“They called me chanchi and it made me feel bad”: undocumented youths’ perception of relational racial projects in school settings

Drawing on data from a two-year ethnographic study with 10 undocumented immigrant youth who dropped out of school after migrating to the United States, this article examines participants’ perceptions of their racialized experience in schools. We argue that undocumented Latinx youth experienced racialization from non-migrant Latinx and 1.75 generation Latinx youth who used “chanchi” to discriminate and stigmatize others. Chanchi, we suggest, is employed as a relational racial project in school settings to create a racial hierarchy that othered 1.25 generation Latinx immigrant youth. Chanchi highlights three important racial dynamics. First, it exemplifies a racial division within Latinidad based on arbitrary proximity to assimilation. Second, we point to chanchi as a symptom of anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity. And lastly, as a relational racial project, chanchi can be understood as a disrupter of the assumed homogeneity of Latinidad, because it allowed newly arrived immigrant youth to create inter-racial solidarity and connection.