Migration and education: Sociocultural Perspectives

Abstract

The world is witnessing an era of unprecedented human mobility: International migrants grew from 100 million in 1960 to 155 million in 2000, and to 214 million in 2010 (UNDESA). However, there is insufficient attention to how migration and education interact to influence social and economic mobility. This article considers the relationship between migration and education. In the first section, we draw upon anthropological theorizing of mobility and citizenship to propose a conceptual framework for the topic. We then examine research from three migration flows: youth of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic, Colombians in Ecuador, and children of Mexican mothers who have migrated to the United States. The analyses of these cases emphasize the importance of access and inclusion, schools as key sites for governing subjects, and the strategies developed by migrants to secure schooling. In the conclusion, we outline directions for future research that would enable a stronger analysis of the relationships between education and migration and the development of Migration and Education as a field of inquiry.

Migration; Schooling; Education; Governmentality; Citizenship; Educational policy

Resumo

O mundo está testemunhando uma era de mobilidade humana sem precedentes: os migrantes internacionais aumentaram de 100 milhões em 1960 para 155 milhões em 2000 e para 214 milhões em 2010 (UNDESA). No entanto, dá-se pouca importância à forma como a migração e a educação interagem para influenciar a mobilidade social e econômica. Este artigo considera a relação entre migração e educação. Na primeira seção, recorremos à teorização antropológica da mobilidade e da cidadania para propor uma estrutura conceitual para o tema. Em seguida, examinamos a pesquisa de três fluxos de migração: jovens de ascendência haitiana que vivem na República Dominicana, colombianos no Equador, e filhos de mães mexicanas que migraram para os Estados Unidos. As análises desses casos enfatizam a importância do acesso e da inclusão, as escolas como locais-chave para governar os sujeitos, e as estratégias desenvolvidas pelos migrantes para assegurar a escolarização. Na conclusão, esboçamos orientações para futuras pesquisas que permitiriam uma análise mais forte das relações entre educação e migração e o desenvolvimento de Migração e Educação como campo de investigação.

Migração; Escolarização; Educação; Governamentalidade; Cidadania; Política educacional

Introduction

The world is on the move: in 2013, an estimated 232 million people migrated internationally (IOM, 2013, p. 1). Labor demands, economic crises, urbanization, entrenched poverty, political instability, development projects and conflict continue to fuel the global movement of peoples. Providing basic social, health and educational services for migrant populations, has become a pressing concern in all regions of the world. Migrant is a wide-ranging term that covers people who move from their habitual place of residence to a new location.

The largest migration flow, an estimated 40% of overall mobility, moves from the global South to the global North (IOM, 2013). The single largest stream stretches between Mexico and the United States: According to the Pew Hispanic Center (2013), among the 51.9 million Hispanics in the United States, 33.5 million trace their family origins to Mexico. Many of these are born in the United States. However, in 2011, 11.4 million undocumented Mexicans were estimated to be in the United States (STONEY; BATALOVA, 2013; see also PEW HISPANIC CENTER, 2010).

Much of global mobility entails “South-South” migration.¹ According to the 2013 World Migration Report, between 35 and 40 percent of migration is “South-South” in nature (p. 55). In 2013, approximately 82.3 million international migrants who were born in the South were living in the South (IOM, 2013). This population has not received sufficient attention in the scholarly literature. South-South migrants are more likely than South-North migrants to be undocumented, and therefore be temporary contract workers; they are often excluded from health, educational, and social services; and they are vulnerable to abuse from human trafficking networks, and nationals (HUJO; PIPER, 2007). South-South migration features centrally in Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2013, 64 per cent of international migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean were living in the major area in which they are born (IOM, 2013, p. 2). While the Caribbean is known for its tremendously high levels of emigration, it is also characterized by high intra-regional mobility (IOM, 2013). Central America also experiences significant levels of intra-regional migration (CORDERO; GUTIERREZ; SERRALTA, 2013). In South America, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay have drawn economic migrants (TEXIDO; WARN, 2013). Violent battles over drug trafficking and territorial control between left-wing guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and the Colombian state have caused the internal displacement of 5.7 million people and a constant flow of Colombian immigrants into Ecuador (UNHCR, 2015). Currently, Ecuador is recognized as hosting the largest number of refugees in Latin America: 55,840 Colombian refugees, 1,140 refugees from other nationalities, 78,840 people in refugee-like situations, and 7,000 asylum seekers (UNHCR, 2014).

This partial snapshot suggests the vast scale and incredible complexity of migration across the Americas. The majority of the existing studies of migration have focused on economic remittances; insufficient attention has been paid to social policies, and especially educational policies, for those affected by migration. Most countries across the Americas profess respect for the migrant’s right to education; however, access to education is commonly limited, and support for im/migrant children is rare.

This article contributes to the theorization of the relationships between migration and education, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. In the first section, we develop a conceptual framework for the anthropology of migration and education. We then examine three cases: schooling for youth of Haitian descent living in the Dominican Republic, the education of Colombian youth in Ecuador, and the children (in Mexico and the U.S.) of Mexican mothers who migrate. The conclusion outlines future areas of research and important questions for sociocultural studies of migration and education.

Conceptual framework: sociocultural approaches to migration and education

In much of the existing literature, technicist, instrumental approaches are applied to schooling and migration; these have the unfortunate tendency to naturalize political decisions and reify cultural constructions. In this article, we draw upon anthropological concepts to “move beyond the often linear and reductionist character of assimilation theories, on the one hand, and the sometimes overly optimistic social theories of transnational flows and connections, on the other” (BOEHM et al. 2011, p. 4). We focus on three intersecting themes: (1) schools as key sites for governing subjects; (2) the contingent and flexible forms of citizenship and belonging that both influence and are shaped by schooling for (im)migrants; and (3) the strategies (im)migrants pursue, mediated by gender, class, race, cultural processes, and legal status, to secure opportunities for schooling to further social and economic mobility (see also BARTLETT; GHAFFAR-KUCHER, 2013).

Governmentality and schooling

Globalization and increased migration have resulted in stricter surveillance of physical borders, “the production of racialized boundaries,” (FASSIN, 2011, p. 213-214) and the constitution of stigmatized minorities (SILVERSTEIN, 2005). Thus, we pay careful attention to thepolitical economy of diversity, or “how global political economic forces influence states’ efforts to manage diversity” (BARTLETT; VAVRUS, 2009, p. 16). In this article, we situate educational processes within a broad political economic terrain that encompasses the global, national and local scales.

To conceptualize the role of the state, the article adopts Foucault’s (1991) notion of governmentality, which indexes the “institutions, procedures, actions, and reflections” as well as techniques and strategies employed by the state to make subjects governable. Governmentality connects state formation with the formation of the subject; but we must also consider how such projects are developed and influenced by transnational flows. One important area of governmentality concerns the policing of boundaries or categories and the adjudication of refugee status. Determination of status has significant implications for the educational services to which (im)migrants can stake claims (BOHMER; SHUMAN, 2008; DANIEL; KNUDSEN, 1995). Governmentality also illuminates the “everyday work of bureaucracies” like schools to render subjects governable and encourages scholars to consider “a politics of borders and boundaries, temporality and spatiality, states and bureaucracies, detention and deportation, asylum and humanitarianism” (FASSIN, 2011, p. 214). Under this framework, questions regarding the multiple and sometimes overwhelming procedures migrants follow to secure physical access to school become critical.

Cultural citizenship and contingent belonging

To complement this framework, we also draw heavily upon the anthropology of citizenship. This approach conceptualizes citizenship not only as legal status but also as the capacity to exercise a range of rights, including civil, political, social and cultural rights (such as the right to maintain linguistic, cultural, and group affiliation) – what Rosaldo and others have called cultural citizenship (CASTLES; DAVIDSON, 2000; FLORES; BENMAYOR, 1997; ROSALDO, 1997). We are informed by Ong’s (1996) argument that an individual’s position in a nation’s racial/ethnic hierarchy limits his or her enjoyment of cultural citizenship. This insight compels us to pay attention to the everyday practices and processes by which immigrants are made into subjects of a nation-state (see also ABU EL-HAJ, 2010; ABU EL-HAJ; BONET, 2011; GHAFFAR-KUCHER, 2011). Relatedly, we engage Ong’s (1999) concept of flexible citizenship, which posits that, in transnational settings, individuals with multiple allegiances pragmatically assess the strategies (including educational strategies) available to them for social and economic advancement.

One overarching goal of the article is to consider the cultural politics involved in disseminating and reinforcing static and hierarchical representations of immigrant and national cultures or particular ideologies through policies, media, and state institutions including schools (ABU EL HAJ, 2010; GHAFFAR-KUCHER, 2011). Anthropologists of migration emphasize how “representations of immigrant and national culture” are reified and “mutually constituted in policies, state institutions, the media, and everyday perceptions surrounding key categories such as borders, illegality, and the law” (VERTOVEC, 2011, p. 241; see also 2010).

Strategies for accommodation

Finally, we consider the strategies, mediated by gender, class, race, cultural knowledge, languaing, and legal status, that (im)migrants pursue to secure opportunities for schooling to further social and economic mobility. Social relationships play a key role in securing educational opportunities for migrant children and youth. Besides kinship, friendship and patronage, official recognition as an asylum seeker or refugee serves as a resource that enables individuals to participate in new networks “of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (BOURDIEU; WACQUANT, 1992, p. 119). These networks might allow individuals to expand their support systems and gain access to limited social services. Networks are institutionalized in assemblages between governmental, non-governmental organizations and what are usually referred to as “beneficiaries,” turning categories such as “refugee” or “asylum seeker” into productive labels through the confluence of discourses, practices, and the circulation of goods (HOAG, 2011). In this arena, it is not surprising that individuals make strategic decisions regarding how to frame their presentations of self and identities in order to maximize their access to limited services and resources.

