The involvement of migrant mothers in their children’s education: cultural capital and transnational class processes

Abstract

This paper analyses the kinds of capital, practices and investments that are implicated in the participation of migrant mothers in the educational careers of their children, drawing on a Bourdieusian framework. We present findings of a study of Muslim Iraqi mothers with school-aged children in Australia, based on 47 interviews with 25 participants. The study identifies different modes of involvement in children’s education and connects these to mothers’ cultural and social capital. Involvement, and its effectiveness, is analysed through the analytical categories of (i) high capital-high involvement; (ii) low capital-high involvement; and (iii) low capital-minimal direct involvement. The paper contributes to the theorisation of family–school relations in the context of migration, and develops a more nuanced perspective for studying social class positioning and repositioning.

Keywords:

• education
• Bourdieu
• cultural capital
• migrant mothers
• social class

Notes

1. 97 per cent of the Iraqi population are Muslims. The remaining 3% is made up of Christians and other religious groups. The Kurds, descendants of Indo-European tribes who settled in Iraq in the second century B.C., make up 15–20 per cent of the population. Arabic is the official language, but Kurdish, Assyrian and Armenian are also spoken.

2. Ethnic schools provide classes to students from specific communities outside mainstream school hours. The programme enables students to maintain their mother tongue or heritage language.

3. The category of high capital-minimal involvement was not represented amongst the sample of mothers, but could be used to characterise some fathers (whose involvement is beyond the scope of the present paper).

4. Generally the middle class in Iraq prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is considered to be composed of small businesses, merchants, craftsmen, professionals, intellectuals, academics, business executives, state officials and others. It is often described as an economically affluent and intellectual class not only because of its income, but also because of its interest in education, culture and art. However, events in the past decade or so have played a crucial role in weakening Iraq’s middle class.

5. Lexile measures provide a quantification of the degree of difficulty presented by a piece of text and are used to select reading material that complements students’ reading abilities. It is expressed as a number followed by the letter ‘L’, e.g. 880L is 880 Lexile (700–900L) is the average range for students over 10 years old). (Scholastic Australia website).

6. The Victorian Certificate of Education or VCE is the credential awarded to secondary school students who successfully complete high school level studies (Year 11 and 12 or equivalent) in the Australian state of Victoria.

7. Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). The maximum rank attainable is 99.95.