Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic engagement in Guatemala with Indigenous youth, local community organizations, and transnational nongovernmental organizations, this article examines how young people imagine and work toward alternative futures at the intersection of extensive migration and a developmentalist push for educational attainment. I…

Studies on migration and education have examined homeland returns as part of family strategies around acquiring desired cultural capital. However, the impact of return migration and transnational mobility on homeland educational landscapes remains under-researched. Using ethnographic data from Ghana, Senegal, the UK and the US, this paper shows…

This ethnographic case study explores Nicaragua--Costa Rica cross-border dynamics, one of the most important South-South migration flows in the Central American region. I identify practices that prevent Nicaraguan children in a Costa Rican classroom from consolidating transnational identities and networks during the school day. Specifically, I…

This article explores notions of belonging and citizenship for "American Mexican" students--Mexican-heritage youth born in the United States who return to Mexico with their families. Our findings reveal belonging as a sociocultural practice that participants negotiated spatially and relationally, chiefly by making their US-born status…

What is the relationship among migration, education, and socio-emotional well-being? This article draws on ethnographic research with Dominican youth to examine the impact of maternal migration on young immigrants and their educational aspirations. We detail how the youth come to conflate mother love, the sacrifices of migration, and educational…

This paper illuminates the border-crossing and border-contesting work of undocumented mothers seeking opportunities for their children. Mothers navigate dual threats of deportability and poverty-induced mobility, preparing children for, and utilizing schools to stave off, these possibilities. Examining border crossing as parent involvement, I…

This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of indigenous Peruvian Amazonian youth pursuing higher education through urban migration to contribute to the resilience of their communities, place-based livelihoods, and indigenous Amazonian identities. Youth and their communities promoted education and migration as powerful tools in the context of…

There are negative consequences for children and youth when a primary caregiver leaves to migrate. However there are unforeseen experiences related to schooling. I compare how Mexican maternal migration has influenced the education experiences of the children left behind in Mexico and their siblings living in the United States. These microcontexts…

This article examines contrasting approaches to citizenship education in two schools in San Salvador, El Salvador, in the face of highly visible transnational migration. I argue that while transnational realities challenge education for democratic citizenship, educational processes that enable students to interrogate their own transnational…

This article explores the ways in which immigrant children in Cyprus negotiated and perceived their class positions amidst the transnational activities of their parents. As findings indicate, children develop acute understandings of the impact money has on their lives. Drawing on resources physically or imaginarily available to them, children…

This article focuses on the relationship between migration and education as aspects of wider livelihood strategies among Nepalese migrants in India. It argues that physical and social mobility are inextricably linked and looks at education (both formal and informal) as a driving force in migration. Combining a broad notion of education with a…

In a context of globalization, individual aspirations transcend the local as people seek to move to distant locations to fulfill their own as well as larger social expectations. Formal schooling often does not lead to the acquisition of appropriate knowledge or relevant skills to attaining these aspirations, making students opt for vocational or…

Migration-based language pluralism and globalized identity conflicts pose challenges for educational research and linguistic anthropology, in particular, how we think about education and social inequality. This article proposes new conceptual tools, drawn from linguistic anthropology as well as world systems theory, for analyzing the role of…

In this article, I examine the possibility of a productive dialogue between diaspora studies and the anthropology of immigrant education in the United States. Arguing that their respective views on the nation-state is a key source for their different orientations toward migrant social and cultural worlds, I nevertheless argue that an engagement…

In this article, I highlight the challenges, tensions, and affinities between Latino educational anthropology and diaspora studies. Some of the urgent questions include attention to new Latino destinations, transnationalism, and Latino diversity. It concludes by suggesting future pathways through Latina feminist thought.