“A los de Nicaragua les dicen Nicas”: South-South Migration, National Identity, and Citizenship in Interaction in a Costa Rican School

• In Event: Civic Identity

Abstract

Central American migration flows are an emerging and underrepresented field in Latin American and international scholarly production. Contributing to South-South migration studies, this presentation reports the findings of a qualitative case study examining the interactive dimension of citizenship in a multicultural fourth grade classroom in Costa Rica. During four months, I conducted document analysis, ethnographic observations, focus groups, and interviews with students and teachers in Escuela Montaña Verde (EMV; pseudonym) an urban school in one of the top ten counties with the largest influx of immigrants in the country. Findings identify the situated discourses, identities, tools, and practices of citizenship of Nicaraguan and Costa Rican children in their everyday interactions with each other and with larger cultural and political narratives.

Author

• Ana Tristana Solano-Campos, University of Massachusetts - Boston