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"A pedagogy is that much more critical and radical the more investigative and less certain of "certainties" it is. The more unquiet a pedagogy, the more critical it will become." - Paulo Freire
It is my conviction that providing the best education for students requires that we plan educational experiences that take into account factors from two worlds, their life and the larger society. For most American students, the two worlds, their home and community, nonchalantly interact daily. Language and culture are inseparable and should, therefore, be taught together. However, second language learners face the unprecedented challenge of bridging together two worlds that are vastly different. Some students are unable to move successfully between these worlds because they never fully enter the mainstream school community. The mainstream classroom and the attitudes they encounter marginalize them. Eventually, many drop out and are often unable to succeed in mainstream society either. Even yet, some students reject their heritage language and culture in order to become part of the mainstream. Rather than experiencing the best of both worlds, they simply trade one world for another. Later as adults, they often regret having had to sacrifice their culture and heritage in order to succeed academically.
Migration and adaptation to a new country and social environment carry with it consequences that are not solely limited to language barriers. It is important to address these issues when taking into account our second language learners' needs. How does the need to cope with our physical environment shape our social behavior, and our material culture? What changes take place or have taken place within our lives as a direct result of moving to a different location?
To what extent are the behaviors that we observe across human societies determined by biology and to what extent are they determined by learned behavior. What do we do different from our "native" culture? What has stayed the same? What are some common characteristics among different cultures?
There are a number of reasons for movement even within a country from native areas into the cities: political, religious and economic. Through film and discussion, this unit will present various individual reasons for family migration and how the children may suffer as a result.
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The students I instruct are 9-12 graders who have emigrated with their families from Central and South America and are no strangers to migration patterns. Their parents work in agriculture, fishing, and nurseries, and move often throughout the United States following harvests and economic cycles of prosperity and poverty. Historically, people have thought of farm worker migration as occurring in three streams; Western, Midwestern, and Eastern. More recent evidence however, points to more complex patterns of movement. While most farm workers move in pursuit of work, their patterns and length of migration can vary significantly. For farm workers working in the United States, there are essentially three types of migration:
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(1) Restricted Circuit, many people travel throughout a season within a relatively small geographic area. Examples of this include: the Central Valley in California; chili harvesting in the El Paso/Las Cruces/Cuidad Juarez area; and, migration that occurs in Nebraska along Interstate 80.
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(2) Point-to-Point, Another group of people will travel to the same place or series of places along a route during the course of a season. These people tend to live in home base areas in Florida, Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico, or California and travel for part of the year working in agriculture and (3) Nomadic, still others travel away from home for a period of years working from farm to farm and crop to crop. Some of these people may eventually "settle out" in an area to which they have migrated, while others eventually return to their home base. 1
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As a result, student education is often interrupted and they are most at risk of failing to meet the state's challenging content standards. Some have had English as a Second Language in their native countries if they come from large cities and have received a formal public education. Many come from the rural countryside and have never set foot in a classroom. They are often the poorest of the poor, maintaining their low socioeconomic status in the United States as well. They form tight knit communities with other immigrant populations and rarely step into the mainstream of high school classrooms or social activities.
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New findings from an ongoing longitudinal study of over 400 immigrant children suggest that a high proportion (85%) of these children experience a separation from one or both parents during the migratory process. Carola Suárez-Orozco, Irina Todorova, and Josephine Louie, researchers from the Harvard Immigration Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, also found that 35% of immigrant children experienced separation from their fathers for more than five years. The quantitative and qualitative findings appear in "The Transnationalization of Families: Immigrant Separations and Reunifications," paper delivered at the American Family Therapy Academy in Miami. The findings also showed that children who arrived to the United States as a family unit involving no separations from their parents were less likely to report depressive symptoms than children whose families had separated during the migratory process.
"These proportions of separation are significantly higher than we had anticipated either from previous research or anecdotal evidence," says Carola Suárez-Orozco. "Given that 20% of children in the United States are growing up in immigrant homes, we now know that substantial numbers of children are being affected by the separation phenomenon."
