Viesca & Commins: Module 4: Historical/Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration/Migration

Module 4: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration and Migration

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Background Theory and Ideas

According to UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency), we are currently witnessing the highest

levels of human displacement on record1. There are an unprecedented 70.8 million people around

the world that have been forced from their homes with 25.9 million of them refugees and over

half of them under the age of 18. UNHCR also estimates that there are ~4 million stateless

people who have been denied a nationality and thus access to basic rights like education,

healthcare, employment and freedom of movement. This kind of large scale movement has

happened throughout history. Yet, currently, UNHCR estimates that every day an unprecedented

37,000 people are forced to leave their homes. The reasons for this movement are complex, and

relate to conflict, persecution, poverty, climate change crises, and human rights issues. These

shifts in population have implications for teachers around the world and here in the U.S.

especially since the arrival of newcomers often results in an increase in xenophobia and

nationalism. We need to ask ourselves what this means for our classrooms and what we need to

understand in order to be great teachers for the students we work with. The following sections

will explore various perspectives regarding historical and contemporary contexts of immigration

and migration to consider just that.

Historical Contexts of Immigration and Migration. The history of migration in the

U.S. can be viewed from multiple and often conflicting perspectives. It is often said that we are a

“nation of immigrants” since most people currently living in the U.S. have ancestry that traces

back to other countries of origin. The dominant narrative around immigration is a fairy tale

version of the historical context of immigration, spurred by images of European immigrants

1
https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/figures-at-a-glance.html

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arriving at Ellis Island set to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America,” which indeed reflects the

experiences of some immigrants. But the history around immigration also includes Native

American genocide, the stealing of African people to sell as slaves on U.S. soil and other

discriminatory, exclusionary, and oppressive policies and practices. While many families hold

idyllic versions of immigration stories that have been passed down through generations, the

reality is that there have been consistent issues with nativism, xenophobia, racism and oppression

that are actually very similar to what we are experiencing in the U.S. today. For this reason,

having a complex, nuanced and expansive understanding of the historical contexts of

immigration in the U.S is helpful for all teachers working with multilingual students today.

It is outside the scope of this module to be able to explore all facets, aspects and events in

history related to immigration and migration in the U.S. and other areas around the world. So, for

the purpose of the desired learning outcomes of this module, we will focus on broad themes that

have proven themselves to be relevant across history and that bear relevance today regarding

immigration and migration as well as our work in classrooms today: language and race.

Language. Part of the narrative around immigration is that in order to be a unified nation

we must all speak the same language. The fact is that there has always been a great deal of

language diversity in the U.S. both from immigrants coming from a variety of language

backgrounds, but also due to the numerous Indigenous languages that were present before the

colonial settlers arrived (Wiley, 2002). The importance of a common language does not have to

mean the exclusion of other languages. There have always been immigrants in the U.S. who have

maintained their languages while still participating in the larger society. In fact it is through these

language ties that groups of immigrants have been able to support one another in their efforts to

make a home in a new place. This is often forgotten in our fairy tale narratives around

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immigration. We hear about how quickly historical immigrants gave up their “old world”

cultural and linguistic practices to assimilate into the “new world.”

As Dr. María Brisk often suggests, the U.S. is a graveyard of languages. Historically, the

“old world” languages often disappeared in families within a couple of generations (Portes &

Hao, 1998). As a society we glorify how quickly previous generations of immigrants learned

English and assimilated, but ignore the reality of what this loss this represents socially,

psychologically and economically, as well as the reasons for that loss. With all we know about

the benefits of multilingualism, why is the loss of immigrant languages something we exalt?

One of the reasons frequently noted for that disappearance of other languages is the desire of

parents to save their children from the discrimination they faced as speakers of those languages.

There is an intimacy and connection that is lost in families due to the social context treating your

language (and thus you) as inferior. This is still an issue educators must continue to grapple with

today.

