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Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement

Narratives of Communal Agency in the Face of Power Asymmetry

by Lilian Cibils (Author)
©2017 Textbook 296 Pages
Series: Counterpoints, Volume 439

Summary

Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement is based on the vivid accounts of seven Latina immigrant women of how they learned to navigate the school system in the rural southwest of the United States. Their stories are presented within several contexts, the socio-political conditions of immigration overarching them all. The process of acquiring a new socio-cultural script offers a common frame to the narratives, which illustrate the central role of the community in finding spaces for agency in circumstances of vulnerability. As a contribution to educational theory, this book explores the official discourse of parental involvement within the broader context of social policy by pointing to a common underlying ideal parent norm across areas of policy related to family and women. It also revisits the concept of parental involvement through contrasting ideologies of motherhood, as it applies the concept of participation parity in everyday institutional interactions as a fundamental measure of social justice. Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement offers deep insight into the institutionalized patterns of formal inclusion/informal exclusion in the relationship of schools with Latina immigrant mothers, even within the best intended programs. Its focus on the persistent need for the implementation of culturally and linguistically sensitive approaches to home-school relations makes this a must-read for undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, education leadership and sociology of education. Teachers, administrators and policymakers committed to moving away from the prevalent view of mothers as people who mainly need to be educated also need to read this book.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • Acknowledgments
  • Part I The Study and Its Contexts
  • Introduction
  • References
  • Chapter 1. The Big Picture: Immigration, Vulnerability and Marginalization
  • Immigration as a Social Outcome of Neoliberal Globalization
  • Extreme Vulnerability of Migrants: Globalization and the Feminization of Poverty
  • The Backdrop to Mexican Immigration to the US
  • Immigration and Marginalization in the United States: Racism and Xenophobia
  • Immigration, Racism and Schooling
  • The Local Context of the Study
  • References
  • Chapter 2. A Situated Theory of Justice: The Significance of Structure, Process and Agency
  • Young’s Theory of Social Justice: The Five Faces of Oppression
  • Bourdieu and Foucault: Symbolic Violence and Normalization
  • Fraser’s Theory of Social Justice: Participation Parity as the Norm
  • The Matrix of Oppression in Critical, Black, and Chicana Feminisms
  • Author Contextualization: A View from Somewhere
  • References
  • Chapter 3. Seven Women: Seven Stories
  • Norma—­Acababa de llegar y no conocía muy bien el sistema aquí. (I had just arrived and didn’t know the system here very well.)
  • Sandra—­Ahí fue donde yo me orienté más, donde aprendí; se me abrieron los ojos. (That is where I found my way, where I learned; my eyes were opened.)
  • Luisa—­Como hasta ahorita, ellos me están ayudando siempre en la escuela. Nunca me han dicho así feo. No, no, nunca. (Even right now, they are always helping me at the school. They have never spoken to me in a mean way. No, no; never.)
  • Patricia—­Yo sí quiero que aprendan los dos idiomas y a escribir en los dos idiomas. (I do want them to learn both languages and to write in both languages.)
  • Susana and Silvia—­Para mí, un apoyo muy grande es cuando nos ponen a alguien que nos interprete lo que nos están diciendo los maestros. (To me, it’s a great help when they assign someone to interpret what the teachers are saying.)
  • Brenda—­M’hija, mira, no faltes, estudia; el trabajo adonde andamos nosotros es duro. (Honey, look, don’t skip class, study; the line of work we are in is tough.)
  • Note
  • References
  • Part II Narratives and Counter Narratives of Parental Involvement
  • Chapter 4. The Discourse of Parental Involvement and the Ideologies of Motherhood
  • The Official Discourse of Parental Involvement: An Exclusionary Narrative
  • “Parents” Equals “Mothers” in Social Policy Discourse
  • The Dominant Ideology of Motherhood: Intensive Mothering and the Good Mother Myth
  • The Ideal Parent Norm in Social Policy
  • Ideal Parents vis-­à-vis Real Mothers in the Literature on Parental Involvement
  • Historical Social Control of Women: Individual Blame for Structural Conditions
  • Intersectionality and Structural Issues
  • The Need for Diverse Cultural Stories of Motherhood