Engaging these anthropological concepts, the case studies we present in the following section illuminate processes of exclusion through both the denial and the provision of education, even as they identify how (im)migrants and displaced people understand and utilize schooling to further their own projects. The insights generated by the cases not only extend our understandings of key contemporary educational processes and sociocultural developments, but also point toward the innovations in policy and practice necessary to promote greater inclusion and equity through the schooling of (im)migrant children and youth.

Case #1: Haitian Immigrants in the Dominican Republic

Sociopolitical and historical contexts

Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola and a 380 kilometer border, with the Dominican Republic (DR) occupying two-thirds of the land mass. Haitians constitute 87.3% of the total immigrant cohort, i.e., 458,233 people (FLACSO; OIM, 2004). Haitians have long migrated to the DR to do agricultural work; in recent decades, they have increasingly settled in urban areas. Though the Dominican elite rely on inexpensive Haitian labor, anti-haitianism flares regularly.

Citizenship and migration law have shifted radically within the Dominican Republic. Until 2010, Article 11 of the Dominican Constitution guaranteed citizenship to anyone born in its territory, except for children of diplomats or those considered “in transit” (WOODING, 2009). In 2010, the Dominican Republic changed its Constitution, stating that Dominican citizenship would be reserved for those children born in the country to at least one parent who is a “legal resident”. In September 2013, a high court in Santo Domingo issued a very controversial ruling denationalising unauthorized people of Haitian descent born and documented in the Dominican Republic since 1929 (PERDOMO, 2013;GRULLON, 2014). Deportations have increased in frequency (KRISTENSEN; WOODING 2013; RIVEROS, 2012). The denial of birth certificates (and, therefore, national identification cards or cédulas as adults) leads to the denial of other rights, such as the right to education.

Findings

This case study is based on interviews conducted in 2009 with 40 youth between the ages of 12 and 23² born in the Dominican Republic and living in the metropolitan area of Santo Domingo – see Bartlett (2012) for more details. Each participant had a mother, a father, or two parents born in Haiti. The goal was to divide the purposeful sample so that half of the participants would hold a Dominican birth certificate and, therefore, have guaranteed access to primary schooling; in actuality, 27 of the 40 youth interviewed held them.

Obstacles to accessing public schools and inclusion

Though the youth were born in the Dominican Republic, only eight of the 40 participants in the study were granted a birth certificate. That figure gives a strong sense of the exclusion faced by Haitian-descent peoples in the Dominican Republic. Among the 40 participants in the study, 13 had no Dominican birth certificate at the time of the interview, despite being born in the Dominican Republic. Of those, five were attending public schools, three were attending private Catholic schools, and two were in community schools funded largely by Haitian non-governmental organizations in partnership with religious and other groups. Two of the participants were school-age but not in school, and one had completed school in Haiti.

Of the 27 youth with birth certificates, the 19 youth who did not receive them at birth had gotten their documents with the help of Dominicans through three processes: adoption, patronage, and bribes. Adoption was the most common mechanism. In this situation, a Dominican family with papers would “adopt” a child of Haitian descent as their own and declare the child legally. Several other youth reported that they had their documents thanks to their affiliation with Dominicans, often through work. For example, Rubens³ (age 19) recounted, “We have our documents thanks to the support that my father’s boss gave us. He is a person with a lot of relationships. We have a good relationship with him. The house where we live is his property. He is always willing to help. It’s an opportunity that few have. With his support, we feel secure.” These patronage relationships, in which a more powerful figure would use his social and economic capital to help Haitian workers to regularize their status, were a common, informal solution to the problem of a lack of documents. Finally, when all else failed, participants admitted resorting to old-fashioned bribery. The fact that nearly half of those in the study got their documents in late childhood or early adolescence through social networks suggests the level of exclusion of Haitian-descent in the Dominican Republic, the solidarity demonstrated by some Dominicans, and the opportunities for extortion created by this irregular situation.

Formal documents did facilitate access to education. Though the general practice at the time was to admit to primary school all students regardless of status, four of the 40 reported being denied access to primary school. Carline, aged 20, presented her experience:

When my mother went to enroll me in a school in Sabana Perdida, they wouldn’t let me enroll because I didn’t have a document, and they realized that my mother is Haitian. My mother did nothing else, and so I couldn’t get in school. After [seven] years, upon talking to some friends, they told me that in some schools you don’t need any documents to enroll. So finally a friend of my mother took me to [a school] and they enrolled me with no problem…. In the same school where they refused to accept me, I know other people who are studying there with no documents. I can deduce that the problem wasn’t the documents; instead, it was discrimination, racism. (Carline, age 20).

