"We Do It All": District Immigrant Parent Liaisons as Agents of Reception

• In Event: District Leadership Practices to Support Immigrant-Origin Students: Case Studies From Immigrant-Serving Districts Across the United States

Abstract

Objective: In this paper, we examine how the school district in “Northfield,” a small Maine city, served immigrant-origin students and families from 2020-2022, during the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask the following question: How do immigrant parent liaisons employed full-time by the district engage with newcomer families?

Theoretical framework: Our paper draws on the framework of “contexts of reception” (Portes and Rumbaut, 2014), which emphasizes the role of local, state, and federal laws and policies in shaping immigrants’ access to resources. Public schools are often a newcomer family’s most consistent point of contact with locals and the state. In this role, schools – and the actors within them – can engage in caring (Noddings, 1993; Authors, 2021; Bajaj & Suresh, 2018) and uncaring (Valenzuela, 1999; Author, 2013) practices of reception. We theorize Northfield’s parent liaisons as “caring receivers” who provide authentic care to immigrant families in the midst of compounded hardships.

Data and methods: Our data comes from a multi-year study of how six school districts across the U.S. support immigrant-origin students and families. The district in this study serves 6,500 students, a third of whom come from immigrant families. We focused on data from virtual convenings held in 2020 and 2021, as well as on-site interviews and observations conducted in May 2022. We conducted thematic analyses of transcripts and field notes to identify emerging findings (Strauss and Corbin, 1990).

Findings: Liaisons described having “dual roles,” serving both as interpreters and as “cultural brokers” between families and schools. Liaisons ensure that the student’s and family’s holistic needs are met. Liaisons conduct intake interviews, take students on tours of their new schools, explain to families how U.S. schools operate, facilitate conversations between parents and educators, and encourage families to advocate for themselves.
Upon noticing high levels of absenteeism, the Spanish-speaking liaison and the superintendent held a series of meetings with Latinx newcomer families. Parents explained that their children must work long hours in order to support their families and reported that their children do not feel adequately supported at school, leading them to disengage. The first parent meeting was an unprecedented success, with over sixty families attending – the largest turnout the liaison had seen in her six years of service.
The district also addressed the needs of immigrants experiencing housing insecurity by hiring a liaison who also serves as a McKinney-Vento specialist. Due to gentrification and inflation, housing in the city is increasingly unaffordable for immigrant families. As a result, many live in hotels or in small apartments with other families. The liaison, who speaks Portuguese and Spanish, works primarily with Angolan and Central American asylum-seeking families to ensure consistent access to schooling and transportation.

Scholarly significance: Our findings highlight the role of parent liaisons within “nested contexts of reception” (Golash-Boza and Valdez, 2018; Authors, 2021), particularly when those contexts are disrupted by crises like COVID-19. These liaisons, who are typically viewed as having low status and little institutional power, actually wield great influence as cultural brokers (Rodriguez, Roth, and Sosa, 2020).

Authors

• Edom Tesfa, Harvard University
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca J. Lowenhaupt, Boston College
  Presenting Author