  • Motherwork: A Critical Ideology of Motherhood
  • References
  • Chapter 5. Polyphony: Master and Counter Stories
  • Counter Narratives of Maternal Involvement: Educational Motherwork
  • Luisa—­Quiero que mi hijo se enfoque no más en el estudio. (I only want my son to focus on his studies.)
  • Advocacy in the Face of Racism
  • Brenda—­Es que para que miren también las maestras, que uno mira por sus hijos. (It’s for the teachers to see that one is looking out for one’s children.)
  • “Consejos” (Advice)
  • Brenda—­A la [maestra] más malita, váyasela ganando, poco a poquito. Ya sabemos la clave. (The meanest [teacher], win her over. Little by little. We already know the key [to winning teachers over].)
  • Keeping Attendance Records Straight
  • Brenda—¡Mira lo que dice en este papel! Me van a llevar a corte o me van a meter a la cárcel porque tú faltas. (Look at what this paper says! They’re taking me to court or sending me to jail because you are skipping class.)
  • Advocacy and Persistence
  • Sandra—­Yo estoy aquí porque quiero ayudar a mi hijo. (I am here because I want to help my son.)
  • Brenda— Yo pienso que los desayunos que están dando, eso sí es muy bueno y es ayuda para nosotros. (I think that the breakfast they offer, that is very good and it helps us.)
  • Narratives of Parental Involvement: School Expectations
  • Susana—­Yo creo que sí [las expectativas] están claras y son muy buenas. (I think that they [the expectations] are clear and they are good.)
  • Silvia—­Así como ellos nos apoyan a nosotros, a ellos también les gusta que uno, como padre, apoye también a la escuela. (Just as they support us, they also want one, as a parent, to support the school.)
  • Awareness and Encouragement of Literacy Development
  • Silvia—­Ya lee mucho. Ya agarra su libro y ya lee sola. Y lee rápido. Bien rápido. (She takes her book and she already reads on her own. And she reads fast. Very fast.)
  • Patricia—­Él sabe leer rapidito en inglés. ¡Sí! ¡Creo [que] lee por minuto más de cien palabras! (He can read really fast in English. Yes, I think he reads more than a hundred words per minute!)
  • Active Participation in the Schools
  • Official Discourse Appropriation: Ventriloquation
  • Norma—­Me dice que hay mucha … como es… negligencia de los padres para asistir a esas juntas. (She says that there is a lot of … what is it … negligence—­spoken louder, in an authoritative tone—­on the part of the parents, in not attending those meetings.)
  • Luisa—­La gente no responde. (People don’t engage.)
  • A Word on Counter Narratives
  • References
  • Part III Formal Inclusion/ Informal Exclusion
  • Chapter 6. Belonging and the New Cultural Script
  • Immigration: Trauma and Opportunity/Vulnerability and Agency
  • A New Sociocultural Script: Relearning the Ropes
  • The Dual Frame of Reference Reformulated Through Communal Agency
  • First Interactions with the Schools
  • Brenda—­Todo se le hace difícil y da como más vergüenza. (Everything seems difficult and one feels more embarrassed.)
  • Susana—­Como que uno no encaja a veces, como que está de más en ese lugar. (It’s as if one doesn’t fit in, as if one is unwanted/out of place there.)
  • Susana—­Hay muchos papeles que firmar cuando uno mete un niño a la escuela. (There are a lot of papers to sign, when one puts [enrolls] a child in school.)
  • Brenda—­No la dejaría sola, sabiendo lo que yo sufrí … porque aquí no es igual. (I would not leave her alone, knowing what I suffered… because here it is not the same.)
  • Knowing, Belonging and Agency
  • Brenda—­Porque yo ya sé lo que se sufre cuando uno llega sin … a ciegas. (Because I know what one suffers when one arrives without … in the dark.)
  • References
  • Chapter 7. Linguistic Resources: Centrality, Contingency and Invisibility
  • Formal Inclusion/Informal Exclusion
  • Brenda—­Me daba vergüenza opinar. (I was too embarrassed to give my opinion.)
  • Invisibility: The Role of Language and Power
  • Sandra—¿A qué voy a perder el tiempo si no voy a entender? (What am I going to waste my time for, if I am not going to understand?)
  • Interpretation as an Afterthought
  • Silvia—­Ella hablaba y hablaba puro inglés, sin preguntar quiénes de las mamás no sabían inglés. (She talked and talked, only in English, without asking who among the mothers didn’t speak English.)
  • Brenda—­Uno, que no sabe inglés, no más pela los ojillos. (So, if you don’t know English, you just keep your eyes peeled.)
  • Luisa—­Había muchas mamás que no entendíamos. (There were many of us, moms, who didn’t understand.)
  • Norma—­La mayor parte de la reunión es en inglés y una que otra cosa les traducen. (Most of the meeting is in English and they translate a thing or two for them.)
  • References
  • Chapter 8. Mediated Interactions: Translation, Interpretation and Power Asymmetry
  • Who Acts as Interpreter or Translator?
