immigrant families' attitudes towards education in Spain

This article was downloaded by: [85.49.77.42] On: 30 October 2014, At: 15:39 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

International Studies in Sociology of Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/riss20

Faith in school: immigrant families’ attitudes towards education in Spain a

Eduardo Terrén & Concha Carrasco a

b

University of Salamanca , Spain

b

University of Alcalá de Henares , Spain Published online: 19 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Eduardo Terrén & Concha Carrasco (2007) Faith in school: immigrant families’ attitudes towards education in Spain, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 17:4, 389-406, DOI: 10.1080/09620210701667061 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620210701667061

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/termsand-conditions

International Studies in Sociology of Education Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2007, pp. 389–406

Faith in school: immigrant families’ attitudes towards education in Spain Eduardo Terréna* and Concha Carrascob aUniversity

of Salamanca, Spain;

bUniversity

of Alcalá de Henares, Spain

Downloaded by [85.49.77.42] at 15:39 30 October 2014

International 10.1080/09620210701667061 RISS_A_266549.sgm 0962-1214 Original Taylor 402007 17 [email protected] EduardoTerren 00000December and & Article Francis (print)/1747-5066 Francis Studies 2007 in Sociology (online) of Education

This paper is based on a preliminary exploration of the in-depth interviews and focus groups that are part of a more extensive research project on the education of children of immigrants in Spain. In the process of migration, families undergo profound transformations that are often complicated by extended periods of separation—not only from extended family members, but also from the nuclear family. Though many immigrant families are involved in transnational separation and reunion processes of this kind, there has been little research on the impact of these forms of family transformations on the vision of education held by immigrants. This impact seems to be two-fold. On one hand, family separation and living or work conditions hamper educational support and monitoring; on the other, the experience of migration poses a tremendous faith in the benefits of education and makes families highly motivated in education. The main idea underlying this paper is that an accurate knowledge of the schooling experience of the children of immigrants has to be related to the moral and psychological effects of this adaptive transformation and, in a very special way, to the weave of projects, expectations and frustrations that permeate the life of an immigrant family. The psychosocial consequences of the processes of adjustment and relearning that immigration entails, the need for a comparative perception of success and the willingness to make an effort and work hard make immigrant families strongly meritocratic and—contrary to some common beliefs—able to show a high level of commitment and expectations in relation to the education of their children.

Introduction Contemporary migration is one of the most relevant agents of social change in southern European countries, very recently transformed into receiving countries, after long experience as emigration countries (Cornelius, 1994; Arango, 2000; Ribas-Mateos, 2004). Migrations have a great influence on a wide range of social institutions, but we concentrate here on the relationship between the most relevant ones concerning socialization: school and family. This focus corresponds to the new concerns emerging within the dynamics of contemporary immigration trends in *Corresponding author. Dept. of Sociology and Communication, University of Salamanca, pso. Canalejas 169, 37008 Salamanca, Spain. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0962-0214 (print)/ISSN 1747-5066 (online)/07/040389–18 © 2007 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09620210701667061


390 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco Spain. In the early ’90s, the proportion of non-nationals living in Spain was still well behind the European average and most came from the EU (mainly north-European pensioners living along the Mediterranean coast or on the islands). ‘Immigrant’ flows (foreign people coming from non-European countries) were weaker and mainly based on labour-force requirements; therefore, their profile was that of young adult male individuals. However, ten years later, things are quite different. The foreign population living in Spain has reached four million in very few years (almost 10% of the total population), mostly as a result of the increasing number of non-European residents (mainly Latin-American and Moroccan). An ongoing part of this increase is due to family regrouping. Not surprisingly, there has also been a steady increase in the foreign school population in Spain during the last decade. While in 1996 only 68,000 foreign pupils attended Spanish schools, in 2006 they numbered more than half a million, making up about 7.5% of the total pupil body. The composition of this foreign school population has also changed. While in the early ’90s most foreign pupils came from the EU, today the largest migrant groups are from South America and north Africa. The performance and engagement of these students at school is essential for the successful integration of immigrant populations. Therefore, national and regional governments have implemented policies to help immigrant pupils’ incorporation to the educational system. Most of the measures are designed to help newly arrived immigrant children to attain proficiency in Spanish and the other official languages of instruction. The lack of linguistic competence in the case of the Africans and the educational disadvantages or the work and living conditions of the parents in the case of the newly arrived Latin-Americans have been pointed out as the main factors explaining this lower performance. Certainly, most immigrant students come from lower level socioeconomic backgrounds; but, surprisingly enough, their parents, even if employed in non-qualified jobs, are often more educated than native students’ parents. This could partly explain the evidence showing that immigrant pupils express similar, if not higher, levels of motivation to their native counterparts (Spanish Ombudsman’s Report, 2003). Our thesis is that this strong motivation is also related to the significant place of education in the settlement experience of their parents. This is why our aim here is to describe the role of the education of children within the cultural adaptation project of immigrant families. Our main tool to build this description is the analysis of immigrant parents’ discourse as it appears in five focus groups and six in-depth interviews carried out as part of a more extensive research project on the education of children of immigrants in Spain.1 The sample of individuals identified for the interviews corresponds to the most significant immigrant communities in Spain and represents quite well their religious, class and family structure characteristics. Owing to the cultural traditions related to certain interpretations of Islamic codes, we found it more suitable to interview African men and women separately. Thus, one of the groups was comprised of Moroccan women with children born in Spain (GD4) while another one was made up of African men (Zairians and Senegalese) with children born in Spain and children who reside in Senegal (GD2). Latin American women and men with children born and bred in their countries of


Immigrant families’ attitudes towards education in Spain

391

origin formed another of the groups (GD1) while Romanian women and men with children born both in Romania and Spain formed the other group (GD3). Latin American individuals in the sample had a higher educational level than the rest, although all the members of the other groups, with the exception of the Moroccan women, had at least finished secondary school. Regarding the time of residence in Spain, the Africans (Moroccans and the sub-Saharans) were those with a longer residence (an average of seven years as opposed to the two years of Latin Americans and Romanians). Some of the issues that arose in these discussion-groups were reworked in several individual and collective in-depth interviews. Thus, in order to check the role of time of residence, two Moroccan mothers with four and one years of residence in Spain, respectively (C2MMI) were interviewed together. In order to see if there were alliances or strategies related to origin, two African mothers (from Senegal and Congo, residing in Spain for seven and five years, respectively, and having children here and there at the same time) were interviewed together with a Brazilian woman who had very recently arrived in Spain and was married to a Congolese man (E1MMI). None of these women had a job. On the other hand, we also interviewed parents with jobs: an Ecuadorian cook with six years of residence and two children born and bred there (C2MI), another Peruvian, working as a domestic, with a daughter who had just arrived (C3MI), an Argentine father with a son born and bred there (C4PI) and an Argentine mother who had been four years residing in Spain and had three children (C5MI). Though the Chinese make up a very small proportion of the school foreign population, the expected cultural distance made it interesting enough to interview a Chinese parent. We took a Chinese industrialist with 12 years of residence in Spain (E2PI). At the time of the research, all of them lived in Madrid and its surrounding area, where 20% of the immigrant population in Spain is concentrated. This qualitative approach has provided ethnographic evidence on the basic questions that made up the structure of the script supporting our in-depth interviews and focus groups. How do children experience schooling in a system that is different from the ones their parents knew? What role does schooling play in the genesis and reformulation of the parents’ migratory plans? Is it a central concern or a mere requirement to be fulfilled in order to settle legally in the new country? Does the frequent over-qualification of the parents have any repercussions on educational motivation? Does it lead to demoralization and scepticism or does it foster motivation and reinforce the meritocratic feeling? Does one or the other have anything to do with immigrant parents participating and involving themselves more or less in school life? Which view predominates, one of instrumentality (qualification of their children for the work force) or one of morality (education in basic values that will help channel them properly)? The subject matters because the still young scholarship being carried out in a new immigration country such as Spain has tended to focus heavily on the perspective of the reciprocal adaptation of the pupils and the school, and therefore on aspects closely linked to the classroom situation, school organization and teaching.2 Mainstream academic research in the field of the sociology of intercultural education suffers, then,

392 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco


from a certain epistemological narrowness: pupils coming from immigrant families are considered just from the point of view of school, concentrating on their adaptive capacity towards it. What we suggest here is a different outlook. We suggest considering the education of immigrant children from the point of view of the discourse of their parents and placing it within the global framework of the adaptive transformation of their family life project. This family life project is built on immigration. Therefore, special attention is paid to its psychosocial effects on the way immigrant families deal with the gains as well as the losses, changes, opportunities and stresses associated with immigration. As we shall see, this deeply affects the role that education plays in immigrant families because, regardless of their ethnic origin and religious background, it strongly favours the importance of certain aspects relating to social comparison and the relative sense of effort and success. Migratory movement, emotional adaptation and the need for social comparison Immigration is a family affair, both for (obviously) emotional reasons and material ones (since it is the axis of the immigrants’ most immediate social network) (Zehraoui, 1994; Forner, 1997; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001, ch. 3; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2002). Immigrant families deeply feel the pressures of the move because it can destabilize different aspects of family life, ranging from the actual composition of the home to the figures and processes through which family cohesion and authority are produced. The expectations and attitudes with which they undergo their socialization process are peculiar owing to three characteristic phenomena: their greater probability of constituting non-traditional households; the strongly comparative nature of their social experience; and their special awareness of the difficulties entailed in bringing up children in a foreign environment. The composition of non-traditional households (or traditional households in their final structure but which are the product of separation and regrouping) and the consequent restructuring of the family project it entails make up a ‘microframe’ within which we can analyse the expectations and attitudes immigrant parents have towards education. A non-traditional household (or non-traditionally constituted) is the source of a peculiar emotional climate that is the result of a certain sentimental structuring: expectations, desires, priorities and feelings of guilt or frustration linked to the greater or lesser need to make up for lost time or have rapid proof that the material and emotional cost of the move have been justly compensated. This emotional impact is relevant when studying the schooling of the children of these families, since it is to be expected that it will have an effect on the children’s level and type of aspirations, on their culture of effort, on the configuration of their biographical references and, finally, on the construction of their life objectives. The composition of the non-traditional household involves one or more of the following processes: the reworking of male and female roles (as occurs in one-parent households or frequently among the Latin Americans, in the cases of family regrouping preceded by the mother working and the father unemployed); the renegotiation



393

or derivation of paternal authority (as occurs in cases of transnational maternity); more than one family living together or a family with other adults in a single household (as occurs with what our Moroccan informants called ‘shared households’); and the inversion of the typical educational relationship (when the minor is the one who knows the new language better and teaches or explains something to the adult or when, in general, the adult cannot avoid appearing before his/her children as just another learner in the new context of the host country, with the consequent breakdown in the legitimacy of experience that this entails in the exercising of authority). Evidence of the effects of these situations is found, for example, in the case of ‘shared households’ described by Moroccan mothers (a situation familiar to almost 20% of the families with schoolchildren living in low-class social contexts in Spain). After listening to the narrative of a divorced mother of three children who has two rooms of a flat shared with another four people, and that of another mother who also lives in a shared household where she has a living room and a very small bedroom, where the children sleep on the floor of the living room, one of those present confirmed that: With a shared house, the children are not living well. They…are not at ease. There’s no heat. In a shared house people living with her say offensive words and the children suffer for it. (GD4)

