Basketball in the (Segundo) Barrio: An Emerging Collaboration Between a University and a Community STREAM Center

This emerging collaboration between a borderlands bilingual teacher preparation program and a community STREAM Center (Alamito) in Segundo Barrio in El Paso, TX takes inspiration from recent critical scholarship around basketball as a potential space of learning and fugitivity with/in and alongside Latinx youth and communities (Carrillo, 2024 ); Carrillo & Gilliam, 2024 ). Through ongoing dialogue and dreamings about potential collaborations between the university and Alamito the two authors came to realize that they were both hoop heads, which spurred them to organize a Saturday morning basketball game at Tula Irrobali Park a few blocks down the street from Alamito. The authors aim to make sense of the “second backpack” (Carrillo, 2024 ) in their local context as they continue playing hoops on Saturdays with a variety of players of different ages, varying skill levels, and connections to Segundo Barrio, and from their unique vantage points and praxis work as a critical scholar in dual language bilingual education (DLBE) and a borderlands pragmatist philosopher.