‘School's Not forAnybody’: Migration as a Sponsor of Literacy in the USA—Mexico Context

Abstract

In the USA–Mexico context, migration is often considered to be a detrimental influence on young peoples' pursuit of education. When migration is considered to be a positive influence, focus rests on the ways that increased financial resources can create more access to formal education in the migrant's home community. Indeed, physical access to schools tends to be the focus of many initiatives to improve educational experiences in developing nations, or among groups of minority students within the USA. Beyond these considerations of economics and access however, the potentially positive social impacts of migration are rarely considered. Drawing on a year of field data in rural, migrant-sending Mexico and a receiving community in the USA, this article argues that migration actually facilitates, rather than jeopardizes, educational gains in both Mexico and the USA. In particular, social capital garnered through the migration experience and transferred in the form of social remittances, as opposed to purely financial remittances, can have a particularly strong impact on literacy. Furthermore, the ideological impact that these social remittances can have on migrating populations may in some cases have a more powerful effect than does physical access to schools.