  • Interpretation and Power Asymmetry
  • Brenda’s Boss
  • “Ella era contratista y ella nos ayudó mucho.” (She was a contractor, and she helped us a lot.)
  • Children as Interpreters
  • Norma—­Y otra de las cosas más tristes [era] que a veces cuando necesitaba interpretación, eran mis hijos que me traducían. (And another of the saddest things was that sometimes, when I needed interpretation, it was my children who translated for me.)
  • Norma’s Sons
  • Norma—­Se les hacía difícil cómo traducirlo. (It was hard for them to translate.)
  • Brenda’s Daughter: An Advocate for her Mother
  • Brenda—­Como a los ocho años ella ya empezó a interpretar. (When she was about eight years old she already started interpreting.)
  • Interpreters Provided by the School
  • Norma’s Name Change
  • Norma—“Estás en Estados Unidos ahora […] Tú necesitas llevar el mismo apellido de tus hijos.” (“You are in the United States now,” she said. “You need to use the same last name as your children.”)
  • Patricia Signs the Forms
  • “Me los leyó y nada más lo firmé todo.” (So, he read them to me and I just signed them all.)
  • References
  • Part IV From Vulnerability to Communal Agency: Finding, Developing and Becoming Resources
  • Chapter 9. Critical Linguistic Agency
  • Seeking Resources in the Community
  • Brenda—­Primero echo el ojo a ver cuál habla español. (First I look around to see which one of them speaks Spanish.)
  • Luisa—­Yo quiero que me lean bien todo. (I want them to read it all out to me.)
  • Learning English: Efforts Made to Attend English Classes
  • Patricia—­Sí me interesa aprender, porque sí le hace a uno falta. (Yes, I am interested in learning, because one does need it.)
  • Luisa—­Pero se me hizo mejor aprender en ese trabajo. (But I found that it was better to learn at that job.)
  • Norma—­Pero se daba su tiempo para ayudarme. Y ahí fui aprendiendo un poquito. (But she would take the time to help me. And there I started learning a bit.)
  • Sandra—“No quito el dedo del renglón. Sé que un día voy a tener la oportunidad de centrarme.” (But I don’t lose sight of my objectives. I know that one day I will have the opportunity to focus again.)
  • Linguistic Advocacy: Embracing Bilingualism and Biliteracy
  • Patricia—­Yo sí quiero que aprendan los dos idiomas y escribir los dos idiomas. (I do want them to learn both languages and to write in both languages.)
  • Silvia—­Ella está en los dos idiomas. Yo digo que por eso ella va como muy avanzada. (She is in both languages. I say that that is why she is so advanced.)
  • Brenda—“Las mías lo aprovecharon y son muy buenas para interpretar.” (My daughters benefited from it and they are very good at interpreting.)
  • References
  • Chapter 10. Immigration as a Gendered Experience: The Crucial Resource of Physical Mobility
  • Physical Mobility and Gendered Migration
  • Developing New Resources: Learning How to Drive
  • Brenda—­Antes a mí no me daba vergüenza caminar. (I never used to be ashamed of walking.)
  • Physical Mobility as a Communal Resource: Solidarity as Self-­Realization
  • Brenda—­Y me pedían “ride” y a mí se me hacía malo decir que no. Y de ahí empecé yo a superarme más. (And they would ask me for rides and I felt bad saying “no”. And from then on I started progressing more.)
  • Susana—­Así es que era indispensable que aprendiera a manejar. Ya después ¡a ver quién me detiene! (So I just had to learn how to drive. Afterwards, who would stop me!)
  • Patricia—“Ahora que empiezo a manejar, un poquito más me relaciono así con la escuela y todo.” (Now that I’m starting to drive, I relate a bit more with the school and all.)
  • Luisa—­Aunque tenía miedo o nervios, tenía que hacerlo. (Even if I was afraid or nervous, I had to do it.)
  • References
  • Chapter 11. Becoming a Resource: The Articulation of Agency and Structure
  • Communal Agency
  • Communal Resources: A Characteristic of Motherwork
  • Becoming a Resource: Helping a Newcomer
  • Brenda—“Hasta si no sabía manejar, yo le enseñaba a manejar.” (Even if she didn’t know how to drive, I would teach her how to drive.)
  • Brenda—­Y así, pues, nos ayudábamos las unas a las otras. Pero esa es mi experiencia, aquí, pues que me enseñé a manejar. (And that is how we helped each other. But that is my experience, here, that I taught myself how to drive.)
  • Luisa—“Yo iba con ella, porque aquí en la escuela, en la primaria, yo conozco a la gente.” (I would go with her, because here, at the elementary school, I know the people.)
  • From Extreme Vulnerability to Communal Agency
  • Sandra—­Ya se va uno abriendo camino, y todo a pie. (One starts making one’s way, and all on foot.)
  • Communal Agency and Motherwork in the Narratives of Mexican Immigrant Mothers
  • References
  • Conclusion
  • References
  • Epilogue: Educational Motherwork Beyond Grade School
  • Index
  • Studies in Criticality

