“In México, I was someone, but here I am a nobody:” an immigrant mother and daughter moving beyond love to facilitate new ways of being

Abstract

In this article, we present parallel narratives of an immigrant youth and her mother who have had to maneuver continual and abrupt interruptions in family cohesiveness and other daily experiences due to anti-immigrant policies and the materialization of being cast beyond love. We highlight how they created spaces of self-transformational love and coalitional love to resist measures of exclusion and redraw how they participated in a divided world. We also argue how educators must encourage these spaces of love and work against practices that contribute to the alienation and suppression of immigrant students and their families. Rather, educators must put a human face to these human struggles and break free from any pretense that this work should solely occur outside the bounds of a school’s borders.

Keywords:

• Immigrant
• love
• diversity
• equity

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eurydice Bauer

Eurydice Bouchereau Bauer is the John E. Swearingen Chair of Education at the University of South Carolina where she also serves as Director of the Center of Bilingualism. Her research focuses on the literacy development, instruction, and assessment of young students from diverse linguistic, economic, and cultural backgrounds, with a specific focus on bilingual literacy.

Lenny Sánchez

Lenny Sánchez is a faculty member in Language and Literacy Education at University of South Carolina and serves as Co-Director for the Bilingualism Matters Center @UofSC. His research focuses on critical and cultural literacies with specific interest in young people's agency and activism and the ways children and their families cultivate bilingual, bicultural meaning-making.