Revealing the complex ways young people understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives, Ariana Mangual Figueroa observes when and how six Latina students from mixed-immigration-status families choose to talk about citizenship. She models new ways to collaborate with educators, children, and families, ultimately offering a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom.
Friday, June 7, 2024
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM (Pacific Time)
Haines Hall
Rm 279
There is a persistent assumption in the field of education that children are largely unaware of their immigration status and its implications. In
Knowing Silence, Ariana Mangual Figueroa challenges this “myth of ignorance.” By listening carefully to both the speech and significant silences of six Latina students from mixed-immigration-status families, from elementary school into middle school and beyond, she reveals the complex ways young people understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives.
Providing these children with iPod Touches to record their own conversations, Mangual Figueroa observes when and how they choose to talk about citizenship at home, at school, and in public spaces. Analyzing family conversations about school forms, in-class writing assignments, encounters with the police, and applications for college, she demonstrates that children grapple with the realities of citizenship from an early age. Educators who underestimate children’s knowledge, Mangual Figueroa shows, can marginalize or misunderstand these students and their families.
Combining significant empirical findings with reflections on the ethical questions surrounding research and responsibility, Mangual Figueroa models new ways scholars might collaborate with educators, children, and families. With rigorous and innovative ethnographic methodologies, Knowing Silence makes audible the experiences of immigrant-origin students in their own terms, ultimately offering teachers and researchers a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom.
Ariana Mangual Figueroa is former teacher in New York City public school, and an associate professor of urban education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
This event is co-sponsored by CSIM and the SE&IS Language, Literacy, and Learning Collaborative
Sponsor(s): Center for Study of International Migration, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, SE&IS Language, Literacy, and Learning Collaborative