The cases of maternity or paternity ‘at a distance’ constitute another good sample already studied in other spheres (Hondagneu et al., 1997). Many immigrant families indeed go through, or have gone through, periods of transnational paternity or maternity when the father or mother emigrates separately.3 It is of interest to explore the way this process is experienced and thought of. Our hypothesis is that, besides giving rise to a ‘period of deprivation’ in which—as we have seen—the family must reorganize its basic functions and figures owing to the absence of at least one of the parents, the cost of this period means that its benefits are considered in strongly comparative terms. This need for social comparison is explained by the anxiety generated by the search for a relative valuation that will support self-esteem and the sensation that it was worth the effort. The educational culture of immigrant families shows that this necessary social comparison is projected onto the educational experience of the children. Family migration involves becoming aware of the difficulties involved in child rearing, not only in going through a period of monoparentality or shared household, but even in the midst of a two-parent family living alone in one household. Even in this case child rearing is fundamentally a learning process, since it has to be carried out in a strange environment (and in general, with little time to morally and psychologically process new and often unexpected situations).4 The first problem, just as one might think, is that before regrouping the distances make it specially hard for the emigrated parent to follow the children’s schooling in the country of origin. For the majority of domestic workers, this creates enormous tension since they have to maintain a difficult co-existence between a cultural model of intense maternity (in the country of origin) and an equally intense role as worker

394 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco


(in the host country), which leaves little time and opportunity to monitor schooling (Parella, 2005). As we shall see later on, much of the subsequent stress and concern with following the child’s development in Spain could have its origin in the need to recover this lost time or control. Perhaps the difficulties in putting into practice a traditional model of parental control (often delegated to in-laws, grandparents or aunts and uncles, especially if the first to emigrate is the mother) are also a source of the anxiety of authority that we shall talk about later. It is not strange to hear Latin American children brought up in their home country calling their grandmother ‘mamita’ or that mothers alone in Spain should use the expression ‘I’ll send you to your father!’ to threaten their children. As one Ecuadorean mother who was regrouped with her two children after four years of separation affirmed: Grandma will always come first. Always, always…they’re still saying it now...and it doesn’t bother me, you know? They’ve cried a lot for her, and I am thankful to her that they’re good children, it doesn’t matter that they don’t love me a lot. (C2MI)

The links the children establish with other family members in cases of long-distance motherhood have a special dimension if considered together with the fact that—as Cerola and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco (2001, p. 148) point out—these children often have only a vague idea of the reasons for emigrating. This causes guilt processes that also have a decisive influence on how the paternal or maternal role is carried out, most especially in the one who emigrated first. Our hypothesis in this respect is that, as we shall soon see, within the deep psychology of migration the educational success of the children can contribute to palliate the effects of the anxiousness to find indicators of the success of the migratory adventure.

Confidence in education: the argument for meritocracy The findings of our larger project permit us to affirm that, although most of the teachers do not think so, the education of the children does play a key role in the immigrant family’s life project. Their confidence in education condenses a good part of their trust that their migratory adventure will turn out well. The children’s schoolwork is the corollary of their parents’ jobs, and this is central, since, as an Ecuadorean mother said: ‘We’ve come for what we’ve come for’ (C2MI). In short, the children’s education constitutes, or will constitute, the success of the migratory project. The markedly meritocratic discourse they exhibit when speaking of what the education of their children means to them fully confirms this point. This prominent place of their children’s education on their map of concerns is endorsed by academic research into this topic.5 Nevertheless, there are differences in discourse as a function of social conditions. Those in a more unfavourable situation, such as Moroccan mothers, don’t speak about abstract issues. Their discourse can hardly be described in terms of optimistic voluntarism or meritocratism because, due to the living conditions of their households, the map of their worries is much more concrete and immediate. Therefore, the



395

Moroccan mothers spoke more of circumstances than of projects. More than education in itself, as something abstractly linked to their life project and the guiding of their children, they are concerned about school because it provides them with some daily relief and the opportunity to get into the labour market (usually as domestic workers). On the other hand, Romanians, Africans and Latin-Americans expressed ideas associated with the semantic field of ‘effort’ and ‘sacrifice’. These words are repeated constantly in the reflections immigrant parents make on the education of their children. Together with this, and as one more expression of the language of social comparison mentioned previously, we also find the message of an evaluation of merit as a function of work carried out (as we found several references to the ‘other’ unwanted or non-integrated immigrants as ‘those who don’t really want to work’). We found the testimony of an Angolan man (GD2/5) significant. He declared that he was ‘proud’ that his children were studying in Spain. His discourse clearly shows that a central element of his self-presentation as a ‘satisfied immigrant’ is the good school performance of his daughter, her interest in attending school and her will and motivation to study, ask questions and do her homework on her own. Enthusiasm provides a good basis for motivation and it can be interiorized with a strong content of moral obligation: ‘She has to do well…the surroundings may make her afraid…[but] she’s got to overcome that’ (C3MI/8, 11). Their faith in the benefits of education is even more striking given the frequent under-employment involved in their working below their qualifications (even though they earn more than in their country of origin). They know from their own experience that education alone will not get them everything, but also that very little can be achieved without it, especially an easy integration. In terms of cultural adaptation, it is interesting to observe that this meritocratic attitude is frequently combined with a will to assimilate. This is true for most of the families (regardless of their ethnic or national origin), although it is not so clear in Muslim families. This combination helps to forge a sense of integration, which, in turn, can eventually create a broad margin of tolerance. The extreme example of this is acceptance of the children’s immersion in a new religious culture different from that of the parents. This is the case, for example, of an African Protestant father (GD2/7), who, although not pleased that his daughter has been taught to pray according to Catholic tradition (she prays before meals and before going to bed every day), understands it and permits it: ‘She prays like Catholics do…At first I didn’t like it, but since she’s integrated in Spanish society and it’s a Catholic society, then…it is OK’. What the school offers them Thus, most immigrant parents show great faith in the value of education and psychologically need their children to be successful at school. But what do immigrant parents find in their children’s school? What do they think is positive and what seems strange to them? Immigrant parents generally hold the Spanish educational system in


