Im/migrant children’s stories in elementary school: caring and making space in the classroom

ABSTRACT

Family separation policies’ impacts on children’s education are one of the critical issues of our time. In this article, I draw on ethnographic data collected over two years in one Northeastern town in the United States. More than fifty im/migrant children were observed inside kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms. For this article, I focus on the experience of four immigrant teachers in dual-language education and im/migrant children in their classrooms as they tried to engage with narratives of trauma and separation. I argue that teachers struggled to understand who was in a position to speak of im/migrant children’s pain and suffering in the classroom, while students wanted to tell their stories. I call this dynamic constrained care. I also describe ways in which children tried to make space for their stories and the teachers’ reactions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ I use the term im/migrant as the flow of people across national boundaries. It is predominantly talked about as “migration” in countries other than the U.S. and “immigration” in the United States.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation.