Activist Research: Promoting the Right to Education of Returned Mexican American Children in Mexico

• In Event: Caught in the Crucible: Deported and Returning Mexican American Youth in Mexico

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to reflect on the collaborative work that civil society, academia, and deported youth have been doing since 2013 to ensure the right to public education of return migrant children and youth in Mexico. In June of 2014, I began collaborating with the Women in Migration Institute (IMUMI), a leading organization based in Mexico City, to guarantee education access for U.S.-born children of deported Mexican families. Obsolete legislation, bureaucratic inertia, and lack of valid identity documentation are considerable obstacles for Mexican-American children (Jacobo y Espinoza, 2015). As a result of our joint-advocacy efforts, the Mexican Ministry of Education recently amended relevant legislation to facilitate school access and studies accreditation for this growing population in Mexico.

My academic work draws on Participatory Action Research as a theoretical framework. I started collaborating with IMUMI motivated by multiple testimonies and in-depth interviews with deported families that have been denied school access for their U.S.-born children, even though the Mexican Constitution guarantees their right to free education. As we gained understanding of the problem, our diagnosis showed some legal barriers as well as wrong implementation of education regulations. This paper describes a two-year process of ongoing advocacy based on various strategies: media campaigns, participation in academic and government forums, alliances with deported Dreamers, collaborations with non-profits and think tanks in Mexico and in the U.S., as well as applied research.

Our shared goals: making the phenomenon of return migrant families visible and pressuring the federal government to respond to returnees’ reintegration needs, beginning with those in education. Our demands for policy reform have been supported by multiple data sources: Census and deportation statistics, testimonies, in-depth interviews, education law, research reports, government meeting minutes, and reflections from my own participation in working groups with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of the Interior, and the National Registry of Population.

Recently, important amendments to Agreement 268 were achieved, a key piece regulating education access and accreditation. Apostille and official translation of foreign documents were eliminated as requirements for accreditation in primary, secondary and preparatory education (Landa y Jacobo, 2015). This change constitutes a major achievement for Mexican returnees, activists, and academics that participate in our group. Yet, policy reform isn’t enough by itself. Our current participation within the government groups seeks to monitor implementation and make the reform extensive to higher education.

Public scholarship around the immigration and education nexus has considerable policy and scholarly relevance in today’s context. Since 2009, 2.3 million of immigrants have been forced to move back to Mexico, the main destination for U.S. deportations (Department of Homeland Security). Return Mexican-American children and youth face common challenges. In many cases, they have spent most of their life in the U.S., attended U.S. American schools, adopted English as their preferred language, and just recently moved to Mexico due to the forced return of at least of one their parents. Ensuring their access to public education, a right fully granted by the Mexican Constitution, is a basic prerequisite for their successful integration into the Mexican society.

Author

• Monica Jacobo-Suarez, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Economicas A.C.