Youth Return Migration (US-Mexico): Students’ citizenship in Mexican schools. (original) (raw)

Youth return migration (US-Mexico): Students’ citizenship in Mexican schools

Colette Despagne*, María Cristina Manzano-Munguía
Instituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico

A R T I C L E I N F O

Keywords:
Return migration
Citizenship
Child participation
School activities

A B STR A C T

This paper explores how nineteen teenagers who, having been raised and educated in the United States and forced to return, adapt and participate to the Mexican school system. This work specifically analyzes their adaptation process in three Mexican public High Schools in the State of Puebla, and how they negotiate the process of participating within a Mexican school setting while negotiating their sense of belonging to the US and Mexico. In this study, we explore different ways in which return students enact their own bilingual and bicultural citizenship through their educational process in Mexico. To a greater extent, we try to convey the idea of looking at multiple forms of participating in, or outside, classrooms settings while constructing and maintaining their communicative repertoires as a way of reclaiming their citizenship in both countries, the US and Mexico.

1. Introduction

In Mexico, return migration is a relatively recent phenomenon. Over the past 13 years, there has been a significant flow of return migration from the United States to Mexico (Hernández-León & Zúñiga, 2016). Between 2007 and 2014, unauthorized immigrants from Mexico to the United States dropped by 1.1 million, and since 2015, more Mexicans returned to Mexico than the ones who migrated to the United States (González-Barrera, 2015). School-aged children represent an important portion of this population. There are nearly 1.5 million return students in Mexican schools (Jacobo & Jensen, 2018) who have been raised and educated in the United States, mainly in English. They generally experience a great diversity of ruptures when they first enter schools in Mexico as teachers and administrators neither perceive their linguistic and cognitive needs nor acknowledge their individual migration experiences (Hamann, Zúñiga, & Sánchez, 2006; Hamann & Zúñiga, 2011; Jacobo & Jensen, 2018). They are invisible for the Mexican Ministry of Education who does not offer any support program for better adaptation to the Mexican school system. Here we want to explore the multiple ways in which return students 1{ }^{1} participate in their own educational process as bilingual and bicultural students and thus, enacting their citizenship. This is important at two levels of analysis. First, we
explore children’s agency 2{ }^{2} in their Spanish learning process, Spanish competency being one of the major factors facilitating scholastic integration (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019); and children’s agency in their English maintenance process, English being related to self-esteem, appraisal and membership in the US. Second, the struggles students face not only provide an exemplar of their agency but also delves in building up the existing literature on children’s citizenship rights and practices whom to a certain extent, “become authors of [their] own world” (Pennycook, 1997, 45). In this paper, we look at how nineteen teenagers who, having been forced to return, adapt, and participate in the decision-making process as bilingual and bicultural students in Mexico. This work specifically analyzes their agency while discussing children’s participation in building their bicultural and bilingual citizenship. Furthermore, we add fragmentation and complexity to the ongoing debate on children’s citizenship and rights (Larkins, 2014; Lister, 2007; Moosa-Mitha, 2005; Roche, 1999). But before we launch into further details about citizenship, we need to understand the phenomenon of return migration.

[1]

1. • Corresponding author.
     E-mail addresses: colette.despagne@gmail.com (C. Despagne), mmanzanomunguia@gmail.com (M.C. Manzano-Munguía).
     1{ }^{1} In this paper we will use the term “return students” to talk about the nineteen participants in this study. They are part of the whole return migration process from the United States to Mexico, even though, we know, that for many of them, living in Mexico is not a return. It is their parents’ return. We did not want to use the category “transnational students” which is mostly used in this area of research because we do not focus on transnationalism as a framework. The terminology employed for these students is generally questioned in many studies and it is difficult to find a single answer or category because of the diversity within the group.
     2{ }^{2} Here agency implies an “active self” but only in a positive manner (Giddens, 1991). ↩︎

2. Literature review

2.1. Contextualizing return migration to Mexico

We live in a world in which we are witnessing the highest levels of human movement on record. According to the United Nations (2019), about 272 million people, are living outside their country of birth in 2019, 51 million more than in 2010. Immigration today affects every continent on earth and for the first time in history, nearly all nationstates have become either countries of immigration, emigration or transit countries (Sánchez & Machado-Casas, 2009). Mexico seems to be a different scenario. It is a country of immigration, mostly from U.S., Guatemala, Spain and Colombia (Expansión, , 2017); a country of emigration, 97.33%97.33 \% of which live in the United Sates, but also in Canada, Spain and Germany (de Relaciones, 2016); and of transit, mostly from Central America towards the United Sates, all at the same time. According to the Current Population Survey (Bureau, 2018), 38.5 million people living in the United States are of Mexican origin - 12.3 million were born in Mexico and 26.2 million are Mexicans of second or third generation with one or two parents born in Mexico. They represent 11.6%11.6 \% of the total amount of immigrants in the United States (Pew Research Center, 2016). Today, the enforcement of zero-tolerance policy for unauthorized border crossing is a crude reality. Since March 2018, over 40,000 immigrants were incarcerated (Young, 2018) and over the last six months, the numbers of Mexicans deported to their home country is approximately of 109,296 as stated by the Human Rights Commission (Roldán, 2018). However, not all forced return is due to deportation. Forced return also includes repatriations and the socalled “voluntary” return signed by foreign citizens based on an order expelled by U.S. attorney, which gives them a limited time to return to their countries of origin and/or forced by their family members to return.

In the case of Mexican return migration, it is estimated that 5 to 35%35 \% were deported, and that among all returns, an average of 80%80 \% returned of their own volition with a margin of error of ±15%\pm 15 \% (Hazán, 2018). The so-called “voluntary” return may be due to many different factors, which can be economic (e.g., recession in the United States); political (e.g., migration policies on both sides of the borders), and family reunifications when migrants return to take care of an ill close relative in Mexico or if they face an illness or disease. Nostalgia experienced by migrants, the emotional dimension of transnational migration (Hirai, 2014), or the desire to return to a place called home (Quayson & Daswani, 2013, p. 13), may also be a factor for return migration. Even though parents often return to Mexico based on a “voluntary” decision, children have generally no say at all in the return decision (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019). Hence, most of the students participating in this study were generally forced to “return” to a country which they barely knew (Zúñiga & Hamann, 2014).

One reason school-aged children return to Mexico is to reunite with a parent who has been deported or forced to return. Thus, by 2010, 330,000 US-born children were estimated to be attending schools in Mexico (Zúñiga & Hamann, 2013). In 2014, the Mexican Education Census reported 431,000 foreign-born children enrolled in elementary and middle schools, 98%98 \% were born in the United States (Jacobo, 2016). Gandara (2016) estimates that the total number of US-born children in Mexican schools may even be more than half a million, but they only represent part of the population. Many more were born in Mexico, migrated with their parents at a young age, and now are back to Mexico. Hence, overall, there are nearly 1.5 million children in Mexico with ties to the US - about 5%5 \% of the scholastic population (Jacobo & Jensen, 2018). Most of these students grew up in mixed families in the US and Mexico with different immigration status (Medina & Menjivar, 2015). As a family, they (immigrants) generally remained connected to both countries (Zúñiga & Hamann, 2009).

In Mexico, there are no specific programs developed by the Ministry of Education to help immigrant children to (re)adapt linguistically and
cognitively to their new school context. The communicative repertoires (Rymes, 2010, 2014) of return students are different to those who grew up and went to school in Mexico. In other words, because of their migration and scholastic experience in the United States, they developed different ways to use languages and employ different means of communication (gestures, dress, posture, accessories) in multiple communities in which they participate (US and Mexico). Their repertoires mostly include English and Spanish as languages, but within these languages, they may use different linguistic varieties and registers.

To put it simple, in English on the one hand, students develop everyday language skills (Gee, 2014) through their everyday social interactions, and academic cognitive language skills necessary to the cognitive development at school. Spanish, on the other hand, is generally not used at school in the United Sates, unless students access to bilingual education (Spanish and English), which was the case of two students in this research. Participants in this study generally learnt Spanish at home with their parents, and other members of their speaking social network. They developed everyday listening and speaking skills, but generally did not have the opportunity to build their literacy in Spanish. However, when attending a school in Mexico, research shows (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019; Despagne, 2018) that they are confronted with school administration’s expectations: to possess the same communicative repertoires in Spanish, like lifetime nationals; to understand what it means to be Mexican in Mexico, as well as understanding the complex power structures within the Mexican social context (Despagne, 2018); and to understand how schools work in Mexico (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019). In addition, return students may relate to multiple identities and citizenships (Mexican, American, MexicanAmerican, Indigenous) depending on where they grew up, with whom and in which language (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019). Now we turn to explore children’s citizenship.

2.2. Children’s citizenship

Over the last four decades, there has been an increasing interest in studying and lobbying for children’s rights and participation in a world where exclusion, marginalization and powerlessness represent a continuum in relation to adult-child relations (Freeman, 1992; Lansdown, 1995; Lister, 2007; Roche, 1999). One of the major issues at stake is the recognition of children as social actors (Lister, 2007; Roche, 1999) and thus, their inclusion as members of society. The latter relates to the acknowledgement of children’s citizenship and the redefinition of their membership in society with “a legitimate and valuable voice and perspective” (Larkins, 2014; Moosa-Mitha, 2005; Roche, 1999, p. 479). The latter is, to a greater extent, an outcome of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990) where empowerment, rights, participation, and freedom of expression for children are solidly present (Articles 12.1 and 13.1).