Data was derived from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (L.I.S.A.), an interdisciplinary and comparative study designed by the Harvard Immigration Project to document educational attitudes, academic engagement, and outcomes among recently arrived immigrant youth. This five-year project- currently in its fourth year- began by following 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America (including El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua), China (Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan), the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. Youth were between the ages of nine and 14 at the beginning of the study. The participants, sorted by gender and country of origin, were recruited from seven school districts in the Boston and San Francisco greater metropolitan areas.
According to Research:
Prevalence and Patterns of Separation
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- 85% of the youth respondents in the study sample were separated from one or both parents during the process of migration. Significant differences between the ethnic groups exist. Children from the Chinese group tended to migrate with both parents most frequently (37%), while the circumstances of migration for the Haitian and Central American groups imposed a family disruption during migration in nearly all cases (96%).
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- Nearly half (49%) of youth respondents in the sample were separated from both parents sometime during migration. Separation from both parents was most likely to occur among the Central American (80%), Dominican (61%), and Haitian (59%) families.
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- 79% of respondents in the sample had experienced a separation from their fathers during migration. 86% of Haitian and 96% of Central American children experienced such a separation. The Chinese children (48%) were least likely to experience separation from their fathers.
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- 55% of immigrant children respondents in the sample were separated from their mothers sometime during the course of migration. The Chinese children were least likely to be separated from their mothers (23%) while the majority of Central American (80%), Dominican (64%), and Haitian (69%) children lived apart from their mothers for a time. Mexican children fell within the middle range (42%).
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- 28% of the children have been separated from their siblings as a direct result of migration. Separation from siblings occurs most often for the Dominican group and the Central American group.
Length of Separation
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- Researchers found some striking differences among groups in length of time for which the children had been separated from their mothers. Of the Mexican children who separated from their mothers, 73% were separated for under 2 years. Of the Chinese children who separated from their mothers during migration, over half were separated to between two to five years (12%). For the Central American children, almost half (47%) experienced a separation from their mothers of 5 years or more.
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- 35% of all children were separated from fathers for five or more children. When separation from the father occurs during migration, it is usually a very lengthy or permanent one. Of the children who were separated from their fathers, half had been separated for five years or more. These lengthy separations were particularly prevalent among Haitians (71%), Dominicans (60%), and Central Americans (54%). About a third of Mexican respondents (34%) and over half of Chinese respondents (56%) who reported separations from their fathers were separated for less than two years.
Effects of Separation
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- Researchers found preliminary evidence that children who arrived to the U.S. as a family unit with no separations from their parents were less likely to report depressive symptoms than children who had experienced a parental separation during the migratory process.
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- Children who left both parents behind in their country of origin to join other family members or who came to the U.S. with a parent leaving the other behind in country of origin reported higher levels of depressive symptoms. 2
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Children often experience migratory separations as painful and complications in family relationships and dynamics often occur. The researchers stress, however, that the effects of the separation may be minimized if the child is cared for in the parent's absence in a supportive environment, if the parents and caretakers cooperate and are in regular communication, and if the child can make meaning of the situation.
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"We know from previous research that if the child is well-prepared for the separation, and if the separation is framed as temporary and necessary and undergone for the good of the family, the separation will be much more manageable than if the child feels abandoned," says Carola Suárez-Orozco.
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"Additionally, our qualitative data suggest that separations followed by reunification, after an initial period of disorientation, may lead to an increased sense of closeness and intimacy in some families. Many of our participants viewed the relationship between parents and children as having increased in intensity because of the need to 'make up for lost time' to fill each other in on all that has been missed."
It is important for high school students to feel that they belong to a particular group and are accepted during the difficult transition from adolescence in to young adulthood. This is especially true for transplanted students. School can also provide a defacto family or site of shelter and identity for students who lack the stable structure of a rooted family. Introducing students to diverse populations that they have never been exposed to will not only educate them about geography but promises to engage students by proving the commonalities that exist among vastly different cultures.