396 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco high esteem. The opinions collected also reinforce this idea that they feel more welcomed by the school than by other institutions. We found no testimony to suggest that the desire for a better education for their children was what led parents to emigrate. However, in half of the cases analysed their positive assessment of the several years of education that their children have received in the host country is considered by the parents as yet another factor for staying in the host country and prolonging a migratory project that initially was not supposed to become permanent or to last for a long time. That is what happened, for example, to an Ecuadorean with two children at state school. In his own country he could not complete agricultural engineering studies and he came to Spain to work on the land until he could go back with enough money. Now he has decided to remain until his children have finished their studies because ‘they don’t have these schools and universities over there’ (GD1/20). The first element positively evaluated in the reception system is the difference in material resources in comparison, of course, with those in schools in the countries of origin. Easy access to the schools, even if the parents’ administrative situation is irregular, is also highly appreciated (GD3/26). The basic message expressed almost unanimously would be: in Spain you don’t need to have money or papers to get a good education. The greatest differences in opportunities and resources are experienced by parents of African origin. They see the opportunities offered by the school system as very positive, especially the fact that education is free and of good quality. An African father with a higher education who has seen his country fall under a dictatorship in which ‘there were no longer any teachers…there was no longer any material’ (GD2/1) and in which only the ‘privileged’ have access to higher education, can only celebrate the difference by remembering that ‘people in my country could not finish because their parents did not have any money’ (GD2/5). Even those coming from educational systems closer to ours, such as the Romanians, highly value the free access to books and the care taken with school menus, as well as the gradual adaptation to a cuisine that is very different even for them (GD3/8): ‘at the school office they ask you what the child does and doesn’t like…that’s a very good thing’ (GD3/9). Nonetheless, the reception has to do not only with the resources the school has, but also with what we could call an ‘emotional reception’. To a certain extent, the school and, more specifically, the members of the head team or some of the teachers, serve as a ‘shoulder to cry on’ and respond to demands that exceed strictly pedagogical limits. Many testimonies from head teachers and teachers collected at other stages of the research recounted the work that they often call ‘social work’, ‘psychosocial assistance’ or mere ‘therapy’. The help the immigrants receive is a great source of recognition of and affection towards the school. In some cases, which are certainly exceptional (C2MI), the parents (or rather, the mothers) were moved to redistribute or return that help by collaborating with the Parents’ Association to help other immigrant parents. But there are also difficulties and criticism of certain behaviour. The main difficulties revolve around the differences in level and the criticism stems from some cases of discriminatory treatment.



397

The Latin American parents generally coincide in observing that the academic level here is higher, especially compared to the state schools in their home countries (GD1/ 5, 12). This perception is congruous with the fact that pupils who arrive with school experience in their country of origin are frequently placed one year lower than what would correspond to their age group. There are also some who agree in feeling that the Spanish system is ‘stressful and competitive’ (GD1/13). A Peruvian mother, assigning herself a well-known stereotype, affirmed: ‘we [the Latin Americans], however, are slower…and over here speed is essential’ (C4MI/22). A Romanian mother also expressed something similar: ‘in my country things are done more calmly, here they stick a lot of things in their heads…when he comes home from school he comes with his head like this [gestures with her hands]’ (GD3/1). The cases of perceived discrimination we found had to do mainly with two issues: access to certain schools and labelling. Among families of Latin American origin it is not rare to find the wish to place the children in private schools financed with public money. This stems from an inertia derived from the poor quality of state education in their countries of origin, from a tendency to imitate the behaviour of the middle class of their country of origin and from the psychological security of the fact that the majority of these schools are religious. However, entry or permanence in these schools is not always easy for immigrant families. We have recorded accounts of cases in which access is impeded either directly or indirectly. One mother from Ecuador, for example, was told that ‘the school further down is for that [for accepting immigrant children]’ (C2MI/1) and another was told at the school door that she would not be able to pay for it (C3MI/1). A Moroccan mother (C2/M2) who had already pre-enrolled her daughter, about to begin the school year, was told that it was impossible for her daughter not to be given pork in the dining hall and that attendance at the Catholic religion class was compulsory. What the school offers is part of what Spain offers. Thus, immigrant parents also encounter the prevailing social labels, which speak for a certain kind of racism. African parents, for example, will at some time come up against the label used to refer to the colour of their children’s skin and will have to weave some kind of strategy around it. This may vary according to the violence with which this is experienced by the child and according to how it has been experienced outside the school. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that even when it is perceived that the use of the label ‘black’ is associated with discrimination in the work environment, these parents deny it may reveal racism or even an excessively aggressive attitude. Joking can then be a response. ‘It depends on how it is said…’ one of them stated. ‘They told my son that his Papa is like Balthasar’ (and he laughed as he said it). ‘My son’, another one said, ‘told me, “Papa, there’s a boy who calls me black”. And I said, “well you call him white and that’s it”.’ All of this does not prevent what another father points out: There are children that call them ‘black’…and that also hurts the boy, doesn’t it? He feels sort of discriminated...Not by the teachers, no, by the children…some people take it as an insult, calling him black as an insult and then there are children who take it badly and that sticks… (GD2/22)


