State-of-the-art review on policy and research of returning Mexican and stranded Central American youth: the absence of pluricultural/intercultural educational practice in Mexico*

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to identify the basic contradictions that exist between Mexican pluricultural policy, which is built on solid statistical analysis of data on migrants and which is the basis of intercultural education policies throughout the country, and the fact that few of the intended recipients – mainly migrant youth – are afforded an adequate education in Mexico. While study of the social, political, and cultural implications of migration in Mexico has been predominant in academia and public policy circles, the importance of intercultural education services targeting youth migration continues to be marginalised. Not only are the characterisations concerning child migration obsolete, the focus of academic analysis and the implementation of public policy is overwhelmingly adult-centric and ignores the pluricultural nature of Mexican society. Furthermore, even though the country has widespread legislation and policies addressing its pluricultural makeup, the intercultural education is largely out of reach for the majority of migrant youth in Mexico. The socio-economic effects of this divide are an increasing number of alienated, marginalised, and poorly educated indigenous and other migrant youth mainly from Central American and returning Mexican migrants from the US that are falling outside the framework of a productive Mexican society.

KEYWORDS:

• Returning Mexicans
• Central American youth
• pluricultural
• intercultural education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Debra Green’s (2010a and 2010b) extensive literature review on African Mexicans.

2. The issue of building a wall has escalated to the highest level under Donald Trump, the President of the US, who expects to build a wall that Mexicans will pay for, which for Mexicans is a totally unrealistic and not acceptable notion.

3. During President Obama’s tenure, the deportation of migrants to Mexico and elsewhere has increased dramatically despite his office’s support for some undocumented youth under DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) who entered the US before age 16 and before June 2007 to receive renewable two-year work permits and exemption from deportation. Estimates of this population according to the Pew Institute may be as high as 1.7 million.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Omar Loera-González

Martha Montero-Sieburth is a lecturer in Social Sciences and Humanities at Amsterdam University College since 2010. During 2007–2016, she was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the Social Science Faculty at the University of Amsterdam. She is professor emerita of the Leadership in Urban Schools Doctoral/Educational Administration Masters Programs at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She is a multi-, cross-, and intercultural comparative educator with publications in American urban schooling, Latinos, and Mexicans in New England; issues of bilingualism and curriculum development in Latin America; and interculturalism in Spain, Latin Americans in Spain, Dutch Turkish high school students in Dutch black schools, and first- and second-generation Mexicans in the Netherlands. She has published extensively in Spanish and English and has several co-edited books. Currently, she is teaching students to conduct community ethnographies within Amsterdam on ethnic and migrant group integration.

Martha Montero-Sieburth

Omar Loera-González, MSc, is a PhD candidate of Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Before that, he was a lecturer at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. He is a CONACyT scholar and his topics of interests involve Mexican foreign policy and Mexican society in general. He can be contacted at Email: [email protected]