Where are Honduran return migrants if not in schools? The absence of transnational students in rural schools.

• In Event: Education and Migrant Communities

Proposal

In December 2016, the Honduran government published a statistical report regarding individuals who had repatriated to Honduras indicating that 10,652 children and adolescents returned in 2016 alone (Centro Nacional de Información del Sector Social, 2016). Twenty-six percent of those migrants were 0-6 years of age, 15% 7-12 years, and 58% 13-17 years-old. Recent legislation, revoking the Temporary Protected Status for 60,000 Honduran migrants living in the US, could indicate that this number will rise in the coming year as many will likely return to Honduras with their families--a reality that could exacerbate current challenges that Honduran educators face.

Honduras faces pervasive challenges to educational access for marginalized populations, school dropout, and differential quality of schooling experiences across the K-12 spectrum (Adelman & Székely, 2017). In 2014, the average schooling of Honduras’ population was 6.2 years, placing them far from meeting their commitment to the UNESCO Education for All initiative goal of providing quality basic education for all children, youth, and adults by 2015 (Hanushek, Lavy, & Hitomi, 2008). In 2016, the illiteracy rate among fifteen-year-olds was 14.5% to 21.5% in rural areas, and 7.5% in urban areas (OECD, 2016) .

How these challenges reflect on the current and future experiences of transnational students in Honduras however, is an area that has been relatively understudied. What research has shown is that Honduran migrant children and youth often live through traumatic experiences with migration, deportation, or family separation, experiences that can have dramatic social, physical, and sociological consequences (Panting, 2016)--consequences that will be felt by schools and teachers. In addition, many migrants maintain the idea that they will at some point leave Honduras again, often returning to the US, implicating a significant economic and personal cost (Palacios, Pedro, Rubio, & Lorena, 2015). The Honduran K-12 education system must consider how to prepare students for trajectories of moving back-and-forth and the possibilities of leading adulthood in another country (Hamann, Zúñiga, & Sánchez García, 2006).

In an effort to learn more about the preparedness of schools in Honduras to serve a transnational student population, in July, 2018, Train for Change--a teacher development project under the non-profit Students Helping Honduras--collected data from 18 rural schools surrounding El Progreso, Yoro, Honduras (12 primary, 5 centros básicos, & 1 secundario). Teachers were asked to administer a questionnaire drawn from the International Migration, School Trajectories, and Poverty study in Nuevo Leon, Mexico with their students asking if any students were born in the US, spoke any languages other than Spanish, or have studied in the US (Hamman, Zúñiga, & Sánchez García, 2008). Follow-up semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teachers and school administrators where affirmative cases emerged, asking questions regarding their previous awareness to this student's transnational experiences, their thoughts about the questionnaire and the learning process as a whole, and how this knowledge might influence their teaching. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed for initial emerging themes.

These results recognized two affirmative cases of students who had previous schooling experiences in the US, and eight additional cases of students who lived or had been educated in countries other than Honduras or the US including Belize (2), Nicaragua (2), Guatemala (2), Mexico (1), and Spain (1). Teacher and school director interviews indicated that most had an awareness of their students previous schooling experiences and countries of birth, however, in two schools, teachers identified a student with transnational experiences that they were not aware of. In addition, one teacher identified a student who she had known lived in Nicaragua, but learned that they also spoke French; when interviewed, the teacher indicated that this information could be useful because the student might be able to teach other students the basics of French. While this comment may indicate a limited understanding on how to build upon students’ funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, & Gonzalez, 1992), it does represent one example of how the administration of this questionnaire helped bring the students’ background and experiences to the teachers attention.

During the administration of the survey at a secondary school, the school director indicated that the question we should be asking is not “who was born or had studied in the US,” as no affirmative cases were found, but in fact “who had thought about migrating or had specific plans to do so in the future?” When this question was added, 17 of the 27 students (63%) across three grade levels raised their hands, with these youth sharing reasons which included future studies, better job opportunities, or family members that live in the US. The school director expressed that one role that Honduran schools play is to motivate students not to migrate and to inform them of local opportunities—a belief that came up through informal conversations at two other schools as well.

Overall when asked how they felt about the survey and the information they discovered, all teachers spoke positively of the results and how they might be able to better address student needs in the classroom. While comments made as to “how” they would do so were more general, this could indicate an openness and interest on the part of teachers to learn and identify ways of serving these students’ unique needs.

This study complicates policymakers’ visions of Temporary Protected Status and the transition back to one’s home country and illuminates further questions about the long-lasting impacts of migration on children and youth. From these statistics, our initial assumption was that the children would be returning to local school systems, such as those which we conducted this survey with. The notable absence of US-Honduran migration cases leads to the following question: If the Honduran children are reportedly returning to Honduras, but they are not returning to school, where are they, and why are they not re-entering the school system? In determining what next steps to take with this research, it is important to hear what the teachers think about migration in a more open dialogue, and how they would approach figuring out where the missing students are, if not at school.

Authors

• Maxie Gluckman, University of California, San Diego

• Edmund Hamann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Katharine Summers, Students Helping Honduras