Education in the New Latino Diaspora: Policy and the Politics of Identity

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Description

The authors describe a new demographic phenomenon: the settlement of Latino families in areas of the United States where previously there has been little Latino presence.This New Latino Diaspora places pressures on host communities, both to develop conceptualizations of Latino newcomers and to provide needed services.These pressures are particularly felt in schools; in some New Latino Diaspora locations the percentage of Latino students in local public schools has risen from zero to 30 or even 50 percent in less than a decade.Latino newcomers, of course, bring their own language and their own cultural conceptions of parenting, education,inter-ethnic relations and the like. Through case studies of Latino Diaspora communities in Georgia, North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, Illinois, and Indiana, the eleven chapters in this volume describe what happens when host community conceptions of and policies toward newcomer Latinos meet Latinos' own conceptions. The chapters focus particularly on the processes of educational policy formation and implementation, processes through which host communities and newcomer Latinos struggle to define themselves and to meet the educational needs and opportunities brought by new Latino students.Most schools in the New Latino Diaspora are unsure about what to do with Latino children, and their emergent responses are alternately cruel, uninformed, contradictory, and inspirational.By describing how the challenges of accommodating the New Latino Diaspora are shared across many sites the authors hope to inspire others to develop more sensitive ways of serving Latino Diaspora children and families.

Reviews

"Education in the New Latino Diaspora is the book everyone interested in what is "new" about the new immigration needs to read. This work succeeds brilliantly in broadening our understanding not just of the new Latino Diaspora, but of the country we are becoming. An important contribution to the Anthropology of education, immigration, and ethnic studies."-Marcelo Suarez-Orozco Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education at Harvard University
This collection of case studies has been written by researchers who have pursued somewhat different goals in somewhat different locales. It is unique in that it attends to the experiences of recent Latino immigrants who are settling in small cities or rural communities throughout the United States. The case studies are scholarly, complex, and should catch the attention of a wide audience of educators, students, school administrators, and policy makers...The text would be a useful supplement to courses that address issues in education, policy analysis, or multicultural studies.-MultiCultural Review
"This collection of case studies has been written by researchers who have pursued somewhat different goals in somewhat different locales. It is unique in that it attends to the experiences of recent Latino immigrants who are settling in small cities or rural communities throughout the United States. The case studies are scholarly, complex, and should catch the attention of a wide audience of educators, students, school administrators, and policy makers...The text would be a useful supplement to courses that address issues in education, policy analysis, or multicultural studies."-MultiCultural Review

Author Bio

STANTON WORTHAM is a linguistic anthropologist of education and teaches in the Educational Leadership Division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. ENRIQUE G. MURILLO, Jr. is a faculty member in the College of Education at California State University San Bernardino. EDMUND T. HAMANN is a Research and Evaluation Specialist at the Education Alliance at Brown University.