Institute for the Study of Societal Issues

Studies of immigrant children and youth rely upon limited temporal and spatial frameworks of analysis. These narrow frames present a fragmented view of children’s immigrant experience that is limited to life after arrival in the U.S. and to their experiences within schools. These frames also assume an unproblematic journey of migration and ignore what children experience prior to migration. Using transnational literature about immigrant families and motherhood as well as fictional work, I demonstrate the weaknesses of these narrow frames, and argue that in order to understand the complexities of immigrant children’s lives, analysis of the process of migration must include a consideration of their lives beyond the school and their experiences before they physically make the move.