Children Crossing Borders : Latin American Migrant Childhoods

Abstract

The Americas are witnessing an era of unprecedented human mobility. With their families or unaccompanied, children are part of this immense movement of people. Children Crossing Bordersexplores the different meanings of the lives of borderland children in the Americas. It addresses migrant children’s struggle to build a sense of belonging while they confront racism and estrangement on a daily basis Unified in their common interest in the well-being of children, the contributors bring an unrivaled breadth of experience and research to offer a transnational, multidimensional, and multilayered look at migrant childhoods in Latin America. Organized around three main themes—educational experiences; literature, art and culture, and media depictions; and the principle of the “best interest of the child”—this work offers both theoretical and practical approaches to the complexity of migrant childhood. The essays discuss family and school lives, children’s experience as wage laborers, and the legislation and policies that affect migrants This volume draws much-needed attention to the plight of migrant children and their families, illuminating the human and emotional toll that children experience as they crisscross the Americas. Exploring the connections between education, policy, cultural studies, and anthropology, the essays in this volume navigate a space of transnational children’s rights central to Latin American life in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Contributors Marissa Bejarano-Fernbaugh; Nancie Bouchard; Lina M. Caswell; Irasema Coronado; Valentina Glockner Alejandra J. Josiowicz; Patrícia Nabuco Martuscell; María Inés Pacecca; Martha Rodríguez-Cruz; Emily Ruehs-Navarro; Kathleen Tacelosky Élisabeth Vallet"