“Involved for My Children”: An Un/Documented Latina Mother’s Immigrant Rights Practice as Family Engagement

• In Event: Home, School, and Communities: Promoting Language and Literacy Development

Abstract

This study examines the practice of one un/documented Latina mother who organizes with her children for immigrant rights, asking: 1) How does an un/documented Latina immigrant rights activist who is a mother understand her involvement in the immigrant rights movement? 2) What relationship does she see between her immigrant rights organizing and her children’s education? Through analysis grounded in the concept of a “communal pedagogy of resistance” (CPR) and “mothering as critical work,” findings show how this un/documented mother and activist conceptualizes her organizing as family/parental engagement. Implications include the need to expand what counts as family/parental engagement in/out of schools, and to work with immigrant families as practice, policy, and research partners.

Authors

• Alicia Rusoja, University of California - Davis

• Grace Cornell Gonzales, University of Washington