Addressing Other Challenges migrants’ Children Face in Mexico: Coping with Adverse Realities and Circumstances

ABSTRACT

Migrants’ children face challenges when returning to their parent’s home country, which is usually unfamiliar to them. This qualitative study explores this phenomenon to understand more about the experiences of returnee children regarding their social-educational (re)integration and adaptation, the challenges they faced, and the mechanisms they have developed to overcome them. Results are discussed from the perspective of acculturative stress and social networks, identifying the struggle that returnees have to adapt and acculturate to their new home because of the lack of competence in the Spanish language and the consequences of the discrimination they suffer in the social environment, namely school and in their parents’ hometowns. However, results also shed light on how returnees create social networks with classmates and family members who help them overcome these challenges, fears, and feelings of alienation.

KEYWORDS:

• Returnees
• acculturative stress
• fears
• discrimination
• challenges

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.