Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates' experiences with raciolinguistic dystopian and utopian moments and spaces: Bilingual teacher education as a site of possibilities

Abstract This study draws from a critical ethnography with Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates (TCs) in Southwest Texas. Using raciolinguistic ideologies as our lens, we examined data coming from participant‐observation field notes, interviews, and artifacts. We found that these TCs have experienced raciolinguistic dystopian moments where their linguistic practices and identities are marginalized. We also found that, in the face of marginalizing ideologies of language and race, TCs enacted raciolinguistic utopian moments by validating their hybrid linguistic practices and identities, which enabled them to engage in linguistic freedom and momentarily escape from the marginalization of institutions. We include recommendations for bilingual teacher preparation and discuss how the raciolinguistic dystopias and utopias lens allowed for the analysis of structures of inequality while also highlighting racialized individuals’ capacity for taking control of their communicative repertoires and refashioning alternative understandings of language and linguistic identity.