Understanding Mixed-Status Siblings' Educational Pathways Across Geopolitical Borders

• In Event: 63.031 - Children Negotiating Everyday Borders: How the Anthropology of Education Contributes to Research on (Im)Migrant Children in Schools

Abstract

In this paper I share findings from a year-long ethnographic study with Mexican heritage students---some with US citizenship and some without--- who recently enrolled in schools in Central Mexico due to their family’s repatriation. I focus on the educational experiences, perspectives, and aspirations of mixed-status siblings in Mexico (those who were born in the United States had access to US Citizenship whereas those born in Mexico did not) to better understand how differential access to US documentation shapes educational experiences beyond US borders. I aim to generate insights on ways to engage in responsive educational research that follows participants across nation-states and school systems to better understand the educational consequences of US immigration policies.

Theoretical Framing: (Im)migrant children are good at revealing the socially constructed nature of childhoods because movement across geopolitical (and other) borders brings into question notions of normality (Fass, 2007; Orellana, 2009). I draw on critical studies of childhood as it offers a lens to highlight the ways children agentively take up and shape their local surroundings (Corsaro, 2005; Orellana, 2009).

Methodology: Drawing from a year-long ethnographic study (2016-2017) with 10 recently arrived binational students in 5 school in Puebla, Mexico, I explore how official US Citizenship differently shaped mixed-status siblings educational expectations, practices, and binational schooling trajectories while in Mexico. Methods for the study included weekly participant observation, video recording, and interviews in students’ classrooms, families’ homes, and the local community. This presentation focuses on the experiences and perspectives of high school students with mixed-status siblings to better understand how access to US papers shaped their educational pathways.

Findings: Findings illustrate the ways some binational families drew upon their binational networks to prepare US-born children for return migration to the United States to enroll in secondary schooling. Similar educational experiences were not possible for their non-US Citizen children, and, due to limited pathways to higher education in Mexico, mononational Mexican children often prepared to join the local agricultural economy. US-born siblings also took up different dispositions- such as indifference toward hard physical labor or limited dedication to their studies in Mexico- which they believed would not prepare them for their envisioned futures in the United States. Thus, even while in Mexico, access to US papers shaped students’ educational possibilities.

Implications: Important research has unveiled the ways that mixed-status siblings navigate schooling in the United States (e.g., Gonzales, 2016; Mangual Figueroa, 2012). Yet much less is known about the ways that siblings’ differential access to U.S. documentation continues to shape the educational experiences of binational students’ and their siblings in their parents’ country of origin. Methodologically this paper illustrates the importance of following young people across contexts and carefully examining their practices and perspectives in order to understand the complexities of how US immigration policies shape education. Finally, findings point to the importance of building binational policies that can better support binational students and their teachers in the multi-directional movements across schooling systems in Mexico and the United States.

Author

• Sarah Gallo, The Ohio State University