Uneven Terrains: Binational Children in Schools in Mexico and the United States

(6 PM Central Time)

Register via Zoom HERE

Speakers:

Víctor Zúñiga
Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León

The movement and arrival of hundreds of thousands of children and adolescents from the U.S. school system to Mexican schools surprised educators and officials. In this talk, we argue that this influx represents a great opportunity for Mexico, its school system, and the economy at large. Most of these young individuals have citizenship in both countries because they were born in the United States and are offspring of Mexican citizens. These students also possess bilingual and bicultural skills, which we, as educators, can support and develop if we adopt an asset-based framing instead of deficit narratives. The talk will elaborate on how to address the challenge to integrate these children into the Mexican educational system and benefit from their knowledge and experiences.

About Víctor Zuñiga:

Zúñiga is Professor of Sociology at the School of Law, Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico. He is a Tier 3 (highest level) member of Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI) and Chief Editor of the journal TRACE (Procesos Mexicanos y Centroamericanos). He is coauthor (with Silvia E. Giorguli) of the book Niñas y niños en la migración de Estados Unidos a México: la generación 0.5 (El Colegio de México, 2019), which will be soon published by University of California Press. Dr. Zúñiga was awarded with the 2018 AERA’s Division G Henry T. Trueba Award for Research Leading to the Transformation of the Social Contexts of Education. In 2021, he was inducted into Kappa Delta Pi Laureate Chapter, a global community of the top 100 researchers in education.

Tatyana Kleyn
The City College of New York

This talk will explore the policies and practices that impact immigrant students in US schools and the implications for those who will continue to cross geo-political, cultural, and linguistic borders throughout their childhoods and into adulthood. From federal policies of acceptance into (K-12) schools to the patchwork of state policies about matriculation into colleges for those without papers, the country has never fully accepted immigrants and has tried to push them out. This tension is especially fraught between Mexico and the United States, where borders have shifted and movement of people between these artificial divisions has become more difficult and criminalized.

About Tatyana Kleyn:

Kleyn is Professor of Bilingual Education and TESOL at The City College of New York. She is Principal Investigator for the City University of New York – Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY—IIE). She served as president of the New York State Association for Bilingual Education and was a Fulbright Scholar in Oaxaca, Mexico. Tatyana has authored books and articles on immigration, translanguaging, and bilingual education. Her latest book is titled Living, Learning and Languaging Across Borders: Students Between the US and Mexico (Routledge 2022). She has also worked in film as a producer and director, including the Living Undocumented Series, Una Vida, Dos Países: Children and Youth (Back) in Mexico and the Supporting Immigrants in Schools video series. Tatyana was an elementary school teacher in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and Atlanta, Georgia.