In this talk, Mangual Figueroa will explore an enduring dilemma in the field of education: how can we best understand and support children growing up in mixed-status immigrant families when we cannot speak openly about citizenship status and experiences of migration in public schools? Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research with six immigrant girls in New York City, this talk examines how children express—sometimes with speech, sometimes with significant silences—their knowledge about citizenship, and how this knowledge shapes their learning and participation in school.
Ariana Mangual Figueroa is an ethnographer whose research seeks to understand the ways in which the lives of children and adults in mixed-status families are shaped by citizenship status and schooling practices. Her work has appeared in Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Language Policy, and the American Educational Research Journal.