Decolonizing praxis: migrant community educator and English as a second language teacher as allies in local struggles for equity and justice

Abstract

Migrant students, families, and their communities in the receiving countries where they live in some instances are the set of people subjugated to the structures of “colonial rule” in globalized, 21st century forms. Immigrants have fewer rights than citizens. They often live, or survive, in the precarious parts of their host countries and the global economies, and their economic and social realities include many vulnerabilities. In the worst-case scenarios of being “unauthorized” immigrants, the lack of rights and steady, decent work are even more pronounced. When economies decline, and/or anti-immigrant leaders rise into positions of power, risks and many forms of violence increase - in the labor force, on the street, in the schools, and in their homes. However, some migrant leaders and their allies are rising as protagonists to fight for the human rights of migrants – forcing the decolonial turn from objects of the system to subjects participating in fluid social processes. This work documents such social change in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the testimonies of a Mexican migrant turned community leader, and one of her allies, a bicultural English as a Second Language teacher in a local, public secondary school system. We argue that the community-based, inter-connected ways in which these women work for change continually create building blocks toward more sustainable, integrated modes of racial and migrant/citizen co-existence. Their grassroots and public education knowledge contribute to constructing frameworks that defend human rights and strive toward ideals of social equality and educational equity.