Confronting School: Immigrant Families, Hope, Education

ABSTRACT

While children remain at the center of families’ decisions to emigrate, the global contexts and technologies that allow diasporas to remain connected to their cultures have influenced families’ aspirations in relation to their children’s education. This article presents data from a qualitative study on how immigrant families negotiate the schooling of their children in Australia. Findings highlight there are incongruencies between immigrant parents’ understanding of education and what the Australian public school system offers. This clash is combined with parents’ determination to reinforce their culture at home, which is usually overridden by schools’ standardization of practices and values. The study suggests there is a need to better understand the range of experiences and expectations that immigrant families bring to schools for educational institutions to be more attuned with an increasingly diverse, mobile, and mediatically interconnected population.

Notes

¹ I understand the concept of diaspora as the dispersal of migratory groups originating from a common territory, that share the same ethnic, national, or religious background (multipolarization), but that also maintain emotional, economic, political, and sociocultural links not only with the original territory, but with other diasporic groups of the same origin (see Ma Mung, 2005).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María Florencia Amigó

María Florencia Amigó is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University, Australia, and conducts research in the areas of the anthropology and sociology of childhood and the anthropology and sociology of education.