Latinx (Im)Migrant Childhoods: Disrupting Binaries to Reconceptualize Early Childhood Education Policy and Praxis

• In Event: Language, Head Start, and Culturally Sustaining Approaches in the Borderlands

Abstract

In contemporary times and more recently with the Trump administration’s unjust immigration policies, families crossing the U.S./Mexico border seeking refuge from poverty, war, violence, and conflict, have been positioned as criminals or as victims without agency (Gomez Cervantes, Alvord, & Menjívar, 2018). The media, in particular, has driven the national and global discourse about children and families crossing geopolitical borders, much of which has (re)produced a criminal/victim binary of (im)migrant children and families. Early childhood scholars have complicated binary conceptualizations of childhood (Burman, 1998; Viruru, 2001), which when considered, can renarrativize how (im)migrant children are constructed.
In this paper, we provide analysis of national and local Southern New Mexico/El Paso, Texas, news media about Latinx immigrant children. Data sources include articles about immigrant children in the El Paso Times and Las Cruces Sun News, in addition to print news media produced by the two leading national cable outlets (according to viewer ratings), Fox News and MSNBC. Data has been analyzed for news content published online between January 1, 2015 and May 1, 2019. This time span allows for analysis of childhood (im)migration just prior to Trump’s bid to become the Republican party nominee, to present.
Women of color feminisms (Anzaldúa, 1987; Collins, 2008) framed analysis, in addition to (post)colonial theories (Pérez, 1999), as they complicate dominant immigrant discourses, and have been inspired by lived experiences of women of color. Findings are illustrative of the prominence of criminal/victim narratives of immigrant children and families. This points to the need to provide more complex and nuanced understandings of the lived experiences of children (im)migrants crossing the US/Mexico border. Recommendations are given for viewing immigrant children as both living with/in trauma and agentic. This has implications for how policies at local program and broader levels can be rethought, and ultimately influences praxis in early childhood education and care.
To reconceptualize early childhood education and care, educational state agencies can develop/revise multicultural education policies and guidelines (Kellogg, 2015) that include and explicitly address the differentiated needs of (im)migrant children. University and college teacher preparation programs can review and revise how its multicultural curriculum expands the dialogue and practice to serve the diverse groups of (im)migrant children in schools and early care (Goodwin, 2017). Educational systems may design specific academic and parent programs that facilitate the successful transition of (im)migrant children and families. Early care organizations and school systems can also create/support learning communities that inform teachers and caregivers about the academic, linguistic, cultural and psychological needs of (im)migrant children and non-binary approaches that support the empowerment of the whole child and families (Souto-Manning, 2013). This also includes learning communities that embrace educational approaches and advocacy that ultimately seeks to integrate and build critical multicultural knowledge, understanding and democratic visions for Indigenous peoples, recent (im)migrants and generational immigrantsin the U.S.

Authors

• Michelle Perez, New Mexico State University

• Araceli Rivas, New Mexico State University