Transbordered Childhoods: Identity, Languaging, and Schooling for U.S.-Mexican Dual Citizen Children

• In Event: Negotiating Bi/Multilingual Identities in and Across Diverse Sociolinguistic Spaces

Abstract

Undocumented families’ rates of repatriation to Mexico from the U.S. continue to rise. This study describes the experiences of U.S.-born children who were raised in the country for their early years and then brought to Mexico. While these dual citizen children are participants in their families’ migration, their input is rarely sought in decisions to migrate to a country.  This article shares their voices to learn about their experiences across nations.

Transnationalism is prevalent between U.S. and Mexico, two nations that share a border and a long history of policies and practices that pull and push migrants (Fernández-Kelly & Massey, 2007). When migrants move between nations, there is more than just a crossing of a physical border (Stephen, 2007). Families literally and metaphorically traverse international and national borders, moving not only across countries, but also often within them. Students navigate school systems, cultures and language borders and policies. These multiple and complex border crossings impact the lived experiences of students not only during, but also well after they find themselves living in a different land.

Findings presented are part of a larger qualitative study (Maxwell, 1996) that looks at how transborder students acclimate to being in Mexico. I consider three U.S.-born elementary school students that were a sub-set of the research study. The students were interviewed in a semi-structured format about their migration experiences (Silverman, 2000) and asked to create artifacts to represent their experiences across nations.

Transborder students experience significant shifts in their identities, languaging, and schooling as they cross borders. Their lives are enriched as students are able to learn about the cultural intricacies of living in different communities, have opportunities to expand their languaging and literacy practices, and learn to navigate school systems that are in different languages and expectations. They develop first-hand understandings of how government policies impact people’s lives and futures.

Conversely, transborder students experience substantial challenges when they find themselves in Mexico. They vacillate between feelings of belonging to both nations and neither nation. They experience difficulties with the new languaging expectations in their schools and communities. They are at a loss when it comes to communicating in indigenous languages. In schools, they both blend in as Mexican-origin students and stand out as students unfamiliar with the norms of the school system. Teachers often view them as struggling students and schools lack specialized programs to help them succeed in the new language and context.

With more families returning to Mexico due to the anti-immigrant discourse and actions of the Trump administration, schools will see an increase in their numbers of transborder students. Many students will continue to live transbordered lives between both countries, and possibly in others. And while immigration and education policy changes are strongly needed, waiting for these top-down reforms to support transborder students across nations is not enough. As a society, we must find ways to build on these students’ multilingual and multicultural strengths and in-depth political understandings by opening up spaces for dialogue about migration in the broadest sense possible.

Author

• Tatyana Kleyn, City College of New York - CUNY