This loss of language among immigrants has happened at that same time that our history

proactively sought to erase Indigenous linguistic and cultural practices, something that is often

completely invisible in conversations around immigration and migration. It’s not only the past

practices of colonial settlers in history that lead to the language loss crises many Indigenous

communities around the world and in the U.S. are facing, but it is modern day practices as well.

The recent use (into the 1960s) of boarding schools to “deculturize” Indigenous communities and

remove children from the linguistic practices of their families and communities directly impacts

many people alive today and has had devastating consequences on Indigenous language and

cultural practices. As with many aspects of Indigenous life in the U.S historically and

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contemporarily, there is most often silence around these practices rather than an

acknowledgement of their reality and lasting impact.

Race. Race has long played a major role in immigration and migration patterns and

policies across history as well as today, but often an unacknowledged one. The Naturalization

Act of 1790 restricted citizenship to free Whites. Obviously in the context of slavery, it meant

that citizenship was officially denied to the many men and women being stolen from Africa and

brought to the U.S. in bondage as well as their offspring. However, enslaved African involuntary

migrants are not the only group whose race impacted their legal standing and

immigration/migration patterns.

In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act that legalized the removal of all Native

Americans living east of the Mississippi to lands that were west of the river. Thus from 1831-

1838 Indigenous communities were forcibly resettled in the West, labeled the “Trail of Tears”

because of its devastating effects due to disease, hunger and exhaustion on the forced march,

thousands died. Across the history of our country there is example after example of treaty,

legislation and other policy work that has negatively impacted Native communities (also

multilingual students in our classrooms) on U.S. soil—more displacement, lack of access to

citizenship, and lack of sovereignty on tribal lands have historically been major issues for Native

communities in the U.S. The sovereignty issue is a major challenge for Indigenous communities

that continues today.

In the 1840s, the U.S. government annexed Texas, declared war on Mexico and by 1848

defeated Mexico and purchased (for $15 million) land that includes modern day California,

Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The Treaty of

Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded the Mexican territory to the U.S. and promised to protect the land,

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language and culture of the Mexican people who were living in the ceded territory. Through this

treaty, Mexicans living on these lands were given the right to become U.S. citizens if they

decided to stay. However, there was an article in the treaty that Congress refused to pass, so the

protections were not realized and instead the people affected by the treaty had to prove in court,

and in English, that they had rights to the land. This is an issue of migration where the border

moved, not the people. And the protections the people were supposed to have as rights to their

ancestral land as well as culture and language, were not recognized, similar to the many treaties

with Native American populations.

In the 1840s, large numbers of Chinese immigrants started coming to the west coast to

work in mining and agriculture. Many of the Chinese laborers also helped to build the

Transcontinental Railroad. However, in 1850, the California legislature passed the Foreign

Miners Tax which required Chinese and Latin American gold miners to pay special taxes that

were not required of their European counterparts. In 1878 the U.S., Supreme Court ruled that

Chinese individuals were ineligible for naturalized citizenship and in 1882 Congress passed the

Chinese Exclusion Act that prohibited Chinese immigration for 10 years. It was renewed in 1892,

made permanent in 1902, but repealed in 1943.

All of these efforts to bar certain groups of immigrants and privilege others came from

nativist sentiments and racist efforts to perpetuate a nation based on white supremacy. In fact,

since citizenship was tied to race, several court cases occurred where the definition of “white”

was tested. In 1923, a Japanese businessman, Takao Ozawa, petitioned the Supreme Court for

naturalization by arguing that his skin was as white as any so-called “Caucasian.” However, the

court ruled that he was of the “Mongolian” race and thus did not qualify for naturalization.

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The reality illustrated here from various aspects of our history related to race and

immigration is that race has always played a role in immigration policy in the U.S., often an

oppressive and exclusionary one. These patterns continue today. In fact, it is important for all

teachers of multilingual learners to recognize the role race plays in the idea of the “American

Dream,” for the White bodies that immigrate eventually become unmarked and “American,”

while even after generations of families living in the U.S with Black or Brown bodies, they are

continually marked “other.” This has recently been illustrated by the President of the U.S. telling

four Congresswomen of Color to go back to their countries. Three of those four women were

born in the U.S. Full assimilation is actually only truly on offer for immigrants who are

phenotypically white. Regardless of how long families have been in this country, how well they

speak English, how engaged they are in the community, they regularly face microaggressions

that suggest they do not actually belong in a country that still sustains white supremacy.