Child citizenship is not a chimera or a symbolic concept; rather, it represents the materialization of a greater debate on granting this status to a population who might fall beyond the political implications of being a citizen. Moosa-Mitha explains the relevance of the differencecentred theorists who challenged the “non-participatory/participatory divide” of liberal models of citizenship and rather the call was to pay attention to the “lived realities of communities of difference” (2005, p. 374). Moreover, difference-centred theorists expanded the praxis of “participation beyond the private/public split” (Moosa-Mitha, 2005, p. 374) and proposed a more encompassing notion of participating within our own lived experiences across time and space (Nedelsky, 1990). In other words, participation is relational (Moosa-Mitha, 2005, p. 375). Consequently, the study of citizens’ self is feasible by looking at the praxis of their agency (Lister, 1997) and social relations (Yuval-Davis, 1999). Following these authors’ proposition, we look at return students’ self through the lens of their agency and social relations to understand their constructions of citizenship and their sense of belonging as members of a community. The latter means creating an "active

Fig. 1. Participants’ basic demographic data in 2016.
membership [which] requires facilitating their participation as political and social actors" (Lister, 2007, p. 701). This participation includes the individual decisions with their parents and professionals about their lives and “participation in wider collective decision-making” (Lister, 2007, p. 701) such as, participating in school councils, school activities, teacher assistant, leader group or voice group, among others. As already mentioned earlier, the present study will look precisely at how return children participate in, or outside, classrooms settings as a way of reclaiming their bicultural and bilingual citizenship and thus, illustrating their agency. As Moosa-Mitha (2005) noted, “[t]his broader definition of participation as the expression of one’s agency in the multiple relationships within which citizens are present in society is very important to a re-definition of children’s right of freedom of participation as it recognizes different ways of participating” (p. 375).

Furthermore, we concur with Larkins (2014) use of the term Acts of citizenship while referring to children’s agency in an effort to understand their participation in an adult centered world. Her work is illuminating given our interest to explore the participation and adaptation of return students in the Mexican school system. In Mexico, as Roche (1999) noted, “we can see the possibility of a politics inclusive of children [citizenship] despite their socioeconomic marginalization” (p. 479). Return students adapt and participate in the Mexican school system, which represents a challenge given their expressions of “we lived better” [referring to the US quality of life] as we will refer later on. Students try to “find a voice” (Pennycook 1997, 2001) in a nationstate whose educational context is based on clear monolinguistic, monocultural, monolithic and nationalistic learning approaches (Jacobo, 2016; Schmelkes, 2013) whose aim still is to assimilate diverse populations, such as Indigenous, migrants or return migrants, to the unique mestizo identity and to Spanish as a unique language (Despagne, 2018). Consequently, in the following section we deem necessary to analyze first our methodology and second, students’ narratives of school agency experiences.

3. Methodology

3.1. Narrative inquiry

This research is a qualitative research (Creswell, 2007), which belongs to the “narrative turn” (Bamberg, 2007). Criticism to positivist research in 60 s and 70 s led to the quest for alternative methods of inquiry and encouraged “personal narratives as a principal channel for listening to silenced voices” (Spector-Mersel, 2010, 207). Sociolinguistists Labov and Waletzky made a call in 1967 to examine ordinary people’s oral narratives of everyday experience (Chase, 2005). Thus, the approach of this study is discursive, constructivist and postmodern because it is subjective and culturally rooted, and focuses on the fluid nature of narratives. From this perspective, narratives do not mirror a real, objective and essential reality, but construct it. The narrative approach, thus, forms a paradigm on its own (Denzin &

Lincoln, 2005) because it maintains the social reality, which in turn is a narrative reality. Hence, students’ reality is subjective and relativist. It is by talking about their migration stories, and how they adapted to the Mexican school system that we can understand how they make meaning to themselves and the world, and form their personal multiple identities (Bruner, 1991; Polkinghorne, 1988) and citizenships (Larkins, 2014; Lister, 2007; Moosa-Mitha, 2005). By narrating their stories, return students become active agents of their own world; they gain a sense of who they are as well as who they might become (Smith & Sparkes, 2009). Hence, the migration stories of the nineteen students in this study play a significant role to understand their acts of citizenship (Larkins, 2014) and their sense of belonging (Lister, 2007; MoosaMitha, 2005). We will therefore analyze them as data (Benson, 2014). The main strength of this methodology lies on its focus. In other words, on how participants made sense of their return migration experiences in an area of inquiry where it is relevant to understand the phenomena from their perspectives and experiences.

Hence, the focus is on students’ voices to be heard (Benson, 2014; Murray, 2009). We followed Barkhuizen (2011) concept of “narrative knowledging” by making sense of students’ stories while analyzing them, and reporting as well as consuming research findings. Hence, the narratives were carried out with the purpose of creating knowledge. We chose narrative inquiry as a method because participants were already in Mexico since approximately 5 years at the time of the interviews. The idea of narrative as a mode of understanding therefore served as a retrospective, which allowed them to look back to their migration experience and therefore to see the movement of events as episodes that are part of their larger whole (Freeman, 2015).

3.2. Participants

The directors of each of the three technical High-schools in the State of Puebla made a call to all students who had experienced school in the United Sates and who wanted to participate in the study. All who attended the call participated willingly ( n=19\mathrm{n}=19 see Fig. 1) and signed consent. Among the interviewees, twelve are female and the rest male, all enrolled in the third year of high school. The range of U.S. residence goes from 1 to 12 years as shown in the summary of participants’ basic demographic data table, with an average of 7.8 years indicating that most of the students spend a significant part of their young lives in the US. Twelve are U.S.-born and the rest were born in Mexico and migrated to the U.S. at an early age, that is, over half of them are U.S. citizens (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019). Like other studies of return migration (Medina & Menjivar, 2015), most of the students were raised in mixed-status families as their parents were undocumented immigrants in the U.S. In only three cases, parents had legal residency or green card. All of them returned to their parents’ social network which became a key factor in their (re)adaptation process (Martínez Díaz Covarrubias & Escobar Latapi, 2018). Moving to Mexico was marked by a lack of agency for most students (Despagne & Jacobo, 2019). They did

not decide to move, as mentioned earlier. They followed their parents regardless of their own migration status.

Fig. 1 illustrates the demographic composition of our participants in the study, where 63%63 \% accounted for female participation. In addition, 63%63 \% of the participants were born in the US, and are therefore US citizens from a legal perspective. However, only in three cases, the whole family had legal residency in the US. In 84%84 \% of the cases, families had a mixed status where parents were generally undocumented, and part of the children were born in the US whereas others in Mexico. Before we launch into further details, we want to introduce a few details about the corpus of our data.

3.3. Data collection

Data collection was the result of dialogic conversations with each participant in 2016. We visited the three technical High-schools in three cities (Puebla, Izúcar de Matamoros and San Martín Texmelucan). The State of Puebla is the seventh entity in Mexico with the highest migration rates (de Relaciones, 2017). These high schools prepare students for quick integration into the local job market, while leaving the door open to university studies. The scholastic situation of the nineteen participants was not typical because only 14.1%14.1 \% of return migrants seem to have finished senior high in 2009 (CONAPO, 2013). The narratives were based on individual semi-structured interviews about their school setting, their studies in the United States, and in one of the three former mentioned high schools. Interviews lasted between one and/or one and half hour each. Participants were asked which language they would like to speak and all chose Spanish because they were more used to that language after several years in Mexico. We first concentrated on collecting demographic background data, and then focused on students’ return migration process. We asked them about their former lives in the United States, their reasons for living in Mexico, their language uses and learning processes, their adaptation to the Mexican school system, and their sense of belonging and identities. The findings were further contextualized by informal teacher interviews, a review of the federal teaching materials used in Mexican high schools and federal schooling policies, and by Despagne’s firsthand experience working in Mexican schools and universities over the past 20 years. We tried to develop close bonds with the participants, bonds that were crafted out of an “ethic of caring” (Cadman & Brown, 2011, p. 450) because their migration experience, and specifically their return to Mexico, is a highly emotional topic as most of them did not want to return. As mentioned by most of the students at the end of the interviews, this narrative inquiry allowed them to be reflexive about their adaptation process because it was the first time somebody asked them about what they felt when they began to go to school in Mexico. Consequently we now turn to analyze our data from the interviews with the participants in this study.

3.4. Data analysis

Constructing and analyzing narratives refers to meaning making. It is an active process, which requires cognitive work (Barkhuizen, 2011). In other words, “sense-making activity” (Ochs & Capps, 2001, p. 35) which refers to learning and knowledge construction at all stages of the narrative research project (Barkhuizen, 2011). Hence, during this process of meaning making, we tried to understand students’ return migration experiences by generating knowledge on how the multiple ways of participation refer to autonomous language learning strategies which aimed not only to increase their cognitive academic language in Spanish, but also to maintain, or even increase, their English language proficiency. The concept of narrative knowledging developed by Barkuizen (2011) is therefore important because it “recognizes the active, fluid nature of meaning making, and aims to avoid conceptions of narrative knowledge as stable, permanent, and unchallengeable” (p. 396). This recognition, to a greater extent, exemplifies the praxis of
students’ agency who enact their bicultural and bilingual citizenship. In the following paragraphs, we will illustrate the first main linguistic problems return students encounter with Spanish.

4. Results

4.1. Participating in the learning process of Spanish

Students possess everyday language skills (Gee, 2014) in Spanish because they generally spoke Spanish at home. They developed cognitive academic language skills in English because they went to school in the United States, but generally did not have the opportunity to develop these skills in Spanish. Ana Karen expressed this in a very succinct manner: “upon my arrival here in Mexico, I knew how to speak Spanish, a little […] when I arrived here [referring to Mexico] everything was different I did not know anything like writing or reading, no sabía nada en español [I knew nothing in Spanish]” (Interview with Ana Karen, 2016). Rebeca also referred the fact that she knew how to operate cognitively in English, but not in Spanish as she puts it: “I was studying in English, everything was in English, and crossing to Mexico … everything was in Spanish, and I was confused, and said “I do not understand” … it is more difficult the Spanish language” (Interview with Rebeca, 2016).

