Immigration and emigration: Canadian and Mexican youth making sense of a globalized conflict

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses findings from focus groups with youth located in underprivileged surroundings in one large multicultural city in Canada and in a moderately large city in Mexico, examining their understandings and lived experiences of migration-related conflicts. Canadian participants framed these conflicts as a problem of racist attitudes towards immigrants in an otherwise welcoming city. Mexican youth understood emigration as a questionable individual dream to overcome precarious economic conditions, bringing about violence to those travelling and family fractures for those who stay. We identify tensions between these dominant narratives about mobility and conflict – usually also present in intended curriculum – and students' first-hand, every day experiences with migration in each setting. We point out to youths' contrasting imaginaries of citizenship – sense of agency and identity positions – with regards to migration in each setting, showing the limited opportunities they have to make sense of their lived (globalized) conflicts beyond their own localized cultural explanations. We argue that connecting the recognition of cultural differences in the world with the power imbalances, unequal positions, and historically structured global inequities revealed by issues such as migration, must become a crucial effort in citizenship education on global issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• citizenship
• youth
• conflict
• globalization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In codes, letters refer to focus groups (A, B, C, D…) within numbered school sites (1, 2, 3…). Students are S (Canada) or E (México)#, female or male, and grade#. When relevant and possible, we have also included racial or ethnic background and school grade, based on field notes (students did not necessarily self-identify, and in Mexican schools, there were essentially no evident ethnic/ racial differences).

2. All focus groups in Mexico were conducted in Spanish and translations made by the authors or other Spanish speakers from the research team.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) insight [grant number 494798].

Notes on contributors

Diego Nieto

Diego Nieto is a PhD student in Comparative, International and Development Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. He has a BA in Political Science from the National University of Colombia and an MA in Political Theory from the University of Essex (UK). His current interests deal with the development of citizenship education, participatory democracy initiatives and intercultural encounters that contribute to peacebuilding and social justice in contexts marked by violent conflicts. He has taught at the undergraduate level in Colombian and Latin American politics, social and political theory, and applied public ethics.

Kathy Bickmore

Kathy Bickmore teaches graduate and teacher education in comparative democratic citizenship and conflict/peace-building education, and critical curriculum studies. Current research examines gaps (and potential links) between young people's lived experiences of citizenship and what/how they are taught in public school, in neighbourhoods experiencing violence, in Canada, Mexico, and Bangladesh. She is Guest Editor of Curriculum Inquiry theme issue (44:4 September 2014) on Peace-building (in) Education: Democratic Approaches to Conflict in Schools and Classrooms, and Co-Editor of Comparative and International Education: Issues for Teachers (revised edition forthcoming 2016). Recent chapters appear in Teaching Global Matters in Local Classrooms (OISE 2014), Restorative Approaches to Conflict in Schools (Routledge 2013).