Other participants also suggested that skin color and manner of speaking were key factors that helped to determine access to primary school.

Consistent with Dominican law, none of the 40 participants who lacked birth certificates were granted access to secondary school. The participants who had made it through elementary school but were not allowed access to secondary school were concerned about their professional prospects; they felt that finding work was hard enough with a diploma, but nearly impossible without one. Further, several of the participants reported that children and youth of Haitian descent were required to pay school fees that were not demanded of their Dominican peers.

In summary, the data suggests that lacking documents poses the key obstacle to accessing schooling. However, the administrator’s or staff member’s assessment of the student’s (and his or her parent’s) skin color and speaking abilities also appear to have shaped access to education. Both moments mark a determination of status based largely on racial categories. Finally, school fees, as reported in a few instances, seem to have formed a sort of informal tax on irregular status.

Schools as key sites for governing subjects

The interviews with students of Haitian descent indicated the strong presence of “racialized boundaries” and stigmatization of skin color at work in Dominican schools. Specifically, the student’s position within the racial hierarchy significantly limited his right to full inclusion in schools. The students who had access to primary schooling commonly reported verbal and physical abuse. A full 71% of those participants in Dominican public schools reported having experienced verbal abuse. As one young female student reported:

[…] when I studied, I fought a lot with my peers, because they bothered me. They called me names, like “Haitian, damn nigger, gnome”… Furthermore, the students made fun of me for my height and my hair. When I was studying, people teased me about my color… Among the students, there are sometimes situations of discrimination. Sometimes Dominicans don’t want to sit beside Haitians. Many Dominicans believe Haitians are witches, that they eat people. (Karina, age 13).

One young man reported:

In my school, there are students who think Haitians are witches, are bad… Teachers encourage [these ideas]. Once, when I was in my second year, some students were making a lot of noise, and the teacher told them that if they didn’t shut up, she would call a Haitian to come and eat them. (Emmanuel, age 15).

Several of the students reported instances when Haitians were positioned as symbolically beyond not only the nation but also beyond the realm of humanity, as witches who consumed humans. In such moments, a particular representation of Haitians, one that is quite present in the media, becomes reified and mobilized against students of Haitian descent.

The participants’ responses suggested that mistreatment resulted from the interlocutor’s assessment of the person’s status based on a complex calculus of not only nationality but also skin color. As one young man explained:

[…] the treatment depends on the person’s skin color. In my case, the treatment I receive is different from how my brother, who is lighter, is treated. Often in school people call me things like “Haitian”, “damn negro”, but this has never happened to my brother. Furthermore, anything bad that happens at school, everyone suspects me first, that’s why I work out so I’m ready to fight, so that others respect me […]. Being black in the Dominican Republic is a serious problem. (Guenel, age 15).

This association of phenotypes with nationality is rooted in Trujillo’s efforts to construct a national racial category, “indio,” which symbolically positioned blackness beyond the nation (SIMMONS, 2009; CANDELARIO, 2007).

While verbal abuse was rampant, there was also evidence of even more serious forms of mistreatment. Five of the students who had attended public school reported experiencing physical abuse. Those interviewed suggested that boys and students with darker skin were more likely to be hit than other students. Once again, a racialized notion of the citizen is at work, and consequences for behavior differ based on the teacher’s determination of the significance of skin color.

Strategies to secure opportunities for schooling

Despite these significant obstacles to inclusion, the students in the study had developed certain strategies that they engaged in order to secure for themselves opportunities for schooling. One was to focus on “getting along,” or proving oneself to be friendly. As Angelo (age 16) stated, “I have a strategy, I don’t pay attention to anyone, and I make friends with all the students and the teachers. But sometimes they call me ‘black,’ ‘shadow.’” Other students worked hard to perfect their Spanish pronunciation and (to a lesser extent) reading and writing in order to demonstrate themselves worthy of inclusion. Finally, as with efforts to secure documents, a few of the youth interviewed worked to cultivate patronage relationships with teachers, with the hopes that the teacher would help to protect them.

Another set of strategies, quite the opposite of the first set, was more common among the boys, especially as they aged—they worked to be ready to defend themselves. When the situation became too much to bear, students (and especially boys) dropped out of school rather than continuing to endure mistreatment.

Case #2: Colombians in Ecuador

Sociopolitical and historical contexts

Responding to pressures from international migration, the 2008 Ecuadorian Constitution contains two articles of particular importance to the migrant population: Article 9, which defines both “foreigners” and Ecuadorians as holders of equal rights and duties, and Article 11, which explicitly prohibits discrimination based on migratory status. Three governmental institutions were made responsible for the welfare of incoming migrants: the Ministry of External Affairs, the Vice Ministry of Human Mobility, and the Refugee Board. Further, the 2011 Organic Law of Intercultural and Bilingual Education (OLIBE) guaranteed free access to education for migrant and non-migrant children and youth. According to the Ministry of Education’s Accord 455, crafted in 2006, asylum applicants and refugees must simply present their temporary asylum seeker certificate or their refugee ID in order to enroll in school. In 2008, Accord 337 was issued by the Ministry of Education; it forced all schools to temporarily enroll migrant children and youth in school, regardless of their migratory status, until they were able to provide proper documentation. To be guaranteed a place in school, potential students only needed to present a valid ID in the form of either a birth certificate or a valid passport. In 2012, the content of Accord 337 was incorporated into new OLIBE Procedures (SJR, 2013).

Despite these substantial changes, the path to school in Ecuador for external migrants, particularly Colombian asylum seekers, applicants, refugees and undocumented immigrants is still extremely difficult, given the day-to-day xenophobia and discrimination that are based primarily on race and gender (BENAVIDES; CHÁVEZ, 2009; LAURET, 2009; SÁNCHEZ, 2013).

Findings

This ethnographic case study, conducted by Diana Rodríguez-Gómez, draws on 13 months of interviews and participant observation in two Ecuadorian schools: one in La Misericordia, a northern, rural, border town with a population of nearly 3,450 inhabitants, and the other in Quito, Ecuador’s capital and the second most populous city in the country, with nearly 2,250,000 inhabitants (INEC, 2010). For more information, see Rodríguez-Gómez (nd).

Obstacles to accessing public school and inclusion

Despite legal arrangements, youth still experience difficulties accessing schools. During academic year 2013–2014, the ID numbers given to refugees by the Refugee Board were not yet compatible with the electronic system used by the Ministry of Education to register students. Thus, Colombian immigrant youth could only register if they were loaned an ID number from an Ecuadorian citizen. In many cases, NGO employees used their own ID numbers to register immigrant students in school. Many educators claimed ignorance regarding OLIBE Procedures. Further, the Ministry of Education simply created an insufficient number of spaces for students. According to UNICEF (2010), 92% of students between 5 and 14 years old were attending formal schooling, in contrast to only 57% of students between 15 and 17 years. As a result, some youth experienced exclusion. One 14-year-old Colombian boy I interviewed had difficulty getting a spot. I asked why, and he said: “Maybe because I’m black, maybe because I’m Colombian.”

Even if they access school, many Colombians experience barriers to inclusion, including racism and xenophobia. One young man reported that peers call him names “because I’m black and Colombian... They are rude during school break, during classes. They call me ‘negro’ ‘Colombiano hijo de puta.’” (Quito, January 2014).

Schools as key sites for governing subjects

Beyond the bureaucratic apparatus that administers and finances public education in schools, the state is materialized as a site of symbolic and cultural production through diverse representational practices (FERGUSON; GUPTA, 2002). Rafael Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana (Citizens’ Revolution) is a political project that aims to implement the “socialism of the twentieth-first century” and “good living” in Ecuador (ORTIZ-LEMOS, 2013) through Nine revolutions.⁴ The school serves as a major site for socialization into this nationalist discourse.

At the beginning of the academic year, school principals, members of the school’s executive committee, members of the parents’ committee, and the student councils select the abanderados (flag bearers). Theabanderado is the student with the highest academic grade point average, but in some schools these committees only consider Ecuadorian citizens as candidates. Colombians are formally outside the national family in these schools.

The weekly pledge of allegiance also serves as a symbol that makes the state tangible. In the two schools studied, every Monday students line up by classroom and by gender and perform military drills; school authorities use commands such as “attention,” “right turn,” “left turn,” and “stand easy” to organize the mass of students. Before singing the national anthem, one school principal will recite, “[Place your] right hand next to the heart. We are going to sing the sacred national anthem. This is our anthem, we must sing it as good Ecuadorians.” All students, regardless of their nationality or migratory status, are compelled to sing fervently. During my fieldwork observations, I observed a teacher scolding a Colombian student during the pledge to allegiance. When I asked him about the event, he told me, “She told me I was disrespecting Ecuador because I wasn’t singing the national anthem. I told her I was not disrespecting Ecuador. I was quiet and standing up straight. I didn’t sing it anyway” (fieldwork journal entry, May 2013). The abanderado ceremony and the weekly pledge and drill rituals aim to transform national and international dislocated individuals into an organized and obedient group—with mixed success.

Inside the classroom, teachers develop other strategies to control students. All schools must have a student council. In addition, the seven classrooms in this study each had a classroom-size replica of the state’s governance structure, including a president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. Only students with high academic records could become candidates and be democratically elected within the classroom; however, none of the seven classroom presidents I interviewed were migrants.

