Spatializing Racial Realism: Rural Latinx Youth and Postsecondary Opportunity in California’s San Joaquin Valley

Scholars have increasingly noted the importance of considering the intersections of race, rurality, and other social dimensions in research on college access and success. This article advances this intersectional line of inquiry in race-centered, rural higher education research by employing Bell’s theory of racial realism and Delaney’s concept of scale to understand the spatialization of racism in rural areas and its effects on racialized rural students’ postsecondary opportunities. This study employs Chicana/Latina feminist pláticas research methodology with rural Latinx high school seniors to examine the intersections among race, racism, place, and postsecondary opportunity in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Findings indicate that rural Latinx youth understood postsecondary opportunity as shaped by interconnected processes of residential and occupational racialization across local and regional contexts. Students connected neighborhood segregation, uneven public investment, agricultural labor, and the unequal distribution of educational resources across place to their postsecondary aspirations and trajectories. This study extends scholarship on race and rurality by showing how young people theorize the enduring and spatialized nature of racial, spatial, and educational inequality in rural places. The findings underscore the importance of recognizing rural Latinx youth as producers of spatial knowledge whose perspectives can inform more equitable postsecondary policy and practice.