Year: 2003
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Mexican officials of the Secretaría de Educación Pública of Nuevo León \nassert that approximately 95 percent of English teachers working in public \nschools outside of the Monterrey metropolitan area learned their English as \nchildren of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. While much has been written on the \neffects of Mexican immigration in the U.S., little exists regarding the ways in \nwhich transnationals, who have returned to Mexico, have adapted to and/or \ntransformed Mexican society and the education system. The purpose of this \ndissertation is to describe the phenomenon of transnationalism as it presented \nitself and continues to unfold in the lives of five transnational individuals \ncurrently employed as English teachers in rural Nuevo Leon. \nThis dissertation is a qualitative, descriptive, multiple case study that \nutilizes ethnographic methods. The primary data consists of in-depth interviews, \nparticipant observations in homes and classrooms, and analysis of written artifacts \nsuch as school records of the five transnational participants. Although the focus is \non these five participants, the voices of their parents, siblings, and Mexican \neducation officials are interwoven. \nAnalysis indicates that these individuals have painful memories of their \ntransitions between U.S. and Mexican schooling contexts due to \nacculturation/assimilation processes. They provide insight into issues of race as \nthey manifest themselves in the U.S. educational system, and issues of class as \nthey play out in the educational system of Mexico. As adults, these transnational \nteachers have been extremely successful at trading the cultural capital they \nacquired in the U.S. for their own gain in Mexico. At the same time, they \nmaintain the values of their immigrant parents nurtured by the transnational \nexperience which have also served them well. As a whole, these transnational \nindividuals have developed a borderlands consciousness which they seek to pass \non to their own students and children. This study fills a gap in the research \nliterature on transnationalism by exploring the phenomenon from the Mexican \nside of the border. This study highlights the shifting multiple frames of reference \nof transnationals and thus includes implications for theory and research as well as \nfor educators working with Mexican origin youth in the U.S.
Author: Mary Petrón
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2125532362