Lilian Cibils

Immigration,
Motherhood and
Parental Involvement

Narratives of Communal Agency
in the Face of Power Asymmetry

PETER LANG

About the author

Lilian Cibils is Assistant Professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include home-school relations, immigrant parent involvement and qualitative inquiry in multilingual contexts.

About the book

Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement is based on the vivid accounts of seven Latina immigrant women of how they learned to navigate the school system in the rural southwest of the United States. Their stories are presented within several contexts, the socio-political conditions of immigration overarching them all. The process of acquiring a new socio-cultural script offers a common frame to the narratives, which illustrate the central role of the community in finding spaces for agency in circumstances of vulnerability. As a contribution to educational theory, this book explores the official discourse of parental involvement within the broader context of social policy by pointing to a common underlying ideal parent norm across areas of policy related to family and women. It also revisits the concept of parental involvement through contrasting ideologies of motherhood, as it applies the concept of participation parity in everyday institutional interactions as a fundamental measure of social justice. Immigration, Motherhood and Parental Involvement offers deep insight into the institutionalized patterns of formal inclusion/informal exclusion in the relationship of schools with Latina immigrant mothers, even within the best intended programs. Its focus on the persistent need for the implementation of culturally and linguistically sensitive approaches to home-school relations makes this a must-read for undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education, education leadership and sociology of education. Teachers, administrators and policymakers committed to moving away from the prevalent view of mothers as people who mainly need to be educated also need to read this book.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgments

This work would not have seen the light had it not been for the support of many people: family members, friends, colleagues, mentors, and research participants. First and foremost, I am profoundly grateful to the wonderful women I had the privilege to get to know and interview. I will remain permanently indebted to each one of them for their trust, openness and generosity in sharing their powerful life stories. Their purpose in participating in the study was clear: they hoped that by relating their experiences they could make a difference in many immigrant mothers’ lives. In retelling them here, this is my wish too.

I would like to thank Shirley Steinberg and Chris Myers for the opportunity to publish my work. Sophie Appel’s diligence and support was invaluable at crucial points in the process of publication; I also thank all members of the Peter Lang team whose work made this book better. I also express my gratitude to the College of Education and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at New Mexico State University for the generous financial support I received through graduate assistantships which allowed me to complete my research. I am grateful to Jeanette Haynes-­Writer, Chair of the Department, for her interest in this project and her sustained encouragement. I would←ix | x→ also like to thank Neil Harvey, James O’Donnell, Marisol Ruiz, and Hermán S. García for their insightful questions, comments and suggestions.

I owe thanks of a more overarching kind to role models and mentors whose timely words have sustained me beyond their knowledge and, in some cases, beyond their time. My loving mother, Alcira de Rogers, a bright and modest woman, and a tireless teacher, inspired me with her passion for making a difference through education. I was truly fortunate to be mentored by H. Patsy Boyer, a brilliant feminist scholar and translator, as well as one of the most graceful and generous teachers, who encouraged me to write and to continue my studies. María del Mar López Cabrales, whom I met as one of my professors during my MA studies at Colorado State University, has become a dear friend who throughout the years has gone out of her way to extend her unwavering support even from miles away, sometimes across continents. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the authors whose writings most deeply impacted this work, namely, and in no special order, Iris Marion Young, Nancy Fraser, Patricia Hill Collins, and Catherine Kohler Riessman. I would like to extend my warm thanks to friends and colleagues—­especially Robin Martinez, Koomi Kim, Laura Liébana, and Heejung Chun—­whose encouragement during this challenging process was invaluable.

Finally, enormous thanks go to my husband, Andrés Cibils, and to my daughters, Anna and Elisa, for their loving patience and support every step of the way. Andrés lent himself as a sounding board for ideas throughout the writing process and, more significantly, the joy of his life partnership is more than I could ask. Anna and Elisa not only inspired the research at the heart of this book in the first place but continue to inspire me daily as young adults in their active commitment to working for a more just and equitable society. Their thoughtful reading and generous feedback of drafts of the newest chapters as the text grew from dissertation to book were more helpful than they will ever know.←x | 1→

Introduction

This book focuses on the experiences of seven Mexican immigrant women with their children’s schooling in the Southwest of the United States as reconstructed in their narratives. Inspired by critical feminist theory, the qualitative study (Cibils, 2011) which gave rise to this book set out to gather the perspectives of this group of women in order to take a close look at instances of interaction which were expected to offer counter stories (Chase, 2005; González, 2005). Yet, a more subtle and complex relation emerged between their narratives and the official discourse of parental involvement in education.

The overarching contexts of the stories in the book are laid out in Chapter 1 through a focus on some of the relevant social and political conditions of immigration. Chapter 2 presents the understandings of justice through which the stories are viewed while Chapter 3 briefly introduces the seven immigrant women who were interviewed for the study. Two contrasting ideologies of motherhood are presented in Chapter 4 as theoretical backdrop to the discussion on parental involvement. This is followed by an exploration of how the official discourse of parental involvement fits within the broader context of social policy through the examination of a common underlying ideal parent norm across areas of policy related to family and women.←3 | 4→

After introducing current perspectives on the dynamics of master and counter narratives, Chapter 5 looks into the significance of the tension observed within the stories of the women introduced in Chapter 3, and the signs of agency emerging from the coexistence of apparently contradictory narrative threads. In Chapter 6 the development of a sense of belonging in a new national context is illustrated through the stories shared by the seven women as they look back on their first interactions with their children’s schools. In the analysis of these accounts, the details of what the process of acquiring a new sociocultural script involves are highlighted, as well as the key role of the community in finding spaces for agency in circumstances of vulnerability.

The significance of language resources and access to them is at the center of the next three chapters. In Chapter 7 some subtle and not-­so-subtle ways in which exclusion is experienced in the formally inclusive spheres of US public schools are exposed by pointing to the paradoxical invisibility of language as a crucial symbolic resource, and illustrated in selected instances taken from the narratives of this group of women. While Chapter 8 centers on the consequences of the mediated quality of most interactions and how the power asymmetry of certain interactions can be accentuated by this factor, Chapter 9 introduces the notion of critical linguistic agency to illuminate how linguistic resources are accessed and shared. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 focus on the phenomenon of communal agency as embodied in the development and sharing of symbolic and material resources. In Chapter 10 immigration is explored as a gendered experience in which certain material resources such as physical mobility and documentation become crucial for independence. The notions of agency and structure which underlie all the chapters are at the center of the women’s stories featured in Chapter 11. After the Conclusion, some final narratives presented by way of Epilogue illustrate the reach of educational motherwork beyond high school.

The excerpts from the interviews with Brenda, Luisa, Norma, Patricia, Sandra, Silvia and Susana included here appear in their original Spanish followed by a translation. This choice reflects a deeply held conviction that research conducted in multilingual contexts must be open about this process. The translations are provided as an aid to English-­speaking readers but are not meant to replace the words of the interviewees; the analysis is based on the original. The names of all people and places have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the study participants.←4 | 5→

Details

Pages
296
Year
2017
ISBN (PDF)
9781433139215
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433139222
ISBN (MOBI)
9781433139239
ISBN (Softcover)
9781433130885
ISBN (Hardcover)
9781433130892
DOI
10.3726/978-1-4331-3921-5
Language
English
Publication date
2018 (October)
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, 2017. X, 296 pp.

Biographical notes

Lilian Cibils (Author)

Lilian Cibils is Assistant Professor of TESOL/Bilingual Education at New Mexico State University. Her research interests include home-school relations, immigrant parent involvement and qualitative inquiry in multilingual contexts.

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