Immigrant and non-immigrant students had to face productivity, discipline, and accountability—values professed by the Revolución Ciudadana (ORTIZ-LEMOS, 2013)—as coercive forces within the classroom. For immigrant students, these were particularly exclusionary. In line with the 2013–2017 Ecuadorian National Development Plan, which states, “Our people are industrious and hard-working, and have always been” (p. 49), teachers associated productivity, discipline, and accountability with Ecuadorian citizenship. Amanda, a social studies teacher of the rural school located along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, reprimanded her students because the land in the Amazonia was not being used for agriculture: “You and your parents are lazy. You should cultivate the land, but instead you prefer to rest. In Ecuador we need hard-working citizens” (fieldwork journal entry, October 2013).

Additionally, teachers used public shame to shape their students’ behavior and educate the ideal Ecuadorian citizen. Some teachers read students’ poor academic work out loud and revealed students’ national identity and personal stories to further their embarrassment and shame. For example, one teacher said: “Mr. Guayasamín, you’re still getting very low grades. Your poor grandmother is very old; she’s not going to be with you forever. What is she going to think if she sees this test result?” (fieldwork journal entry, December 2013). In another classroom, during natural sciences, when a student asked the teacher, “Why has the government reduced the length of our holidays?”, the teacher roughly replied, “It’s so sad you’re not Ecuadorian.” The student responded, “I’m Ecuadorian,” to which she said, “You’re not Ecuadorian.” The student again asserted, “I’m Ecuadorian,” and then the teacher replied, “But you were not born Ecuadorian.” The student tried once more, “I was born here, but I was raised in Colombia” (fieldwork journal entry, April 2014). After this last sentence was spoken, the teacher finally returned to the question the student asked, and described every holiday students had in Ecuador.

Governmentality in these seven classrooms generally overlooked migratory status and focused on inculcating citizenship, specifically by articulating nationality with knowledge and notions of productivity, discipline, order, and accountability.

Strategies to secure opportunities for schooling

The strategies implemented by parents and students to secure opportunities for schooling differ in the extent to which they need to marshal their identities to navigate daily life. For migrant parents, receiving the label asylum seeker or refugee might be a means of securing resources and opportunities for their children’s schooling. These labels may mean receiving goods or access to educational projects. Migrant parents strategize about how to maximize their status, often investing time and money in running errands and repeatedly visiting governmental offices and NGOs that provide services for migrants.

In Quito, it is common for NGOs engaged in the fields of migration and education to expect refugees to be people in need. This means forced migrants are required to repeatedly articulate—in a consistent and coherent narrative—traumatic events, and to state a list of unsatisfied urgent needs. NGOs generally deliver five services related to education: training for civil servants, school administrators, and teachers; financial aid for learning materials and uniforms; physical support when schools deny access; informal education workshops; and psychological services. One NGO employee explained to me, “If you introduce yourself as an unemployed single mother with few children you will be invited to participate in our entrepreneurship workshops and we will provide learning materials. Also, you will get psychological attention.” (Quito, February 2014). But this situation looks different from the other side. Carmen, a Colombian woman, told me, “[The NGOs] just ask absurdities, absurdities over and over and over: ‘Why are you here? Why haven’t you returned?’ Why do they have to ask us the same questions so many times? After 12 years, I still have to tell the same story every time I meet a new person” (Quito, February 2014). This required narration locates Carmen’s history, in the form of a static identity, as her main resource to ensure her children will have access to educational opportunities.

While parents invest time, money, and energy reciting past events to secure educational opportunities for their children, students enact a series of strategies that play with the porous borders of identity and citizenship formation. Some students adopt what they define as “Ecuadorian” expressions and modify their Spanish intonation, in order to confuse the listener. They also learn new content related to Ecuador’s national symbols, geopolitical situation, and national history. To play it safe in class, students not only avoid asking hard questions regarding the sometimes tense relationship between Colombia and Ecuador, but also decline to respond to discriminatory insults from their classmates. To manage this environment, students carefully select their school friends. A 13-year-old Afro-Colombian boy explained that, in order to avoid discrimination, he only spent leisure time at school with his cousin and another Afro-Colombian friend. To them, informal educational projects provided by NGOs were a key space for expanding their social network and sharing common experiences. When all these strategies fail, students become “dropouts”.

Case #3: Mexican transnational families

Gabrielle Oliveira collected data for this section during three years of ethnographic research in and between Mexico (specifically Puebla, Hidalgo, and other proximal locations) and New York City. She interviewed and did participant observation with twenty families who are split between Mexico and the United States. She considered how sociocultural and material factors influenced educational opportunities for children on both sides of the border. The study reveals that there was more variation in the quality of the education children and youth experienced in New York City than in the towns researched in Mexico.

Sociopolitical and historical contexts

Transnational Mexican families, who are split between the Global South and the Global North, are on the rise; children in both countries experience different education trajectories even though they are siblings who share at least one parent. Parents and caregivers in towns in Mexico as well as in New York City are constantly trying to secure schooling opportunities for children “here” and “there” and overcome barriers such as legal status and language knowledge in addition to physical distance.