For David the stress of moving back to Mexico was closely related to a place he did not know even though he was born in this same country. At 12 months of age, he was crossing the border to the United States without documents and stayed there until his father’s illness prompted their sudden return:

My dad became sick, and suddenly without any reason he wanted to go back [referring to Mexico]. But we did not [including David’s mother], my sister too, I have a sister she was born there [the US]. And we did not want and my mother neither, because over there [the US] we lived better. But my Dad, I don’t know, wanted to return and we came back to Mexico the four of us… I did not speak Spanish well. I spoke [Spanish] so that I could communicate with my parents.
Not very well, because I left when I was a baby, basically since then my way of communicating, my language, was English (Interview with David, 2016).

Here we encounter two issues at stake: first, English was not only the cognitive academic language but it was also recognized as his first language. Second, Spanish was only used to communicate with parents in a very fragmented manner since he was a kid. The latter represented a challenge while at school given the need to learn Spanish as the cognitive academic language. Therefore, return migrant students participated in different manners while learning Spanish, which turned to be a significant contribution in the learning process for acquiring a new language and their citizenship as Mexicans, both imagined or legally proclaimed.

Furthermore, the following excerpts will illustrate return students’ agency, which leads them to learn Spanish. For instance, David communicated first with body language including but not limited to, face gestures as well as the practice of Spanish vocabulary with his classmates in order to create his first sentences and rapport:

I didn’t understand what they [his classmates] said and the same for writing… I did not know how to write [Spanish]… At first, upon my arrival [in Mexico] my mother took me over to school, and when my classes started I neither knew nor understood how these were going to be, what I was going to learn. [For instance], to go to the bathroom I was used to say it in English but didn’t know how to say it in Spanish!
But I used my body language… my face gestures helped me and they [the teachers] understood, and so forth. And my classmates asked me questions, they tried to communicate with me: "where do you

come from"… I tried to speak … but at first I was not able to socialize but later with practice and my good memory I was able to do so. Also by asking “what is this” and “what is that”, everything… I was able to communicate in Spanish, little by little. They [his classmates] explained to me [the words in Spanish] and I was formulating my sentences. I socialized after a few months (Interview with David, 2016).

David’s statements focused on issues pertaining on his right to participate in a different manner within the educational setting such as the use of his body language to communicate with his teachers or classmates. He was able to communicate through verbal language and created a sense of belonging to this Mexican school while creating social bonds with his classmates and teachers. This example to a greater extent illustrates the “relational interpretation of participation” (Moosa-Mitha, 2005, p. 376) of children exercising their right to freedom in constructing their self within a nation-state like Mexico.

In addition, return students’ hone their listening skills while searching for the meaning/translation of words in Spanish and as well as being members of their community while socializing and participating in the translation process. As the following excerpts will illustrate:

I was in my classroom and everyone was playing and speaking [Spanish] words over here and over there, but [I] didn’t know their meaning, and then, when I returned from school, at home, I asked my family [mom and dad]: “what is the meaning of this and that”. The words were recorded in my mind, and they were telling me what was the meaning. My parents supported me while learning Spanish, they bought me Italian notebooks [referring to the style of the notebook] and I practiced writing in Spanish. This was the way to help me out in the learning process. I had the support from the school and my parents (Interview with David, 2016).
[I understood] and spoke [Spanish] but sometimes while writing I had problems. For example, one word they [students and teacher] said “pero” and I wrote it down with double r. They [teacher and students] told me my mistake: “the new meaning is a dog”. So little by little I succeeded in learning Spanish! (Interview with Edwin, 2016).
“[My] father taught me little by little how to write in Spanish. He taught me the basics […]. Certamente, in the US my dad and my grandmother helped me to learn Spanish […] and I came here [Mexico] and at school I did not received the support [from teachers] on how to learn it. I learnt Spanish at home… not at school” (Interview with Rebeca, 2016).

Learning Spanish represented not only a challenge at school but at home, and at the same time, not all the experiences are similar in relation to the school setting. Some students expressed how different social actors made a significant contribution to their learning process including, but not limited to, teachers, family members, and classmates. Consequently, these examples represent in a vivid manner their agency as the “expression of their self-defined needs and interests” (Roche, 1999, p. 484) at school and at home and how their participation “is about being counted as members of a community” (Roche, 1999, p. 484). In this case within the Mexican community.

