Professor Cati de los Rios
School of Education
Christina Velazquez, Undergraduate Research Fellow
Learning from Working Latina Immigrant Grand/Mother's Involvement in Dual-Language Bilingual Education
Project Abstract
Latinx/e immigrant families face significant structural inequalities in the United States. Socioeconomic status, level of English proficiency, ethno-racial positioning, and immigration status are factors that impact immigrant families (Olivos & Mendoza, 2010). The rising costs of rent and racial disparities in home ownership, especially in the Bay Area, also impact Latinx/e immigrant families (Bay Area Equity Atlas, 2021). Understanding this structural inequality more qualitatively is critical to better serving Latinx/e immigrant families in urban schools. However, the field of bilingual education continues to know very little about the working lives of immigrant families in gentrifying urban regions like California’s Bay Area.
Against this backdrop, white monolingual middle-class families are increasingly choosing public dual-language bilingual education programs (DLBE; Gándara, 2021). As income inequality rises in urban cities, research is highlighting the inequitable opportunities for linguistically and racially-minoritized families in DLBE, and the push out of those with immigrant and working-class backgrounds. (Flores & García 2017). While DLBE grew from 1960s social movements for racial and educational equity for language-minoritized families, their voices are often suppressed despite the necessity of their participation for these popular programs to thrive. Although research in bilingual education has urged scholars to document Latinx families’ lives, less research has inquired into the economic and labor experiences of Latinx/e caregivers, specifically grand/mothers. Informed by the conceptual contributions of labor-informed child rearing (Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1997) and translanguaging (García, 2009), this project uses participatory and ethnographic methods to learn how grand/mothers have managed the rising costs of living in East Bay cities, as well as their leadership and experiences within their children's DLBE programs.