ERIC Number: ED660728
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Aug-25
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Mexican Migrant Parents' Access to School Resources and Perceptions of U.S. Schools: The Interstice of Linguistic Structural Realities and Family Cultural Backgrounds
Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo; Anne E. Pfister
Educational Linguistics
The two goals of this chapter are: (1) to investigate the resources provided by public schools to students from migrant farmworking families with varying citizenship status; and (2) to understand how their parents perceive their children's U.S. school experiences. These Mexican and/or Indigenous families have come to the U.S. in fear of violence, to escape poverty, and with a lack of educational or social opportunity in Mexico. This study contributes to understandings of how U.S. schools might better meet the needs of children and families from migrant farmworking (often Indigenous) backgrounds who are forcibly displaced from their homelands due to economic inequality and political upheaval. As Campbell-Montalvo has written about elsewhere (2019), "Indigenous migrants are at the margins of multiple racial, ethnic, and national spaces" (see also Casanova SB. Hisp J Behav Sci 34(3):375-403, 2012; Casanova SB, O'Connor B, Anthony-Stevens V. Lat Stud 14(2):192-213, 2016; Zúñiga ML, Lewin-Fischer P, Cornelius D, Cornelius W, Goldenberg S, Keyes D. J Immigr Minor Health 16:329-339, 2014). Of the one million Indigenous Latinos who have migrated to the U.S., the largest groups are Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui from Oaxaca (McGuire S, Georges J. Adv Nurs Sci 26(3):185-195, 2003). Set within the agricultural and rural Florida Heartland, this chapter draws on more than 100 observations of elementary school offices and classrooms, 21 interviews with teachers and staff, and 13 interviews with Mexican migrant parents. Analysis of data shows that language accessibility and access to school resources differed between two elementary schools (Emerald and Apple) in a rural district serving migrant farmworking families fleeing economic insecurity, social unrest, and political turmoil in Mexico. One of the elementary schools (Emerald) was known to be accommodating to families and comparatively more linguistically accessible. Although half of the interviewees' children attended Apple, which grappled with linguistic accessibility, all parents interviewed had positive views of both schools. The chapter outlines the ways these parents put forth extra effort, through emotional and unpaid labor and ingenuity, in the face of linguistic inaccessibility in order to access school resources for their children. [For the complete volume, "Refugee Education across the Lifespan: Mapping Experiences of Language Learning and Use. Educational Linguistics. Volume 50," see ED660722.]
Descriptors: Mexican Americans, Access to Education, Parent Attitudes, Language Usage, Cultural Influences, Public Schools, Migrant Workers, Immigrants, Indigenous Populations, Elementary Schools, Rural Schools, Foreign Countries
Springer. Available from: Springer Nature. One New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Tel: 800-777-4643; Tel: 212-460-1500; Fax: 212-460-1700; e-mail:customerservice@springernature.com; Web site: https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2129/series/5894
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: United States; Mexico
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A