However, for some students school did not represent a meaningful learning experience and knowledge creation was not based on students’ former cultural and linguistic experiences. For this reason, students developed cognitive academic language on his own. For instance, Jezer did not understand what he learnt in Spanish for two main reasons: first, the words and concepts in Spanish lacked any knowledge or meaning, even though he may have understood them in English; second, teaching was not based on his own background knowledge because teachers’ examples related to the Mexican context. As Jezer noted:
[I] had to read many books, taught myself Spanish. The teachers
told me they were not going back to review what they had already taught. If I had any questions, I searched in a book and looked up the words to write them… there were words I did not know. I … had to search for their meaning. There were examples mentioned at school where I did not have any idea, like the one related to a highway in Mexico City and the impossibility to connect because I have never been out of here [Puebla] [Interview with Jezer, 2016].

Jezer self-educated himself and the reference to a highway he did not know made no significant meaning for him. His experience while learning Spanish by reading books represents an example of autonomous language strategies, which allowed return students to develop academic language repertoires in Spanish. We want to point their strengths while dealing with multiple challenges at the same time: new home, different cultural codes, multiple voices in different languages and a new social, political and economic order. We insist that these students never had the opportunity to build their literacy in Spanish when they were living the US (except in two cases) and that the Mexican Ministry of Education does not offer any specific heritage language program for them once in Mexico. Some of them were able to read Spanish, but often did not understand what they were reading. Mexican schools often perceive this as a problem of functional illiteracy in Spanish, but we clearly disagree with this perspective. This should instead, be interpreted as a strategy of meaningful learning, that is connecting what is familiar in English with the learning process of the new language, which is Spanish.

The following excerpts illustrate how students participate in the process of learning the new language while relating to a previous language framework. Roxana expressed how she learnt to read in Spanish but she did not understand the text, even after six years in Mexico: “while reading, there are certain things I can read without understanding them… I do not understand what I read and I need support … this is the main problem I encounter” (Interview with Roxana 2016). However, when she reads in English, Roxana has no problem at all understanding what she reads. Hence, schools need to focus on students’ Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP) (Cummins, 2000). For instance, they need to focus on the set of skills and implicit metalinguistic knowledge students developed in English in the US schools system and draw upon this knowledge when working in Spanish. According to Cummins (2000), these skills and knowledge provide the base for the development of both, the first (English) and second language (Spanish). Any expansion of CUP that takes place in one language will have a beneficial effect on the other language. In other words, schools need a strong promotion of English literacy along with a strong literacy program in Spanish. Both programs should be related with one another and work in transferring conceptual knowledge and language awareness across both languages, such as the use of cognates, the writing of bilingual texts or the explanation of concepts in both languages and contexts. Other students like Pamela expressed that they did not speak “only” Spanish in the United States, but that she translanguaged (García & Wei, 2014) with her peers in the US, like most bilinguals do. In other words, they used both languages simultaneously and strategically as an integrated and dynamic communication system. However, she felt repressed by translanguaging, by her family first, and by her peers in Mexico later:

It’s that you mix, so, I learnt to speak another English, because at school everyone spoke and then I learnt to speak more English and at home my parents nugged me, and my brother told me “aquí tienes que hablar español” [here you have to speak in Spanish]"…[W]hen I returned [to Mexico], I did not know the alphabet in Spanish (…) and… I spoke [Spanish] “a medias” [halfies] and I mixed it (Interview with Pamela, 2016).

Here we can think of participating in translanguaging firstly, as a modus of representation of their bilingual and bicultural citizenship, which is representative of many Mexicans in the US. Secondly,

translanguaging could also be a way for creating a pedagogical space, in US or Mexican schools, in which students would take advantage of their language knowledge to acquire new knowledge (García, Ibarra Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017). By translanguaging, return students base the new learning on their own personal cultural and linguistic knowledge to make learning more meaningful to them and to give further nuance to the proposition of participation in the negotiating process of creating selves, and therefore, a bilingual and bicultural citizenship. Following Larkins (2014), children’s agency could be interpreted as practices of citizenship and with the aforementioned examples we concur with her while viewing these acts of translanguaging as reaffirming their bilingual and bicultural self as citizens. Now we turn to look at the multiple ways in maintaining, revitalizing or increasing their English proficiency when school support is absent.

