Going to a home you have never been to: the return migration of Mexican and American-Mexican children

Educator Responses to Migrant Children in Mexican Schools

“…In turn, because what teachers think matters for what happens in schools, it makes sense to examine here how Mexican educators have been thinking about their internationally mobile charges. As members of our research team have noted before, neither schools nor teacher preparation in Mexico are designed for nor expect transnational enrollments, but working with transnational students is now part of their task, as it seems that there are more than 420,000 such students in Mexican primarias and secundarias (Zúñiga and Hamann 2015). That said, there are a few incipient professional development efforts to ready Mexican teachers for these students, which we discuss in the conclusion.…”

“…Mexico may not long have imagined itself as an immigrant receiving country or a developed one, OECD membership notwithstanding, but increasingly it is both. Gándara and Callahan's quote matters then in two ways; it reminds us that the task of responding to international newcomers is vexing to lots of school systems (even if/when some conceptualize it as ''Going Home'' [Zúñiga and Hamann 2015]), but it also promotes a theoretical premise-that ''forward thinking'' is possible-which then creates the task of delineating what that forward thinking would entail.…”

US Immigration Policy and Its Impact on Immigrants: Reassembling the Stories of Deported Mothers and Their Transnational Children Through the Healing Spirit of Coatlicue and Coyolxauhqui

“…Fewer studies have examined return migration to Mexico and the challenges posed to USborn children forced to return with their parents (Hamann & Zúñiga, 2011). Deportees are a practically invisible group, since research focusing on deportation is even more scant (Zúñiga & Hamann, 2015). More visibility and research are necessary to better understand the experiences and needs of Mexican mothers and their US-born children forced to live in Mexico after an involuntary return.…”

Dispatches from Flyover Country: Four Appraisals of Impacts of Trump's Immigration Policy on Families, Schools, and Communities

“…For almost 15 years, Víctor Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez García (both of Monterrey, Mexico), and I have formed a binational team studying children in Mexican schools with prior experience in U.S. schools (see, for example, Hamann et al ; Zúñiga and Hamann ; Zúñiga et al ). It is from this work that I remember a February 2010 visit to a rural school in the Sierra Mixteca, 200 miles southeast of Mexico City, where I met a sister and brother who both had been born in Chicago but were now living with their grandparents in rural Mexico (Hamann, Zúniga, and Sánchez García in press ).…”

“…I think these stances are important and I hope they have given space or comfort to others (my students, my family, my colleagues, my friends), but they remain only stances. Since the election, I have also been trying to apply my expertise on “education in the new Latino diaspora” (Hamann and Harklau , Hamann et al ) and the education in Mexico of students with prior U.S. school experience (e.g., Hamann et al ; Zúñiga and Hamann ; Zúñiga et al ) help to protect the vulnerable that I may be able to help protect. Perhaps it is cynical to expect a dislocation of students with Mexican roots (but often U.S. birthplaces) to Mexico, but that does not matter if attending pragmatically to that likelihood means Mexican educators are prepared to more successfully receive such students.…”