Therefore, for teachers, we suggest it is important for you to remember the racialized

history of immigration in the U.S. and how our racialized society still impacts multilingual

students and their families today—even those whose immigration stories might reach back across

generations. We also ask that teachers recognize the complexity of this situation by

acknowledging that the typical idea of the “American Dream” and the goal of assimilation (like a

melting pot), is both true for some (especially those in White bodies) and not on offer for others

(particularly those in Black, Brown and other non-White bodies). Further, for Indigenous

communities, sovereignty is what is often most desired rather than assimilation. This complexity

should also be embraced by acknowledging the different narratives around immigration (as well

as histories) that occurred across our nation. For instance, the Ellis Island narrative is different

from that of Angel Island near San Francisco. What are the local and regional narratives that you

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need to learn about and attend to in order to understand your current teaching context? Please be

sure to attend to the hard things like Native American genocide and erasure, slavery, Japanese

internment, etc.

To account for the complexities of our historical context around immigration by attending

to both language and race, we need to move away from the “melting pot” metaphor regarding

immigrants and their roles as contributors in the U.S. towards a “salad bowl” metaphor. If

immigrants coming to the U.S. are not expected to assimilate and disappear into the pot, they can

maintain aspects of their identities, cultural practices and language, and also contribute to a more

fantastic whole as a component of a salad. The most delicious salads have diverse flavors,

vegetables, fruits, seeds, nuts, legumes, etc. None of those components need to lose their essence

in order to contribute to the quality and deliciousness of the salad. In fact, when they are

eliminated, the salad become decidedly less flavorful. In order to combat some of the historical

issues that still play a contemporary role in our society and classrooms around immigration and

migration, we need to embrace a pluralist approach that supports and engages the individual

assets and abilities of multilingual learners as well as their cultural and linguistic strengths for

the benefit of the larger society as a whole.

Classroom Snapshot

In a getting to know you activity at the beginning of the year, Ms. Smith, a first-year teacher

working in a 5th grade classroom wanted to celebrate the varied cultures and backgrounds of her

students and their families. So, she asked students to write a short story about the immigration

narrative in their family and then post it, along with a picture of themselves on a large world map

hung on a classroom wall to indicate where their family was from. However, this activity did not

turn out to be as positive and hopeful as Ms. Smith had intended. While for many students this

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activity was positive and engaging, for her Native American student, this activity caused some

problems that she simply hadn’t anticipated. She got an email from the parent of a Native

American student describing how the student had cried at home, not wanting to do the

assignment. This student was well aware of the history of immigration and migration and how it

had impacted her family. She felt sad and unseen when her teacher asked her to participate in an

activity that continued to tell a narrative of invisibility and erasure for that student’s family and

ancestors. Ms. Smith was devastated. She reflected on what she could do better and the next year,

she did a similar assignment but with some important shifts. First, the assignment was focused

on getting to know students’ families and histories. She encouraged students to write a story that

would help the class get to know their family and history. It could be a story of triumph or

challenge—any story that the student wanted to share. Second, as part of this assignment, Ms.

Smith invited local leaders, Elders in the Indigenous community, to come to class and do a land

acknowledgement2 where students participated in honoring the ancestral lands of the local tribes.

Third, as students shared their stories, Ms. Smith connected their stories to larger societal issues

and opportunities around the time the stories were told. She used students’ stories as a launching

pad into collaborative investigations into history and a variety of social studies topics. In fact,

they used the stories as a foundation for weeks of investigations and community building to not

only learn about the students in the class, but to learn about the histories that impacted their

families personally. She did not shy away from exploring with her students, the more challenging

aspects of history that were uncovered. And instead of creating a static display of student

pictures on a map, she used the stories that students wanted to share to both build community as

well as expand student understanding regarding history.

