Learning in Transit: Crossing Borders, Waiting, and Waiting to Cross

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Reimagining Refugee and Migrant Education: Critical Methodologies, Agency, and Resistance Across Global Contexts

Proposal

This study examines the informal learning of Honduran migrant children enrolled in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or “Remain in Mexico,” during prolonged waiting periods in Monterrey, Nuevo León. Between 2019 and 2021, MPP returned over 71,000 asylum seekers—including at least 16,000 children—to Mexico to await U.S. immigration proceedings (TRAC Immigration, 2022; Cooke et al., 2019). For the four focal families in this study, this “transit” period lasted between 18 and 26 months, during which children navigated violence, discrimination, and uncertainty while developing critical understandings of borders, legality, and belonging.
Grounded in “border thinking” (Dyrness & Sepúlveda, 2020) and “politicized funds of knowledge” (Gallo & Link, 2015), we locate children’s learning in the spatial and temporal dimensions of migration, where mobility is interrupted by extended immobility as a state strategy of control (Andersson, 2014; Hyndman & Giles, 2011). While existing research shows that migrant youth’s transnational experiences are often erased or framed as barriers to assimilation (Abu El-Haj, 2015; Bajaj & Bartlett, 2017), we demonstrate how in-transit experiences generate valuable knowledge for educators seeking to adopt socio-politically relevant pedagogy (Bajaj et al., 2017).
From January 2020 to April 2021, we conducted ethnographic and digital participatory storytelling sessions with 11 children from the four families, alongside informal interviews with mothers. Arts-based activities and narrative prompts elicited accounts of border crossing, waiting, danger, and discrimination. Data were thematically coded, with narrative profiles developed for each family and compared in cross-case analysis.
Findings show that children’s evolving understandings of border politics emerged through misinformation from coyotes, encounters with immigration officials, and intra-family dialogue. Some initially imagined borders as “open,” later revising these perceptions after detention experiences and prolonged exclusion. Children recognized push factors such as gang recruitment and economic hardship, and actively supported bureaucratic steps to expedite asylum claims. They developed strategies to mitigate risks—avoiding public spaces, altering speech to “sound Mexican,” and anticipating racialized treatment. For Garifuna children, anti-Black racism compounded restrictions on mobility, reinforcing an awareness that discrimination crosses borders.
These politicized funds of knowledge reflect nuanced understandings of legality, state power, and social inequities. While not always expressed in formal political terms, children’s practices—resisting police harassment, interpreting smugglers’ motives, or managing asylum paperwork—demonstrate sophisticated navigation of restrictive systems.
We argue that prolonged transit is not merely “waiting time” but a formative educational space where migrant children learn about rights, borders, and belonging. Recognizing these insights in schools could counter deficit framings and foster critical consciousness. For CIES audiences, this study provides empirical evidence on the impacts of MPP and theoretical contributions to migration and education scholarship, positioning migrant youth as active knowledge-holders whose in-transit experiences are vital to reimagining inclusive and equitable education.

Authors

• Michelle Bellino, University of Michigan- School of Education

• Maxie Gluckman, Friends of Fundesur