Claudia A Anguiano

“Voicing for Space in Academe: Testimonios of Chicana Communication Professors” Chicana/Latina Studies 16(2), Spring 2017, pp. 158-188 CO-AUTHORS Mari Castañeda, Claudia A. Anguiano, Sonya Alemán ---  Full article can be found at: http://journal.malcs.org/issues/past-issues/cls-162-spring-2017/#ESSAYS  ---  This essay centers the testimonios of three Chicana/Latinx scholars and contributes to the growing body of scholarship that demonstrates the value of this methodological approach. It highlights experiences and strategies of Latina scholars who struggle to make their voices heard in the ivory tower and against the bias in tenure and promotion in academia. This essay extends the use of testimonio within the field of communication as a viable method for engaging the personal and public lives, voices, discourses, stories and representations of Latina/os and Latinx communities. It is our objective that our shared stories filtered through a time-honored and respected Chicana feminist approach within a Latinx centric communication framework can become points of connection that encourage other emerging Chicana/Latinx scholars to consider communication as a serious and meaningful field in which decolonized knowledge production and activism is possible. Via their testimonios, the authors aim to contribute in shifting the vocal landscape of higher education and provide models for Latinx students who are considering Latinx critical communication as a dynamic area of study. KEYWORDS Chicana, communication, decolonizing, knowledge production, LatCrit Comm, Latinx, testimonio ABBREVIATED INTRODUCTION The lack of Latina/os (see footnote below) in the professoriate is becoming increasingly well documented (Ponjuan 2011; Gonzales, Murukami, Núñez, 2013; Machado-Casas, Cantú Ruiz, Cantú, 2013), and the academic discipline of communication in the United States is no exception. Latina/os only make up 4 percent of tenured or tenure-track faculty members in the United States (Ponjuan 2011), and hold less than 3 percent of all communication faculty positions (Becker and Vlad 2009) despite demographic growth. In fact, over the past fifteen years, Latina/os have only made up 1.7 percent to 2.7 percent of all communication faculty, with most recent figures sitting at 2.1 percent. Accordingly, many communication department chairs have noted that the racial and ethnic diversity of communication faculty and communication doctoral students still lag behind most academic disciplines (Interviews 2016). Although the field has grown in the past two decades and over five hundred communication doctorates are awarded annually, the percentage of people of color receiving PhDs in communication each year continues to be statistically small (Hickerson et al. 2008). For instance, in 2011, 3 percent of all doctoral degrees conferred in communication went to US students identifying as Hispanic—a total of 22—while in 2014, 7 percent of communication doctoral recipients identified as Hispanic—a total of 39 (National Communication Society 2014). Current percentages for 2015 and 2016 have not yet been released by the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) report, but an officer with the National Communication Association suspects the percentages have not changed much. With figures this dismal, Latina/os in particular, have been nearly nonexistent in the communication discipline in the United States. This small pool of Latinx scholars in communication is a likely consequence of multiple institutional barriers underrepresented racial minorities often faced when attempting to access higher education, especially graduate programs (Solorzano and Villalpando, 1998; Castellanos and Kamimura, 2006; Holling and Rodriguez, 2006).

This paper examines the problematic labels of deserving and undeserving within a broader context of undocumented immigration. Specifically, we interrogate the categorization of deservingness that imposes distinctions between “good” versus “bad” immigrants. We demonstrate these categories are assumed and subverted by undocumented youth in order to challenge disempowerment and racism experienced at both an interpersonal and institutional level. Our findings reveal how narratives of hard work and perseverance mitigate stigma to help youth reframe narratives of undeserving at a micro-level of analysis while at the macro-level racialization shapes individuals’ experiences and motivations for activism. The study highlights the narrative strategies used by youth to frame their narratives of inclusion and contributes to the scholarship of undocumented youth in higher education through its examination of the experiences of Latino undocumented students in northeastern elite private institutions.