2
For more information on land acknowledgements, please visit the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture’s website:
https://usdac.us/nativeland

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Resources and Strategies. Supplemental information is available online.

Local Immigration and Migration Histories, Resources and Organizations. To learn

about your local history of immigration and migration as well as local resources and

organizations who currently support immigrants and migrants, we recommend some thoughtful

research on local history that includes attention to the history of Indigenous people in your area

as well as the opportunity to begin the practice of land acknowledgement in your classrooms.

Contemporary Contexts of Immigration and Migration. This module is being written

during a time of heightened attention and conversation regarding immigration in the U.S.

(summer of 2019). Our contemporary context of immigration and migration is littered with

human rights abuses, shifting policies, and demeaning rhetoric towards immigrants and their

families. Currently every news cycle is attending to the overcrowding and squalor in the

detention camps that immigrants are being kept in. There are threats of expansive ICE

(Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids on immigrant communities around the U.S, as

well as a travel ban for people from some Muslim majority countries and conversations around

cancelling protections for undocumented family members of active duty military personnel.

There is also talk of shifting policy regarding asylum seeking as well as ongoing issues of family

separation at the southern border.

Similar to the complexity we discussed in the historical context of immigration in our

country, we face a great deal of complexity in these issues today. Consider, what would make a

parent leave their home, family and friends and journey over a 1,000 miles on foot even when

they know they will get put in a detention camp when they arrive? And while there are many

people seeking asylum in the U.S away from poverty and/or violence, there are also people

coming to the U.S through the “front door,” yet few doors remain open. This is a situation where

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we have to acknowledge there are simultaneously multiple seemingly competing truths as well as

no simple solution. Rather, a great deal of complexity that all teachers of multilingual learners

should be aware of.

There has not been an update to U.S. immigration laws and policies in decades. There are

incredible backlogs in addressing applications and paper work for people seeking to immigrate

through the so-called “front door.” Even with proper documentation it can require over a 20 -

year wait to be processed. In reality this means that for many seeking to immigrate, there is no

“front door” option. This is particularly true for children who were brought to the U.S. as minors.

Many of them have no pathway to citizenship in the country that they have known as home all or

most of their lives. This creates a kind of stress and uncertainty unknown to children who are

U.S. citizens, especially if their younger siblings are citizens with may more opportunities open

to them. The non-existent doors and increasingly closing ones are extremely problematic, but

very difficult to address as there are such varied views across the political spectrum regarding

immigration and the best ways forward. For this reason, it is possible that it will be quite a while

before the larger overarching legal and policy questions will be addressed. Nonetheless these

students are part of the multilingual diversity in our classrooms and deserve the respect and

dignity afforded to their peers.

All teachers, regardless of their political leanings, must view their multilingual students

as capable, strong learners and create positive learning contexts full of opportunities for self-

actualization and transformative learning. To create this kind of space, it is important for

teachers to know as much as possible about their students as well as the communities they come

from. This knowledge should come from meaningful interactions with students, their families

and their communities. Without being intrusive, seek to understand the history of the family,

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why they are in the area, how long they have been in the area, and if they are not Native to the

area, what were the push and pull factors that brought their family to the area? Also seek to learn

about community resources and supports as well as the community ecologies they participate in.

In truly seeking to understand students and their families and communities, you will have an

opportunity to also learn about their motivations, interests and most importantly, definitions of

success. At the same time, recognize that while impacted by their families and communities,

students are themselves unique individuals who may or may not fully subscribe to those notions

of success their parents hold and may be, in fact, developing their own personalize notions of

success. The more you understand about all of these things, the better you will be able to support

strong levels of learning and self-actualization for your students.

As you seek to understand the culture, language, histories, and goals of the students and

families that you work, remember that how you interpret the information is key. Many families,

especially those with recent immigration histories, have faced particular challenges. Depending

on your own family’s experiences with immigration you may be more or less able to relate to

them. In all cases you should frame what you learn in terms of strengths and possibilities.