The pattern of regular migration between Mexico and the U.S. was well established by 1964, when the Bracero program formally ended. Nonetheless, many American companies still relied upon the cheap labor provided by migrants, thus producing the “problem” of illegal Mexican immigration. In the 1980s, with the passage of the Immigration reform and Control Act (IRCA), over 2 million undocumented Mexicans were granted amnesty by the American government. In the early 1990s, the Clinton administration militarized the border, interrupting the long process of circular migration experienced by Mexican workers throughout the twentieth century. This move resulted in long separations for families, since it became more expensive and more dangerous to go back to Mexico. Large numbers of children are left at home with caregivers. Further, with increased levels of deportation for adults, an increasing number of U.S. born children and youth are going to Mexico with their parents. Most of them have never been to the country, do not speak Spanish comfortably well, and experience difficulties adapting to new schools in their parents’ country of origin (HAMANN; ZÚÑIGA, 2011).

The influence of parental migration on the educational attainment of children in migrants’ countries of origin and host countries remains an important and open debate. This study asks: How has Mexican maternal migration influenced the educational experiences of the children left in Mexico and their (separated) siblings living in the United States?

Findings

Research with transnational families and separated siblings reveals two major patterns: 1) Mothers in New York City migrated in part to secure quality education to their children in Mexico; and 2) New York City’s schools were perceived as sites of surveillance, which prevented women from participating in their U.S. born children’s schooling experiences. At the same time, although mothers and caregivers understand education to be extremely important for the children under their care, children “left home” may receive limited support from their parents in New York City and from their caregivers in Mexico in part because of legal status, language skills, literacy and financial resources. This study shows the importance of looking comparatively at the educational experiences of children from transnational families in different locations.

Obstacles to accessing public schools and inclusion in Mexico

Migration of mothers from many towns in Mexico creates stigma associated with the quality of care children receive at home. Teachers and school staff discuss the performance and possibility of achievement of children whose parents have migrated. Schoolteachers interviewed in different schools in Mexico reported that the academic performance of children dropped steeply in three situations that stem from migration issues: (1) when there is a rupture and a parent migrates; (2) when children in Mexico hear about parents who are in the U.S. getting a divorce or separating and starting new families; and (3) when one parent returns and the children have to adapt to new realities. According to educators, the mother’s departure creates psychological challenges for children; children, and especially boys, between ages of 11 and 14 who had just been recently separated from their mothers could have two very distinct reactions: (1) to “shut down” and not speak to anyone in class; or (2) to “rebel,” and start fights, be rude, and skip classes. Teachers reported that children felt abandoned when mothers migrated. They also stated that maternal migration instigates migration aspirations among children, with potential consequences for children’s investment in schooling.

Tensions between students and teachers in Mexico did appear intense when children’s caregivers were older grandparents who worked all day, did not read or write, and felt intimidated when they had to go to school and talk to teachers and principals. Principals and teachers seemed to have very little patience and willingness to help. They would set up appointments with grandparents who were the caregivers, but they would not see them or offer help to fill out papers and forms. There was a perception that grandparents lacked “education” to comprehend the demands of youth and children in school.

Schools as key sites for governing subjects in the U.S.

The varied socioeconomic and educational backgrounds of immigrant families can affect a child’s opportunities and experiences in different ways. Parents with more resources settled in more affluent and integrated neighborhoods, which typically offered better schools for their children. Conversely, parents of more limited means gravitated to poorer neighborhoods, where they were likely to find inferior schools. The focal families who lived in the South Bronx had children in under-resourced schools. These mothers discussed feeling fearful and disempowered due to language barriers and legal status. Mothers reported worrying that teachers and school staff would report them; this minimized their interactions with the school. Mothers also had the impression that teachers were judging them as parents. Such fears reduced mothers’ likelihood of engaging in a collaborative relationship with teachers.

Parents in New York City felt powerless to help children under their care with homework and dreaded interacting with teachers and school staff. Mothers received countless letters from teachers and school administration in New York City regarding children’s behavioral issues, grades, parental participation, transfers from English as a Second Language (ESL) to different classrooms, requests for children to see psychologists, and offers for tutoring that they either ignored or did not understand. Teachers complained about parents/caregivers, using deficit language and assuming adults did not care about schooling. However, lack of parental involvement in schooling did not mean lack of aspirations for a better education. Education was always the goal of parents.

Strategies to secure opportunities for schooling

In contrast, several of the mothers felt more empowered to influence the schooling of their children back home. They sought actively to be engaged in the education of their children in order to secure a better future for them. In doing so, they actively shared tasks and duties with caregivers in Mexico, relying on those caregivers for enforcement and feedback. The mothers regularly asked their children about homework or test performance during phone calls or on-line exchanges. One mother even contacted the principal via telephone to complain about her daughter’s teacher and demand that her daughter be assigned to a different classroom.

All of the women in this study justified their decision to move to and stay in the U.S. by saying that it would provide their children (and especially their U.S. born children) with better educational opportunities. Yet, as this section suggests, impoverished immigrant children faced many barriers to achieve quality schooling in the U.S. Maternal absence in Mexico had unpredictable effects—sometimes funds sent home helped to secure better schooling, and sometimes the mother was able to intervene from a distance, but often the child was left with a caregiver who was unable to help with schoolwork and unable to advocate effectively at school, exacerbating the child’s likelihood of divesting in schooling and beginning to invest more in the idea of migrating.

Implications and Conclusions

In this article, we have treated diverse migratory statuses as constructed labels, historical artifacts of governmentality that shape the subjectivities and living conditions of children and young people. We demonstrated how these social constructions change over time and vary in relation to different political arrangements, institutions, and actors. Contrary to the universalistic definition of migrant, the three cases show incredible diversity not only between but also within migrant groups. Further, the second and third cases in particular reveal the value of multi-sited, comparative case studies, whether within one country (e.g., in an urban and rural site in Ecuador) or between two countries (in Hidalgo and Puebla, on the one hand, and in different neighborhoods in New York City, on the other).

Comparing these cases reveals that different beliefs about citizenship differentially shape access to school, teaching, and learning for migrant and non-migrant youth. Schooling exposes migrants to the inscription of state power on their daily lives. As an object of desire that is constantly crossed and re-crossed by notions of race, ethnicity, nationality, language, and more, citizenship acquires a bodily and intimate dimension that shapes migrant identities. As these crossings are constrained by regulatory regimes, such as international and national legal frameworks, state bureaucracies, civil institutions, and social groups, migrants must navigate universalizing and fossilized definitions of what it means to be or not to be a citizen, an “illegal,” an immigrant, or a refugee. The lives of young migrants who aim to access education are governed by 1) global policies and agendas; 2) national policies arising from the distinct fields of policy, education, migration, security, and youth; and 3) local institutional dynamics. Testimonies from Haitian, Colombian and Mexican children and youth demonstrate the power of fixed notions of citizenship and migration to shape individuals’ understanding of their physical bodies as racialized, excluded, and abused, and of the extent to which they have a sense of deserving inclusion and belonging.

These case studies also suggest a variety of important questions for the nascent line of inquiry around migration and education. How do historical political and economic relationships between countries influence the schooling of immigrant populations? How is the state apparatus refining its techniques to make subjects governable? What are the key factors shaping support for education of immigrants, and how do they vary across national contexts? How do students transgress the production of racialized borders? How do they interpret their daily life experiences in contexts where new labels aim to define their identities? What are the conditions of possibility that in particular settings facilitate the enjoyment of cultural citizenship for migrant and non-migrant youth? How do what Portés and Rumbaut (2001) call “modes of incorporation,” including government policy, social attitudes such as discrimination and nationalism, levels of segregation, and community factors influence the adaptation of immigrant children in and through schooling across sites? How does length of stay or generational status in the host country influence academic achievement? How do access, the duration of schooling, language of instruction, assessment policies, school culture, teacher-student relations, parental involvement, and peer relations differentially shape educational opportunities for South-South migrants, and how does this compare to what we have learned about South-North migrants? At the most general level, what policies, pedagogies and practices best support the integration of (often multilingual), multicultural immigrant children and youth?

The answers to these questions will not come easily, as there are significant methodological challenges to examining these issues within one country, much less in cross-national perspective. Nevertheless, given the rapid increase in global immigration and the magnitude of South-South migration, questions relating to migration and education may well be central to international efforts to expand educational quality and promote inclusion through schooling.

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• 1
  - While World Bank definitions of the South depend upon income, thus excluding countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and most of the Gulf States from “the South”, the definitions of the United Nations development Programme (UNDP) rely instead on broader measures of human development, restricting membership in “the North” to countries with very high measures on the Human Development Index (BAKEWELL, 2009, p. 3-4). With the UNDP definition, there remain large differences in levels of human development within the category of the South.
• 2
  - For policy purposes, the definition of youth varies across the Latin American and Caribbean region. Here, given high repetition rates and late start dates for Haitian-descent in Dominican schools, we adopted a fairly broad range, including several participants in their early 20s.
• 3
  - All names are pseudonyms.
• 4
  - The nine revolutions are: economic, productivity and labor revolution; knowledge revolution; social revolution; justice, security and co-existence revolution; cultural revolution; political revolution; ecological revolution; sovereignty and integration revolution; and ethical revolution (SENPLADES, 2013).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Dec 2015

History

• Received
  01 Jan 2015
• Accepted
  07 Apr 2015