Civic Engagement and Latina Immigrant Mothers' Remote Learning Involvement During COVID‐19¹

Abstract

Immigrant incorporation scholars have established that racialized immigrant parents encounter several barriers in their children's schooling: namely, language and cultural differences, discrimination, unfamiliarity with the U.S. schooling system, and unhelpful school agents. However, less is known about the mechanisms that lessen these challenges. Drawing on insights from immigrant incorporation and civic engagement literature, this study examines how advocacy organizations can mediate the barriers racialized immigrant parents face in their children's schooling. A case study of 20 Latina immigrant mothers is used to demonstrate how civically engaged parents drew on their participation with a local advocacy organization—Parent's Choice—to overcome the barriers that emerged during the transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Findings suggest that immigrant mothers leveraged their connection to Parent's Choice to learn how to use technology, get district‐related updates, secure devices necessary for at‐home learning, create complaints or demands for services at their children's school, fill out paperwork, and access community‐based referrals. Parent's Choice provided support and empowered Latina immigrant parents by minimizing the overwhelming barriers they faced during online learning. These findings complicate our understanding of immigrant civic engagement patterns and provide implications of how civic engagement can facilitate the incorporation of marginalized parents in educational institutions.

Parents/guardians, education and digital technologies

“…Although the authors stress that parental context needs to be considered carefully before any generalisation can be made due to the small number of remote learning situations studied, a paper in this Special Issue also focuses on home learning for children with ASD and contributes additional evidence relating to this context. Delgado (2023) explores challenges of home learning for Latina immigrant mothers in the United States (US). The author states that: "A case study of 20 Latina immigrant mothers is used to demonstrate how civically engaged parents drew on their participation with a local advocacy organization-Parent's Choice-to overcome the barriers that emerged during the transition to remote learning due to the Covid-19 pandem-ic… to learn how to use technology, get district-related https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.e442623c updates, secure devices necessary for at-home learning, create complaints or demands for services at their children's school, fill out paperwork, and access community-based referrals.…”