Language and School Support in the Educational Experiences of Puerto Rican Transnational Youth

• In Event: 35.040 - Literacies Across Local, Global, and Translocal Imaginaries: Ethnographies of Becoming Transnational

Abstract

This paper will discuss the educational experiences of transnational Puerto Rican youth returning to the Island and the role of language in said experiences. Drawing from the work of Blommaert on space and scale (2005) and superdiversity (2011), I will explore the variations in the value added to the linguistic repertoires and literary practices of returning students in the Puerto Rican public school context and how these impact the students’ academic outcomes. These variations were influenced by the Linguistic Limitations Program implemented by the Department of Education for the returning migrant population, and by the personal ideologies of teachers working with these students. The data were collected in a project that took place in two public schools in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico to document the social and educational experiences of transnational Puerto Rican families returning to the Island. Six ethnographic case studies were constructed through school observations, household visits, and individual interviews with returning students, parents, teachers, and school staff.
Every time a family relocates to Puerto Rico or the US the children in that family go through a process of adjustment and negotiation upon their arrival to their new communities and schools. Language is one of the most salient factors in the school context that impacts the experiences of the students and their academic outcomes. All the students who participated in the study had different levels of bilingualism. They had their own linguistic repertoires, proficiency levels and language preferences, but they were all fluent in Spanish and English, which would be a valuable skill in other contexts. However, in the Puerto Rican school context Spanish was prioritized and when their proficiency in this language was evaluated, many returning students were labeled “linguistically limited” and were considered to have a language problem that affected their academics. This label, and the program that was implemented along with it, will be discussed thoroughly in the paper. Students quickly learned the new school and language rules but kept in mind that these would change if the family returned to the US. These differences in educational settings here and there and how students made sense of them further contribute to our understanding of the ways in which migrant Puerto Ricans are transnational, and in particular how the children negotiate these differences in each location.
Although several studies focusing on Puerto Rican migrant youth have been conducted in Puerto Rico (Reyes, 2001; Vega de Jesús & Sayers, 2007), none are recent. Furthermore no research had utilized the transnational lens to examine the experiences of Puerto Ricans returning to the Island and particularly the experiences of youth in the public school context. This ethnographic study contributes significantly to our understanding of the Puerto Rican vaivén (Duany, 2002) from a transnational perspective and the experiences of Puerto Rican migrant children in relation to language and education.

Author

• Sandra L Soto-Santiago, University of Puerto Rico - Mayaguez