Im/migrant children’s stories in elementary school: caring and making space in the classroom

ABSTRACT Family separation policies’ impacts on children’s education are one of the critical issues of our time. In this article, I draw on ethnographic data collected over two years in one Northeastern town in the United States. More than fifty im/migrant children were observed inside kindergarten, first and second grade classrooms. For this article, I focus on the experience of four immigrant teachers in dual-language education and im/migrant children in their classrooms as they tried to engage with narratives of trauma and separation. I argue that teachers struggled to understand who was in a position to speak of im/migrant children’s pain and suffering in the classroom, while students wanted to tell their stories. I call this dynamic constrained care. I also describe ways in which children tried to make space for their stories and the teachers’ reactions.