398 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco As an example of the combination of confidence and mistrust that immigrant families must learn to weave into the strategies recommended to their children when they feel they are the object of these labels, it is revealing what a Moroccan mother taught her newly arrived daughter: ‘Do you know?’, she said to her, ‘here everybody is your friend and at the same time nobody is’ (C4MI/19). But even when there are no features that stimulate labelling on the part of the phenotypically non-marked population, immigrant parents in general are aware that the very label ‘immigrant’ marks them and have a feeling towards the word that is generally of rejection, because for them it is linked to gestures of fear or mistrust in daily life and because through its use in many of the news items heard they are associated with ‘bad things’ (GD1/21). A Peruvian mother, for example, noted that Spanish families fear the arrival of foreigners and that this is passed on to their children. She could not understand why her daughter could not find any schoolmate to help her get up to date when they arrived, and later, she believed, she found the answer: her presence was associated with that of drugs (C4MI/15). Nevertheless, it seems that the perceived labelling, rather than being merely rejected, is re-worked into a kind of ethnic boundary-marking that is turned back on the others. The Moroccans are the stellar case in this sense (as the ‘Other produced by the others’). This is proved by affirmations such as that expressed by African parents who in general feel that Moroccans have a more problematic relationship with the host society: ‘white Africans (Moroccans) have more problems than we [Black Africans] do’ (GD2/26). Also, a Latin American mother (C2MI), based on her experience at work and on her work helping other foreign mothers at her daughters’ school, and based on the idea that parents from different places ‘have different types of problems’ states that ‘the Moroccans have more problems, because of the language and because of their customs’. Together with the fact that this Ecuadorean mother found confirmation at the school of what she had experienced with Moroccans at work, we have what a Romanian mother told us. She related how her son’s teacher had told her that her son was better behaved and had more respect for others than the Spanish themselves, but above all, better than the Moroccans, who ‘go to their class and are very bad and, also they drive the teacher mad…make him nervous, and they don’t want to learn and sometimes the teachers don’t feel like explaining things to them…’ (GD3/18). An Ecuadorean mother also told us, along this same line, how her own daughter told her—a year after arriving in Spain—that she didn’t want to play with a new girl because she was Moroccan and couldn’t speak ‘and, of course,’ she explained, ‘they are more conflictive and some of their children are very aggressive’. This mechanism by which the immigrants themselves reproduce the dominant ethnic boundary-marking should not only be interpreted as an imitation strategy of the way the native population thinks. It is sometimes also a mere prolongation of differentiating mechanisms that already existed in the country of origin and that could even be intensified with the migratory transition. The effort and risk involved in the migratory adventure give rise to a kind of impatience to see results and an easy way to feel successful is to know you are different from those you consider inferior. One



399

mother told us how, upon arriving, she tried to gather a lot of information before choosing a school but never wanted ‘to ask the Ecuadoreans that lived close by because they didn’t come from urban or developed areas of Ecuador, but from rural areas where education was not valued…they’re more superficial…I prefer to stay away from them’ (C3MI/3, 1, 19). In no case did we find in the declarations of the parents interviewed a clear accusation of racism in the schools. Not even Muslim parents did so, although the Arabs were very aware of the emerging prejudices against them after the terrorist attacks of March 11th, 2004 in Madrid. Generally speaking, immigrant parents clearly play down racism as a factor of discrimination at school. Only the Africans, perhaps because of the perception of the phenotypical labelling they feel themselves to be the object of, seem more inclined to notice a ‘certain’ racism: ‘I won’t say there’s no racism here,’ said one of them, ‘but there are also good people, like in Germany, where I’ve been. What I notice here in Spain is hypocrisy, people don’t tell you to your face that they’re racist, but you notice it’. What racism does occur seems to be accepted with a certain amount of resignation and even, in line with what was seen earlier, with a certain condescension as regards the experience of their children. Thus, they tell us, ‘the children don’t perceive it, they will in time, when they go to secondary school. They can’t think that they’re going to come home from school happy every day’ (GD2/27). Moral protectionism and the anxiety of authority: uncertainty in the face of peer influence The process of settlement and adjustment in a new country and culture is very challenging for most immigrant families. The stress of acculturation (reconciling values, expectations and norms) and the burdens of separation and reunification are specially manifest when facing more egalitarian gender roles and/or parenting alone without substantial support from other family members. The emotional impact of these processes has strong effects on their sense of authority and discipline. Analysis of this point brings their educational experience into relation with the cost of cultural adaptation and the psychological tension deriving from having to bring up children in a new environment, not necessarily perceived as hostile, or anything near that, as we have seen, but indeed perceived as uncertain and often stressful (Ward et al., 2001 quoted in Zoblina et al., 2004). The cultural adaptation of immigrant families affects the socializing task of the parents owing to: the restructuration of parental roles during migratory transition, temporary separations or situations of sharing a home; the need to have to cope with the duty of moral guidance without the background of experience and knowledge of the environment with which the adult is normally equipped for exercizing authority; the novelty of cultural models of care and control that the host society offers; the uncertainty generated by unexpected choices and decisions which often have to be faced without close reference points; and, last but not least, the fears of the not very foreseeable influence that peer groups may have on their children. In the end,


