Immigration and education

Education and progress, both personal and social, have been intricately linked in the human imagination and across historical contexts. The link became even more powerful with the introduction of free, open, and eventually compulsory education-for example, from the early days of the “common schools” in mid-nineteenth-century United States, education has carried tremendous symbolic weight in the national imagination. It connected the gains of an education to personal self-improvement, social mobility and the fulfillment and perpetuation of the new republic’s virtues. Such potential eventually engendered previously absent support for publicallyfunded schools from multiple social strata, as each was able to find a relevant promise in this institution. Among these supportive groups were the newest members of society who, ironically, were among the very reasons native-born populations supported free schools that would aid with their integration. Drawing mainly on US-based immigration, this chapter centers on the intersections between immigration and education conceptualized both as a social institution and as lived experience. I position the education of immigrants in historical context as well as in the context of assimilation and integration theories, emphasizing the relationship between education and aspects of inequality and social reproduction. After a brief overview of the historical development in this area of inquiry, I highlight major issues in the field-focusing on immigrant education along several relevant social locations-and subsequent critiques. I conclude with potential areas of future investigation. Newcomers’ history with formal educational institutions in the United States is complex and

contested. Historical evidence shows the nuanced relationship immigrants had with schools, being both drawn to their promises of integration and success in the new land, while simultaneously resisting their impositions when these were antagonistic to immigrants’ own values and intentions. This historical relationship records a tension between “coercion and beneficence, between immigrant acquiescence and resistance” (Olneck 2004: 383). Oversimplification of this history may lead to erroneous conclusions about the possibilities of immigrant incorporation through education, both historically and now. For example, despite some common social angst regarding immigrants’ desire to use schools for separatist intentions-and resist linguistic and cultural integration-historical research highlights immigrants’ desire for schools and education

that has been, in fact, consistent. Their contemporary aims for education are not in contrast with a “golden age” of seamless integration that has allegedly ceased to exist in our fragmented society. On the contrary, immigrants seem to want from education today what they have historically wanted: integration and mobility in the new society along with a fair recognition of their identities (Olneck 2009). Similarly, interpretations of this history range from the critiques of aggressive Americanization of immigrants through education-portrayed as a compelling force that stripped newcomers of their identities-to the subsequent critiques of thoroughly “bleak” views of American history that overlook education’s genuinely progressive facet that benefited immigrants in their transition. Immigrants’ history with educational institutions, therefore, and their experiences in those

contexts highlight essential ideological positions about social progress, national agendas and other issues with an important legacy into the present. As immigration sociologist Michael Olneck (2004) has argued, “research on immigrants and education illuminates important societal beliefs and aspirations, responses to social change, prevailing educational policies and practices, and continuous debates about multiculturalism” (p. 381). It is thus an essential scholarly area that addresses perennial issues, albeit a newer one in the longer history of immigration studies. Of the 71 million children in the United States in 2009, 24 percent had an immigrant parent.

The increase in immigrants’ number in educational institutions-currently one in five students is an immigrant or the child of an immigrant-enriches these institutions and poses important questions about how they are to respond. This, however, is far from being a new phenomenon. Indeed, questions about how to address immigrant integration and how schools should participate in the process-as major acculturating, if not assimilating institutions-are long-standing and have coincided with major immigration waves or turning points in the United States, its ideological orientations and economic situation. For example, the middle of the nineteenth century (with the spread of the “common schools”), the beginning of the twentieth (known for its Americanization movement), as well as the “intercultural education” movement between the two world wars and the subsequent multicultural education approaches emerging out the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, all exemplify such recurrent attempts at addressing the education and integration of minorities and immigrants. With the post-1965 immigration and its exponential increase in immigrants of previously banned origins, integration in the social fabric continues to capture policy, public, and scholarly debates. Current so-called “dilemmas” over immigrants’ integration simply continue a quintessential narrative in American history. The connection of this national narrative with education became clearer as social science

research on immigration and education has emerged more visibly in the last four decades. This new interest was paralleled by the later increase in attention to children and youth in studies of immigration, an interest prompted by the post-1965 immigrants’ descendants (“the new second generation”) and their adaptation (e.g., Portes and Zhou 1993; Kao and Tienda 1995; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 2001). Historical research on immigrants and schools in the United States-although mostly originating in education research and not necessarily immigration research-has focused on the schools’ role in the integrative movements from the common school era of the mid-nineteenth century and through the Americanization movement of the early twentieth century. Research on how educational institutions respond to immigrants has continued from the historical contexts to contemporary ones, along with interest in immigrant students’ patterns of educational achievement and the newer attention to their various experiences with schools. The ethos of the Civil Rights Movement, even if initially focused on native-born minorities,

prompted a shift in the focus and tone of research with immigrants in general and with immigrant youth and students in particular. More research emerged justified by a sense of concern

and care for the needs of immigrants and their well-being in the new society. While initially the value of pre-migration social resources was ignored or denigrated, in the 1970s, scholars paid increased attention to the positive effects of migrants’ social and cultural practices which facilitated their survival and success post-arrival, including interest in education. A fascination with immigrant achievement also emerged in the 1970s, as research studies

began to look at academic performance by group, beginning with some attention to cohorts in the early 1900s. Even if these historical studies are considered limited due to data access and variable operationalization-which made it difficult to separate the effects of ethnicity per se from other relevant factors (Olneck 2004)—these studies found relatively consistent rank ordering in achievement. The children of Northern Europeans were doing as well as nativeborn white Americans, Eastern European Jews better or the same as native-born white Americans, while non-Jewish central and southern Europeans were at serious disadvantage. Later studies, as Michael Olneck (2004) explains in his historical overview, would account for both structural and cultural factors, because in considering the issues of achievement, “cultural factors do not operate in a vacuum; nor are they impervious to material and historical circumstances” (p. 394). The interest in immigrants’ educational attainment by group continues today, including

attention to the intersection of cultural and structural factors, especially since certain groups remain in disadvantaged positions and their prospects at social mobility are thus limited in the newer knowledge-based economy. Studies have increased to highlight disconcerting trends, for example, for Latino youth whose drop-out rates and lower educational attainment are disproportionally high compared to other groups. Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut’s ambitious Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) of over five thousand immigrant youth of seventy-seven nationalities in San Diego and Dade County, Florida, and the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) led by Carola and Marcelo SuarezOrozco (1997-2002)—as well as other studies, both in the United States and Canada-confirm trends of disproportional achievement across groups. These findings drew attention to important variables for achievement and their uneven distribution across immigrant origins, placing some at higher likelihood of success just as in the historical context: