Mother Pedagogies of Migration:Multiplicitous Identities and Pedagogies

ABSTRACT

This article draws on two collaborative ethnographic projects to discuss a praxis of mother pedagogies of migration (MPM). The first project centers on Mexicana campesinas (farmworker womxn) in the Yakama Nation who use agricultural land as a context for teaching and learning, and the second project focuses on a community of Indigenous Yucatec Maya and Latina mothers at a K-5 school in San Francisco, California, who develop forms of parent engagement along the dimensions of Indigenous language and cultural revalorization. Drawing on Chicana/Latina philosophers Ortega (2016)and Lugones (2003), we discuss two pedagogical elements central to MPM: relationality and indeterminacy. Relationality is examined by drawing on campesinas teaching each other how to prune in a vineyard. Indeterminacy is contextualized by illustrating Indigenous and Latinx mothers working together preparing food for a school event. These elements demonstrate immigrant mothers’ who strategize and insert their knowledge within dominant educational contexts.

Acknowledgments

We thank the mothers and families with whom we work in our projects. Rosalinda thanks the campesinas in this project who so generously welcomed her into their lives. Patricia thanks the parents, teachers, and students at Metropolitan Elementary School and the undergraduate and graduate student research assistants of the Laboratory for the Study of Interaction and Discourse in Educational Research (L-SIDER) at the Graduate School of Education of the University of California, Berkeley. We thank the funding sources that supported the research projects: A NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship (Rosalinda) and a Spencer Small Grant (Patricia).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ We use Latinx as the alternate spelling to Latino/a to avoid binary gender nouns.

² We use the word “mother” to name the womxn in this project to indicate that this identity is on some occasions shared by biological birthing of children and by social roles as caretakers, providers, and nurturers. However, motherhood and mothering are not only about the biological aspect and includes a historical and social construction that informs the caretaking, providing, and nurturing arrangement (Caballero et al., 2019; Glenn et al., 2016). At the same time, motherhood and mothering are complex categories in themselves intersecting with other identities (parent, immigrant, employed, gender, stay-at-home mothers, etc.). We recognize that the term “mother” can also have localized meanings across local and transnational spaces. Author 1 uses “mamá” to refer to Author’s own mother within the context of transnational Mexican meanings of the word.

³ We use pseudonyms for the school as well as for participants unless otherwise noted.

⁴ Ortega’s theorizing of the multiplicitous selfhood has been influenced by Martin Heidegger’s (1962) existential philosophy on the nature of “being” as unfixed and variable, which also overlaps with the Anzaldúan notion of living in the borderland. Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) borderlands theory offers a way to make sense of the potential in the liminal for experiencing multiple locations in a history of marginalization of womxn of color while still reifying a unified subject (Ortega, 2016).

⁵ We recognize that these two institutions are quite different, creating specific experiences and labor for the womxn across context but also across individual experiences. We do not aim to create a false equation between the two in our examples, but we do want to discuss the parallels that exist to theorize coalition building and pedagogy as strategy.

⁶ Rosalinda mentions agricultural contexts such as cherry orchards and vineyards as part of a large-scale enterprise rooted and upheld to function as an exploitative system. This system of exploitation creates laboring practices, educational practices, and knowledge systems shaped around Eurocentric frameworks.

⁷ “From above the wire, we leave the branches that are more at the center. We cut the ones out to the sides. The ones underneath the vine, they must have space. Everything from the leg stem must be removed because when we are removing the flower buds it fills up and we don’t want that.”

⁸ “I am getting the hang of it.”

⁹ “I didn’t know how to prune, I just learned. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to do it. Veremi (the crew leader) doesn’t check anymore, she says that I am doing fine.”

¹⁰ An earlier analysis of these data was presented at the 10th Congreso Internacional de Mayistas. Izamal, Yucatan, Mexico (Baquedano-López & Borge Janetti, 2016); for a related analysis discussing alternative, tactile literacies, see also (Baquedano-López & Gong, in press). Further, we note the difficult history of this celebration, but we make space for the active engagement of Indigenous mothers to reclaim this commemoration.

¹¹ Tamales are an Indigenous dish from many parts of Mexico. The original name of the dish derives from tamalli in Nahuatl, which means “wrapped,” typically in corn husks or banana leaves.

Additional information

Funding

Rosalinda’s project is funded by an NAEd/Spencer fellowship. Patricia’s project was funded by a research grant from the Spencer Foundation and a University of California, Berkeley Excellence Grant.

Notes on contributors

Rosalinda Godinez

Rosalinda Godinez is a Ph.D. candidate in Critical Studies of Race, Class, and Gender at the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include Latinx (im)migrant family and womxn’s education in rural and informal contexts. Her work is rooted in social justice orientation, lived experiences, and collaborative partnerships that honor non-dominant literacies.

Patricia Baquedano-López

Patricia Baquedano-López is Associate Professor of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She has long-standing interests in the education of Indigenous Latinx students and the critical examination of processes and practices of settler colonialism in education.