400 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco immigrant parents seem to face a somehow contradictory experience: on one hand, they have to forge innovative attitudes because they are pioneers; on the other, they tend to become very conservative because of the impact of novelties and fears. The habitual presence of one or several of these factors of change in family environment and structure may explain why immigrant parents (of any origin) so strongly stress the different meaning and demonstration of authority, discipline and respect they find developed in the host country. When speaking of authority, respect or shame, Romanians and Africans coincide in emphasizing a necessary complementarity between education at home and in the school but they attribute the main responsibility for education to the family: ‘Good education begins at home,’ a Congolese father stated. ‘We have to educate them, we have to show them the road they must follow’ (GD2/20). Nevertheless, and despite insisting on the greater responsibility of the parents (GD2/18), the group of African parents (GD2/11,12) admits that children spend a lot of time in school and that the ‘company they keep is crucial…[hence] teachers have to keep watch’. The habit of resorting to physical punishment in their countries of origin is often pointed out as one of the most striking differences between the educational culture of the country of origin and that of Spain. As a rule the lack of physical punishment is not criticized in itself (although African parents are more acquiescent to its presence).6 However, they do criticize the lack of discipline perceived in the schools in comparison with those in their countries of origin (as well as, more generally, the lack of respect towards elders). A Romanian mother, for example said that ‘it’s a little bit about fear…[because] in Romania, if the teacher doesn’t like something, he hits you’. Although the Romanian parents did not fully agree about the use of corporal punishment, they do all agree in the idea that they miss respect for others (especially for adults) and that this respect begins with language, in the simple fact of using the polite form of Spanish to address the teacher (‘that’s where it all begins’, one of them stated). That is how you manage to get ‘the class to be quiet, less noise, no shouting’ (GD3/12). When the children are in secondary education, the fear and uncertainty proper to an adventure of settling and bringing up children in a new country are accompanied by the fear and uncertainty that surround the very development of adolescence. Hence immigrant parents tend to prefer not to give their children much freedom. In general, just like any native parents, immigrant mothers and fathers are concerned with problems such as clothes or drugs and alcohol, matters in which they feel that, as could not be otherwise, parents, often in clear opposition to the peer group, have ‘to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s’ (GD3/21). Similarly, they do not think it is right to smoke in schools but the relationship they establish between this and lack of authority and discipline is striking (GD2/11). In their discourse, the question of authority at school is related to respect for adults in general, something from their country of origin that they clearly miss. The women especially agree that Spanish children ‘are very naughty and should be kept on a tight rein’ (GD3/7).



401

As a Romanian mother (GD3/19) said, the fear of ‘giving children wings’ and, especially in secondary school, the dangers coming from new friendships, can, to a certain extent, be the same as those of any native family. But in immigrant families it is particularly important because, as another Romanian mother said, ‘foreigners are scrutinized more than Spaniards. If a Spanish child does something wrong, he is just seen as a black sheep, but if a Romanian or a Bulgarian puts something into his pocket, they all get blamed’ (GD3/20). Thus, the recipe is quite simple: ‘they shouldn’t be given so much freedom’ or ‘give them a little, to try’ says another (GD3/21). Fear of the social surroundings and new activities in a context that is also new for the parents, reinforces their desire for control and this may be the reason behind their interest and concern in relation to the moral values that the school does not ensure (thus their nostalgia for stricter teachers), the excessively relaxed attitude they see in many native families and their frequent stress on religious training (even though this is not expressed as a demand on the school). This is more observable in the case of Moroccan and African parents, who show a deeper conception of respect than in the case of Romanians or Latin Americans. For them the matter of respect, discipline and authority has to do not only with deference towards one’s superiors or adults, but also with religion: ‘How can they let a child say “I shit on God?” If they don’t respect God, how are they going to respect other people?’ (GD2/17). Our hypothesis is that the importance given to the preservation of the religion of origin by these families has more to do with the uncertainty they find in their new environment than with sticking to some type of essential ethnic characteristic. Participation This strong and greatly extended discrepancy with the ‘excessively relaxed’ attitude that seems to be the moral climate of the school has not inspired any of our interviewees to take the initiative of intervening at the school. It is assumed as just one more burden to add to the load of the task of educating and not as something that they could take a hand in to improve the school. The academic community broadly accepts that family involvement in children’s learning is a fundamental factor in improving the latter’s performance and in the functioning of the school, especially in the case of disadvantaged families (Moles, 1993). This is even more important in the case of schools attending to immigrant families, since the information supplied by them is decisive for adapting school organization and teaching practice to their presence. However, academic literature on the schooling of immigrant pupils normally indicates that the participation of immigrant parents in school life is very scarce (Moles, 1993; Kanoute & Saintfort, 2003). But, why do they not participate, if, in the light of the evidence gathered in the previous sections, education is so important for them? Why do they not have greater contact with the school if they have so much confidence in it and, moreover, they so need their children’s success at school in order to feel the success of their migratory project?


402 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco Would not such participation be even more expected if, to all this, we add the fear of losing the child in a society that is not controlled, the impression that the school does not have enough discipline and their uneasiness at not being able to provide a moral reference in a context unknown to them? At present, our data do not allow us to offer a definite explanation of this issue, but, since they are extracted from the discourse of the immigrants themselves, they do allow us to pose it in a way better adapted to their perspective. The narratives gathered in our research make us think rather that there are several ways of becoming involved in the children’s educational life and in the school. Some are more visible than others in the eyes of the teachers, the head team or the researchers themselves. Belonging to the schools parents’ association; attending teacher-parent meetings, courses for parents and meetings when they are called or requesting meetings with the form teacher or the head on their own initiative are clearly visible strategies. On the other hand, encouraging effort or trying to help with school homework, seeking information on extracurricular activities or activities supporting study outside the school are less visible. Immigrant families score really low in the former strategies, as has been mentioned above. The main reasons for this are: incompatibility of working hours and/or feeling uncomfortable, especially at the beginning owing to limited communicative skills as compared to native parents, reasons also found in other countries in southern Europe (Törmikoski, 2004, pp. 17, 31). The same cannot, however, be said of the latter strategies. Certainly they are not families that participate openly and visibly (indeed, like most of the native families) but they are in general families that are involved in and concerned about their children’s education. When they do go to the school, they usually go to individual meetings rather than collective ones, which makes their participation even more invisible.7 On the other hand, this lack of open participation that is sometimes taken as indicating a lack of interest or of will to integrate, from the teacher’s perspective may be compatible with the opposite feeling on the part of the parents, who may feel more subjectively integrated than the teachers perceive and certainly more involved. In a broader educational sense, religious instruction outside the school, or learning the language and culture of origin are examples of interest and involvement in their children’s education. One African father, for example, included in his educational effort having to teach his language of origin (mandinga) to his daughter (who was born in Spain), at home, as that was the language they spoke at home ‘so that she’ll understand…[and] not forget’ (GD2/3). But even in a narrower educational sense, helping with homework (or frustration at not being able to do so, or at not being able to create a favourable atmosphere for it) is also a good indicator of interest. Moroccan women, for example, understand that their children ‘need help with their homework’ and that nobody at home can offer this, even when they would like to. One of them puts it this way: ‘they come home and [she] asks them, “Have you got any homework?” But if they don’t want to do it, they say they haven’t got any’. Although the reverse also occurs, since another mother answered: ‘Sometimes my son cries, “oh, mummy, tomorrow they’re going to ask me!”’(GD4).



