city-based peers. Finally, my study mapped distinctions between the cases. My study, which provides comparative knowledge about the civic lives, literacies, and learning of Indian and U.S. urban migrant girls, foregrounds these youth as significant makers of civic meaning. It also advances understandings of how critical civic education can honor how they are already taking up civic space.