Immigrant Parent Perspectives on Educational Responsibility

• In Event: Between Two Worlds: Lessons From Narrative Inquiry and Immigrant Youth

Abstract

This presentation will analyze perspectives of immigrant parents on educational responsibility and involvement in their children’s schooling in the U.S. It will draw on interview data with four Congolese immigrant parents of children who attend schools in a small city in the Midwest. The research was guided by the following questions: How do immigrant parents from the Democratic Republic of Congo perceive of their roles and responsibilities with regard to their children’s schooling, versus those of schools? What barriers to involvement do they perceive? Data are analyzed using a migration capital framework, which is defined by Jimenez (2020) as “knowledges, sensibilities, and skills cultivated through the array of migration/immigration experiences in the United States or its borderlands” (p. 775).

Authors

• Liv T. Dávila, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Susan Akello Ogwal, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign