Migration

Why read this text..

Migration is a concept used to describe the movement of people from one locality to another. It includes both internal movement within state boundaries and international movement across geopolitical borders. Seen both as a phenomenon and a lived experience, the concept accommodates different institutions as well as political and sociocultural practices that are critical both within and across different educational contexts.
Migratory phenomena affect state policies and determine processes of legal classification and enforcement such as the political status of “citizen”. As citizenship comprises ‘insiders’ (those that have legal access to various rights and state institutions such as education), it also excludes ‘outsiders’, such as migrants, or creates ambivalent transitional categories for them. With regard to education, understanding the migrant experience makes it crucial to comprehend the specific cultural construction of the insider/outsider divide.
Schools across the world face the challenge of educating growing numbers of students with migration background trying at the same time to equip them with several skills and competences. The language and cultural knowledge that immigrants bring with them known as “funds of knowledge” (Arzubiaga et al. 2009, Moll 2010) are important in the school curriculum for children’s educational engagement. In the same vein, teachers are expected to be trained in order to fulfill not only the role of educators but also that of cultural intermediaries.

Historical Context

Anthropology’s contribution to the study of migration is the attention to “the articulation between the place whence a migrant originates and the place or places to which he or she goes (Brettell 2000: 98, Horevitz 2009). Historically, migration has been initially studied in anthropology and other social sciences as the movement of people from small-scale, rural localities to large urban centers. The so called Chicago School of sociology with studies in urban areas in North America (Bulmer 1984) and the so called Manchester School of anthropology with studies in Southern and Central Africa (Werbner 1984) focused around the mid of 20th century on the settlement of large numbers of internal migrants in big cities.
These studies examined aspects of social change, forms of co-existence of different ethnic groups and the importance of networks of family and friends in these newly emerging settlements. They also described the processes by which existing networks of social ties were maintained and utilized in urban situations. Focusing on the internal migration, this body of research drew on modernization theory and a bipolar framework of analysis that contrasted city and the countryside.
A renewed interest in migration in the 1980s and 1990s explored the movements of workers from Asia to the Arab Gulf states. Analyses of the social and economic contexts that migrants, their families and communities operated in, challenged the economically determined models of migration and stressed the social and cultural aspects of human movement. Various key themes emerged that included the social organization and the political economy of migration, the study of social networks and immigrant organizations, the relationship between migration and ideology, and the impact of migration on identity (Eades 1987).
By the late 20th and early 21st century the anthropological study of migration explores the ways state policies both shape and are shaped by the international movement of people. According to Green, there are two perspectives on the migrant populations: the economic that depicts them as a workers and the cultural that perceives them as foreigners (2004: 54).
Currently, the anthropological study of migration focuses on the relations between local practices and global forces and discourses, processes of inclusion and exclusion, transnationalism and the meanings of citizenship, and the problematization of multiculturalism and cultural diversity.

a) Discussion

The anthropological study of education intersects with the anthropology of migration at the point where migrant populations are subjected to state educational policies, exclusionary and/or inclusionary procedures related to citizenship and political rights, and formal or informal categorizations between “Self” and “Other” based on cultural features. Globalization and intense immigration have established new demands on the host countries in terms of governmental policy, law policy, and civil rights and re-oriented the priorities regarding the management of migrants. As a result, the educational provisions are being intensified and systematized.
Most of the anthropological studies on migration and education have focused on the incorporation of second-, third-, and even fourth-generation migrants, often from the perspective of children and young people, into host societies (as in the case of USA or Scandinavia), and on the role of educational institutions in processes of in- and exclusion (Levitt 2009).
Adopting new perspectives, anthropologists are looking at the ways citizenship is claimed or negotiated by migrants who are often confronted with acts of exclusion, by nation state institutions and/or in the context of everyday interactions (Reed-Danahay & Brettell 2008). Citizenship as a political status or a set of rights and obligations between individuals and the state operates as a boundary among migrants and non-migrants (Werbner and Yuval-Davis, 1999, p. 4). Claims to citizenship involve forms of political activism and immigrant civic engagement. Societal and political participation among immigrants and their offspring is considered as fluid and changing, subjective, and contentious.
In understanding how migrants settle in a host society, anthropologists have employed the concept of transnationalism, which is understood as a social process, where migrants have social, cultural, and political presence in more than one nation at a given time. From a transnational perspective, migrants are not uprooted but active participants in both homeland and host societies (Vertovec, 2010).
The anthropological work on transnationalism emphasizes the way in which identities are negotiated and constructed simultaneously in local, national and global spaces and the transgression and redefinition of political borders, and the construction and deconstruction of socio-cultural boundaries. Thus, understanding the everyday transnational agency of migrants, the ways transnational identities and arrangements may challenge the political and cultural authority of the state as well as state projects concerning immigrant incorporation which can further illuminate the relation between migration and state formal education.

b) Practical Example

John Bowen (2007), working on the subject of immigrants in Europe, discusses the statutory ban on headscarves in state schools in France in 2004 (65-97). He argues that the focus on headscarves resulted from a great concern about the public presence of religion in schools and fears that this would be a link between public expressions of Islamic identity and radical Islam. The effects of the law became apparent in the practices within state schools where headmasters and teachers were attributed with the authority to decide whether the girls were properly unveiled or not, and whether the alternative head covers did not resemble too much a “religious” symbol. Bowen interprets the events as an effort to control the content of communication and behaviour in school life based on a widely shared discomfort from the increasingly visible participation of Muslim immigrants in Europe.
In a study about the impact of immigration on school education in New South Wales, Australia, Iredale & Fox (1997) analyze the demographic changes in the profile of school students, and an overview of how school systems in New South Wales responded to their changing student populations. Australia's immigration policy is one of multiculturalism. Assimilating immigrants has been replaced by an emphasis on economic advantages of a culturally diverse nation in which the appropriate services should enable them to become Australian. Thus, the local federal government provides English programs for newly arrived immigrants who have non-English-speaking background and funds multicultural education equity programs.
The study reveals that many of non-English-speaking background pupils miss out on English as a second language instruction, community languages are allowed to lapse, and aspects of the school environment, such as relations between different groups, are not given the attention that they deserve. In a multicultural society, as Australia sees itself, relatively free of ethnic tensions, educational strategies that work at developing a heterogeneous, nondiscriminatory society must be given more attention. State educational institutions need to provide adequate and appropriate education and training for all immigrants and their children and to ensure their full participation in all social, economic and political fabric activities.
In another study about the connections between educational inequality in Brazil, transnational migration and educational upward mobility, Carnicer (2019) analyzes a young woman’s migration from a favela in Brazil to Germany as a case of educational migration. He describes the social trajectories of this woman and her family and interprets them in the context of recent socio-economic developments in Brazil, showing how educational inequality can drive migration. The analysis aims to show how migrants from disadvantaged social backgrounds actively take part in the transnationalization of education. The study demonstrates that transnational educational careers of underprivileged migrants are influenced in a decisive way not only by migration regimes, but also by the educational systems of emigration and immigration countries.

Thinking further:

How do migration phenomena affect national education policies?
How should a state education system integrate children with migration background?
How should migrant children best be received and included in the primary or secondary education classrooms?
What institutions and training are needed to deal with the effects of migration in schooling processes?
What are the skills teachers need to acquire in order to fulfill their roles as educators in the context of migration?

KEY-WORDS/ CROSS-REFERENCES

Inclusion, exclusion, citizenship, transnationalism, identity, nation-state, culture, schooling

Sources

Arzubiaga A. E. (et al.) (2009). The education of children in immigrant families. Educational Research Review, 33. (246–271).

Bowen, J., R. (2007). Why the French don’t like headscarves: Islam, the state, and public space. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

Brettell, C. (2000). Theorizing migration in anthropology: The social construction of networks, identities, communities and globalscapes. In Brettell, C. and Hollifield, J. (Εds) Migration theory: Talking across disciplines. New York: Routledge. (97–136).

Bulmer, M. (1984). The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carnicer, J.A. (2019). Transnational migration and educational opportunities: A case study of migration from Brazil to Germany. London Review of Education, 17 (1). (14–25).

Eades, J. (Ed.) (1987). Migrants, Workers and the Social Order. London: Tavistock Publications.

Green, N. L. (2004). Repenser les migrations. Paris: PUF [in Greek].
Horevitz, E. (2009). Understanding the Anthropology of Immigration and Migration. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 12 (6). (745- 758).

Iredale, R. & Fox, Chr. (1997). The Impact of Immigration on School Education in New South Wales, Australia. The International Migration Review, 31(3). (655-669).

Levitt, P. (2009). Roots and Routes: Understanding the Lives of the Second Generation Transnationally. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 35(7). (1225–1242).

Moll, L., C. (2010). Mobilizing culture, language, and educational practices: fulfilling the promises of “Mendez” and “Brown”. Educational Research, 39(6). (451–460).

Reed-Danahay, D., & Brettell, C. B. (Eds.), (2008). Citizenship, Political Engagement, and Belonging. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Vertovec, St., (2010). Introduction: new directions in the anthropology of migration and multiculturalism. In Vertovec, St. (Ed.) Anthropology of Migration and Multiculturalism: New Directions. New York and London: Routledge. (1–17).

Werbner, R., P. (1984). The Manchester School in South-central Africa. Annual Review of Anthropology, 13. (157–185).

Werbner, Pn., Yuval-Davis, N., (1999). Introduction: women and the new discourse of citizenship. In Werbner, Pn., Yuval-Davis, N. (Eds.), Women, Citizenship and Difference. London and New York: Zed Books. (1–38).

Authors

Ioannis Manos, Georgia Sarikoudi (GREECE)

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