403

The most usual solution in these cases is to take the children to public or private centres that offer school support but normally there is no very direct monitoring of what is done there. ‘Yes, there is a centre, but only for playing and the like. If they have homework they help them a bit but no more’ said one of the Moroccan mothers. Nevertheless, for this monitoring, which is the first step in support, some experiences are being developed that have been positively assessed. An Argentinean mother, for example, told us how useful her participation in a programme in which ‘you monitor your child from home and there is also some involvement with the teacher’ (C5MI/ 9) had been. This programme essentially consisted of school-family communication through the new technologies, which allowed the teachers to give the parents information (planning of tasks and homework, examination dates, truancy, etc.) about the pupil using e-mail. The still scarce access of the immigrant population to these technologies at home may be a serious obstacle for establishing new channels of participation adapted to their timetables. Conclusions Immigration has taken root in Spain. Many immigrants have become parents here, or have decided to be parents here by bringing their children from their country of origin. The objective of this research was to analyse how they define their children’s experience with school and what it means to the development of their migratory plan in the forming or recomposing of their household and in producing their feelings of integration and the perception of how they are received. The analysis we have presented of the information obtained through interviews and discussion groups allows us to come to three basic conclusions in relation to the research questions formulated at the beginning. The first confirms an idea already established both in research on certain aspects of migrations and in educational research: that when what is contemplated is a project (and both migrations and children are such) the fundamental unit of analysis is not the individual but the family. Without understanding what is happening within it, it is difficult to understand what they expect, what they plan and what they are willing to take on in the education of a child. It is very likely that in many cases, rather than mere ethnicity, their migration history and the living conditions under which they reshape family structure are the clues to understand their educational commitment. An immigrant family or a family founded on immigrants or foreigners is, above all, a family whose history is marked by an important process of mobility towards an objective: working and getting on: ‘we’ve come for what we’ve come for’. And the other two conclusions of our study have precisely to do with ‘working’ and ‘getting on’. The second conclusion confirms one of the hypotheses considered throughout the text: that for immigrant parents, the meaning of their children’s school experience derives from their need to see the fruit of their migratory effort. The good school performance of their children indicates that the journey was worth it (especially when their own work does not give such great results). This belief provides the basis of their great confidence in education, of their involvement (although hardly ever with open


404 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco participation) and of the fact that they project on it all their strong ideology of work and effort. Providing that there are no difficulties deriving from language, late entrance or moving to Spain at an advanced age (and even sometimes when these factors are present), it is very likely that the work ethic governing immigrant families is an important motivating factor for their children’s school performance. Nevertheless, the history of an immigrant family is, as we have seen, a history plagued with adjustments and restructurings in the face of new situations that demand rapid adaptation. The third conclusion has to do precisely with this horizon of uncertainty, if not of fear that surrounds the experience of immigrant parents, not merely as users of the system but as educators themselves. We believe that the empirical evidence gathered in our research makes it possible to confirm the hypothesis that much of this uncertainty and tension usually included in the study of phenomena, such as culture shock or Ulysses syndrome, also affects how immigrant parents experience their children’s education. The traditional patterns of moral guidance and authority are turned upside down, feelings of insecurity emerge and consequently (especially when the family’s lower needs are reasonably satisfied) there is a certain extension towards a deeper and more moral sense of education, which is no longer expected from the school (despite the fact that it is highly valued). In some cases, the initial experience of separation prior to regrouping generates a concern for authority and control, since this role could not be carried out during the separation phase; in other cases, those of families formed here with second generation children, the source of a similar concern would be the uncertainty of seeing your children grow up in a context different from the one remembered (or even imagined). Now, rather than fear that the children should get bad marks, it is the fear that they will not know how to behave correctly that lies behind the fear of failure for having brought them up as immigrants. These hopes and fears are, in short, what explain the central role that their children’s education plays in the immigrant families’ life plan.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

‘Education and immigration: a challenge for the 21st Century’ (BBVA Foundation, 2005– 2007; for more detail on the project see www.casus.usal.es). This project began two years ago and is ongoing; to date we have interviewed 37 teachers, 22 immigrant parents and 16 pupils from eight primary schools and ten secondary schools. All the immigrant families analysed in this research had come to Spain due to economic motivation and 80% of them underwent a process of parental separation. See Terrén (2005) and García Castaño (2007) for a general review. It should be recalled that in the period 2000–2005 the number of permits for family regrouping granted in Spain raised from 12 to 74,919. This can give rise to ‘acculturation stress’ (Smart & Smart, 1995): feelings of loss and disorientation, often linked to an eroding of authority and the adult-guide entity. The demand for information and assessment regarding education (especially relating to grants for meals and books) is one of those most (26%) expressed by immigrant families to welfare services (Cabrero, 2003). Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001, p. 46) even found that the improvement in educational chances for their children was the primary motivation for the parents to emigrate.