4.2. Return migrant students’ participation in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classes

When return students enroll in Mexican schools, they have to attend the same EFL classes as lifetime nationals. No specific classes are created for them. The nineteen participants therefore attended A2/B1 7{ }^{7} EFL classes in their respective high schools. Efrén mentioned that he actively participated during EFL classes for not getting bored: “[the teacher] does not ask for help, even though he knows I am from there [US] and I speak very well English, but I participate anyways, in other words I like to participate in this class [referring to the English course] so that I don’t get bored[.] But I have never been asked for help or something” (Interview with Efrén, 2016). He also added that most of the EFL teachers know that he comes from the US: “The English teachers [know that I came from the US] they notice it because I was excellent in that [English] and they asked me if I was from there and told them “yes”. But other teachers did not know, they were just a few who knew about it [his US background]” (Interview with Efrén, 2016). Through his participations in EFL classes, he felt much more recognized. The deficit perspective he felt about Spanish transformed to an asset in his EFL classes: “I feel more recognized. My grade for this course is 10 , and in other courses it is different, my grades are 9,8,7,69,8,7,6 and y I feel that this [good grade in English] empowers me, it makes me look in another manner” (Interview with Efrén, 2016). Irene confirmed this point by stating that one EFL teacher congratulated her good English level: “So the English professor, Nicandro, … congratulated me because of my English proficiency and told me that it has been a pleasure to have me as his student. This was his manner in acknowledging my work” (Interview with Irene, 2016). Hence, she really felt that in the EFL class, her background knowledge was taken into account while reading aloud a paragraph or so in English and demonstrating her good accent and proficiency. On the opposite, Jezer mentioned how boring were the EFL classes and therefore developed more self-taught strategies for not forgetting the language: “[The English class] is easy, nothing new, I know everything, and I have studied aside on my own. For instance, I watch videos in YouTube in English, watch movies in English, read books in English, in order to practice and not forgetting” (Inteview with Jezer, 2016).

Another strategy for not forgetting English is to speak English in Mexico. Efrén, Edwin and Rebeca participate in different activities where their language of communication is in English and their sense of belonging is the US, although only through the use of the language. Efrén and Edwin are cousins and know each other well. They speak English together. Edwin mentioned that "with my cousin [Efrén], upon arrival [referring to Mexico] we always talk in English, sing in English […] We [speak in English] because we like it, we understand each other, and my mother and my aunt always said that thanks to these

[1]actions we still know English" (Interview with Edwin, 2016). And Efrén confirmed that “we prefer this language [English] because we were there almost all our life, and we were used to it and it is not easy to leave it from one day to the another. I think it makes easier everything, the language” (Interview with Efrén, 2016). Rebeca also speaks English at home, with her siblings: “[With my brother I speak] English, my mother told me that she doesn’t want me to loose it… so I practice my English at home and Spanish at school” (Inteview with Rebeca, 2016). She just inverted the languages she spoke in the US. Speaking English at home now allows her to maintain her English language level.

Another way of participating is through teaching English and English teacher assistant. Jezer expressed that he “[spoke English] with a classmate, he was teaching her. He likes English and she wanted to learn it. So he told her “I can teach you if you want” and little by little, I practice it too” (Interview with Jezer, 2016). Rebeca also recalled that “she got bored in EFL classes because she knew what the teacher taught, but she [teacher] was nice with me, she asked for help and things like that” (Interview with Rebeca, 2016). Through teacher’s request, Rebeca increased her self-esteem: “she asked for help, when I was absent she sent me a message” (Interview with Rebeca, 2016). Roxana even did her "servicio social"8 with her English teacher and officially became her assistant: “… I am pursuing my social service with my English teacher (…) by doing so I can teach English to the other ones” (Interview with Roxana, 2016). By being able to teach English to their peers and by becoming their English teacher assistant, these return students increased their self-esteem and felt appraised. As well as continued with their sense of membership to the US through the use of the English language. In other words, being a citizen through membership (Lister, 2007) is one of the main propositions of our work given that these return students continued effort to maintain their sense of belonging to the US and Mexico. As stated by Lister (2007) “an understanding of citizenship in relation to political identity and subjectivity” (p. 701). Here we concur with her and propose that students pursue their cultural and linguistic connection with the US and Mexico in a subjective manner and thus, creating their sense of belonging and participating as social actors in building their bilingual and bicultural citizenship (US and Mexican). The following excerpts will give force to our proposition.

Efrén mentioned he liked rap music in English, and to dress up like young people in the US as a strategy to maintain his US identity: “… rap, the artists of this genre you can listen to them in Spanish, but I like them in English, I feel myself identified with them, even when I am out of school. I feel that I dress up more as someone from there [the US]” (Interview with Efrén, 2016). As far as going to the US, as a strategy for maintaining English, this is only feasible for very few students. As Ana Karen stated, “they [her family] go frequently to the United States. Every six months they go and visit her uncles, they have a truck in the US and every six months they have to cross the border in order to obtain the permits… when I go there I practice my English” (Interview with Ana Karen, 2016). And Roxana, in turn, was thinking of going there during her winter holidays: “I’ve been over 5 years in Mexico and we are currently looking forward to the opportunity to go [referring to the US] in December for the holidays. I will visit a few uncles because I am forgetting English… a few words, I can not express myself as before” (Interview with Roxana, 2016).

In these cases, family members are related to being from the US, as their home country. One way of maintaining students’ social relations with the US is through family members who are still living there. These relations allow them to use the English language in its multiple and fragmented manners (as presented earlier) and to maintain a sense of belonging to the US. It is a very complex manner of analyzing how these

[2]

1. 7{ }^{7} A2/B1 relates to the foreign language levels defined by the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for language teaching and learning. ↩︎
2. 8{ }^{8} The servicio social is a Mexican mandatory school and university program through which students put the knowledge they acquired at school and university into practice, develop awareness of the national problems and challenges, and compensate society with the resources allocated to their education. ↩︎

students followed their families to Mexico despite their willingness to stay in the US (regardless of their migration status). As Areli stated:
…but now my sister is the one who is teaching us. She [her sister] is still studying in there [United States] and she came for the holidays, she is still studying and brought books and teaches us. Later when she enters a web page, is like homework and we have to talk about it for a check mark and I complete my homework with her" (Interview with Areli, 2016).

Another example is David’s family, who receives visits from his uncle and he himself is a US citizen:

Right now my uncle is coming, [from the US] he comes with all his family and I get along pretty well with my cousins, his sons, and we are chatting or things like that… they know Spanish. They were like me at the beginning when I spoke to them and at the beginning they did not speak to me in Spanish, they continue to speak in English. But now, when they come, a few times, they speak English, and sometimes I understand but sometimes am not recognizing all the words (Interview with David, 2016).

And Gustavo whose brother still lives in the US:
I told my brother to help me so I can speak [English] and he told me yes. He is helping me, he sent me exercises so I can speak from below, it doesn’t matter “I begin from below” I told him, with the most simple words might begin but I want to learn. When he [referring to his brother] speaks in English, I respond in English, there are a few words I do not understand, and he explains to me, and in messages too [referring to e-mail, WhatsApp, or any other social media tool] (Interview with Gustavo, 2016).

Hence, family ties also help to maintain students’ communicative repertoires. English maintenance strategies or multiple ways of participation allow students to keep their ties and identities with the US. These multiple ways of participation are autonomous learning strategies that aim to maintain their bilingual and bicultural citizenship (from the US and Mexico). Twelve out of the nineteen students are dual citizens. Most of them would like to return to their home county (the US) and others must remain in Mexico given their lack of documentation, which officially proves bicultural and bilingual citizenship. Our findings open a new path of research and of further inquiry, which ignite new trends of thought and practice across the disciplines.

5. Discussion and concluding remarks

This paper conveyed the idea of giving nuance to our proposition on how return migrants build their bilingual and bicultural citizenship while participating in the school system in Mexico. Their experiences as students at school generate knowledge on the processes of meaning making while displaying multiple language learning strategies which aimed not only to increase their cognitive academic language in Spanish, but also to maintain, or even increase, their English language proficiency. In other words, their two cultures and two languages. However, the school system in Mexico is not supporting the development and maintenance of their bilingualism and biliteracy despite the existence of a public educational policy, which aims Mexico to become bilingual in Spanish and English within ten years (Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP) (SEP), 2017).

Through narratives, we looked at how students enacted Acts of Citizenship (Larkins, 2014) to reclaim their citizenship to both sides of the border. To do so, they developed multiple ways of participation in the form of autonomous language learning strategies (e.g., David who communicated through the use of body language, the practice of Spanish vocabulary with his classmates, or writing words in Spanish in his notebook in order to create his first sentences). These cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective strategies, in both, Spanish and English, are not taught to them; they are totally autonomous. No
mediation takes place in any of the school settings observed. As noted, this control return students agentively acquired over their own learning process has also political implications because the autonomous learning and maintenance strategies in Spanish and English allow them to reclaim the recognition of their bicultural and bilingual sense of belonging to more than one community (Mexico and the US). Hence, beyond the improvement of linguistic practices, what students also do are manifestations of control taking, agency and initiative to maintain their identities.

For instance, Efrén, Edwin and Rebeca practice autonomous language learning strategies which in turn represent multiple ways of participation which increase their cognitive academic language in Spanish, and to maintain, or even increase, their English language proficiency in English while in Mexico. As illustrated by Efrén and Edwin who are cousins, they speak English to each other on face-to-face encounters or through media technology. Moreover, translanguaging is also a way to look at the language practices of bilinguals “not as two autonomous language systems, as has been traditionally the case, but as one linguistic repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages” (García & Wei, 2014, p.2) which allows return students to exercise participation in their own learning process. We also looked at multiple ways of maintaining, revitalizing or increasing English proficiency when school support was absent, including the development of their own academic Spanish skills. Hence, what these findings show is that students, even in circumstances in which schools do not provide them with many options, they are able to take initiative and maintain their agency. Schools and teachers therefore, even though they cannot come up with specific programs for return students, should praise students who find their own paths to maintain their dual identity and grant recognition to their efforts. Further research needs to look at the complexity analyzed in this paper, citizenship within the context of returned migrants must continue to be looked at as well as the diversity of participatory strategies exercised by them. At the same time, our study might help in creating public educational policies that will aid in supporting (financial, moral, and affective) children’s rights, citizenship and participation within and beyond the classrooms settings.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declared that there is no conflict of interest.

Appendix A. Supplementary material

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104652.

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