Landscapes of (non)options: Chicana youth making a life within and against cycles of imperialism and policing

As an embodied theory that learns from a twelfth grade Chicana’s decision-making between joining the police or the military and attending college, this scholarship proposes that these pathways structure landscapes of (non)options for non-Black and non-Indigenous Mexican-origin youth, the primary referents of U.S. Latinidad. Featuring a plática from a larger study of a college preparation program, we faithfully witness one Chicana youth’s experiences in depth, an epistemic commitment to learning from embodied knowledges. Reading the multiplicities of nationalism, merit, migration, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, gendered violence, and desires for familial safety and stability across Chicana experiences, we contend that U.S. Latinidad orients youth to state-supporting futures. We consider these postsecondary options through the lens of racial-settler capitalism to argue that the state seeks to make the children and grandchildren of demonized migrant populations useful within local and global cycles of capitalist accumulation through devaluing human life and dispossessing Indigenous lands.