Immigrant families’ attitudes towards education in Spain 6.


7.

405

‘In Africa the teachers hit us when we did wrong things and I think this is right’ and, after recalling the punishments of father Pierre (of French origin), he added: ‘Here a child is not hit, and if the teacher hits him the police come and the teacher gets into trouble’ (GD2/19). They are surprised that the child has the right to call the police when feeling ‘mistreated’, since they think that this ‘is good for their education’ and explain: ‘when we were small I remember…the infants’ school teacher used to hit us, not to punish us, [but rather] to educate us, [so as] not to repeat the same thing the next day’. In interviews with teachers corresponding to other stages of the research, we found that, in their opinion, the parents of Moroccan students ‘did not understand anything’ at group meetings and so preferred individual meetings, since this way of participating intimidated them much less. In the same line we propose here, Comer (1986) highlights the fact that the lack of participation of low-class families should not be interpreted as lack of interest in their children’s education, and the same has been observed in relation to immigrant families (Zuñiga, 1992).

References Arango, J. (2000) Becoming a country of immigration at the end of the twentieth century: the case of Spain, in: R. King, G. Lazaridis & C. Tsardanidis (Eds) Eldorado or fortress? Migration in southern Europe (London, Macmillan), 253–276. Cabrero Rodriguez, G. (2003) Protección social de los immigrantes extranjeros [Social protection of foreign immigrant workers], in: A. Izquierdo Escribano (Dir.) Inmigración: mercado de trabajo y proteccion social en España (Spain, Consejo Económico y Social). Comer, J. (1986) Parent participation in schools, Phi Delta Kappan, 67, 442–446. Cornelius, W. (1994) Spain: the uneasy transition from labor exporter to labor importer, in: W. A. Cornelius, P. L. Martin & J. F. Hollifield (Eds) Controlling immigration: a global perspective (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press). Forner, N. (1997) The immigrant family: cultural legacies and cultural changes, International Migration Review, 31(4), 961–974. García Castaño, F. J. (2007) Inmigración y escuela en España: una mirada reciente sobre la investigación del alumnado de nueva incorporación [Immigration and school in Spain: a recent outlook on research on recently arrived pupils], paper presented at the 5th Congress on Immigration, Spain, Valencia. Available online at: http://www.adeit.uv.es/inmigracion2007/ index.php (accessed 15 May 2007). Hondagneu Sotelo, P. & Avila, E. (1997) I’m here but I’m there: the meanings of Latina transnational motherhood, Gender and Society, 11(5), 548–571. Kanoute, F. & Sainfort, M. (2003) La relation école-famille immigrante [The immigrant familyschool relationship], Education Canada, 43(1), 28–31. Moles, O. C. (1993) Collaboration between schools and disadvantaged parents: obstacles and openings, in: N. Chavkin (Ed.) Families and schools in a pluralistic society (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press), 21–49. Parella, S. (2005) La ‘maternidad a distancia’ de las empleadas domésticas latinoamericanas en España. La vulneración del derecho a la vida familiar en el contexto de la internacionalización de la reproducción [The ‘motherhood in the distance’ of Latin American domestic workers in Spain], in: J. Giró (Ed.) El género quebrantado (Madrid, Catarata), 59–73. Ribas-Mateos, N. (2004) How can we understand immigration in southern Europe? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(6), 1045–1063. Smart, J. F. & Smart, D. W. (1995) Acculturation stress of Hispanics: loss and challenge, Journal of Counselling and Development, 75(4), 390–396. Spanish Ombudsman’s Report (2003) La escolarización del alumnado de origen inmigrante en España [The schooling of immigrant pupils in Spain] (Madrid, Oficina del Defensor del Pueblo).


406 E. Terrén and C. Carrasco Suárez-Orozco, C. & Suárez-Orozco, M. (2001) Children of immigration (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Suarez-Orozco, C., Irina, L. G., Todorova, P. D. & Louie, J. (2002) Making up for lost time: the experience of separation and reunification among immigrant families, Family Process, 41(4), 625–643. Terrén, E. (2005) Sociología de la educación, inmigración y diversidad cultural: una aproximación panorámica [Sociology of education, immigration and cultural diversity: an overview], Tempora, 8, 97–119. Törmikoski, K. (2004) Estudio comparativo de la integración socio-educativa de padres y madres inmigrantes en los sistemas locales de educación y en los sistemas de aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida [Comparative study of the socioeducative integration of immigrant parents in local educational and lifelong learning systems], R3L Iniciativa de Enseñanza Vitalicia, Reunión Regionet Integra [R3L Lifelong Learning Initiative, Regionet Integra meeting], Tampere, 13 March. Ward, C., Bochner, S. & Furnham, A. (2001) The psychology of cultural shock (East Sussex, Routledge). Zehraoui, G. (1994) L’immigration: de l’home seul à la famille [Immigration: from the man alone to the family] (Paris, L’Harmattan). Zoblina, A., Basabe, N. & Páez, D. (2004) Adaptación de los inmigrantes extranjeros en España: superando el choque cultural [The adaptation of foreign immigrants in Spain: surpassing the cultural shock], Migraciones, 15(2), 43–85. Zúñiga, R. (1992) Latino families, in: E. W. Lynch & M. J. Hanson (Eds) Developing cross-cultural competence (Baltimore, MA, Paul H. Brooks).