Remember that all families, not just multilingual families with connections to immigration face

challenges. For example, teachers may be able to look at the student who has lost a parent to

cancer as an incredibly resilient student with great physical and emotional strength, while they

may view a child who was a refugee for several years before immigrating to the U.S as a child

full of deficits and gaps. We encourage you to understand the challenges and traumas families

and communities have faced, but then also see how they contribute to the learning assets and

abilities these students bring to the classroom. It is true that some multilingual students have

faced challenges and contexts that have forced them to be more adult and mature than many of

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their peers who have not been in those situations. But rather than engaging in the “pobrecita” (or

“poor thing”) syndrome, an approach that often leads to lowered expectations and thus less

expansive learning opportunities, we ask teachers to recognize those challenges and focus on the

strengths and learning assets students bring to the classroom for surviving or currently thriving

through them. Some of the incredible skills that multilingual students may bring to the classroom

that can be overlooked cooperative skills, high levels of cognitive flexibility, cultural sensitivity,

and resilience.

Classroom Snapshot

Teacher Rogers, a non-binary 7th grade Mathematics teacher whose preferred pronouns are

they/them/theirs, attended a professional learning session on trauma informed teaching and was

struck by some of the opportunities to reframe how they looked at poor behavior in the

classroom. Teacher Rogers realized that they were often looking at student misbehavior and

asking, “what is wrong with that student?” rather than asking, “what has happened to that

student?” By shifting their mindset to recognize that the student may have trauma in their life

history or current life experiences, they were able to see different ways to help students.

Immediately, one student Teacher Rogers had found extremely challenging to work with quickly

started to behave differently when Teacher Rogers pulled him aside and said to him, “I was

thinking about you last night and was worried that something hard might be going on in your life.

Do you feel like you can talk to me about it?” The student said no. But the mere fact that Teacher

Rogers was thinking about that student outside of school and had communicated that to the

student started a different interaction trajectory between the two. Overtime, with consistent

caring efforts Teacher Rogers and the student built a trusting relationship where the student did

confide in Teacher Rogers regarding the trauma his family faced as they fled war-torn Iraq from

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ethnic-related violence to their Yazidi family. Teacher Rogers learned that the student had

witnessed his sister and mother being gang-raped. And that some members of his immediate

family were killed in their efforts to escape. As Teacher Rogers learned more about this student’s

trauma, they were able to recognize the incredible strength and resilience the student had, as well

as the leadership this student had taken in helping his family move to relative safety in the U.S.

Certainly, their lives were not without challenges in the U.S., and in fact, this student carried

major responsibilities for his family’s health and well-being. Teacher Rogers recognized the

incredible leadership skills this student had and that they had left untapped in the classroom

learning environment.

Resources and Strategies. Supplemental information is available online for each of these.

Transnationalism. This can be an incredible asset to student learning that is often

untapped and/or misunderstood by teachers.

Working with Students with a Refugee Background. Students with a refugee background

are as diverse as any other set of students might be and should not be only framed in terms of

their learning gaps or academic deficiencies.

Trauma Informed Teaching. Engaging with students from a space of recognizing trauma

can have powerful effects on learning and relationships.

Working with Undocumented Students. Because of Plyer v. Doe, students have a right to

an education in the U.S. regardless of their immigration status and documentation. However,

there are some challenges and opportunities that teachers of undocumented students should be

aware of.

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References

Portes, A. & Hao, L. (1998). E plurbus unum: Bilingualism and loss of language in the second

generation. Sociology of Education, 71(October), 269-294.

Wiley, T. G. (2002). Accessing language rights in education: A brief history of the U.S. context.

In J. W. Tollefson (Ed.), Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (pp. 39-64).

Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Resources for Further Learning

Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An Indigenous people’s history of the United States. Boston, MA:

Beacon Press.

Suárez-Orozco, C., Abo-Zena, M. M., & Marks, A. K. (Eds.) (2015). Transitions: The

development of children of immigration. New York, NY: New York University Press.

Suárez-Orozco, C. & Suárez-Orozco, M. M. (2002). Children of immigration. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press.

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