Project | 01 Mexican Migration Field Research Project

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Research conducted by UCSD students participating in the Mexican Migration Field Research Project 2018-19 compiled qualitative data and surveyed middle school students in Tijuana, Ensenada, and Tecate, with a goal of focusing on education in Mexico and specifically, the education of students in English classes. This research brings up a number of questions that force us to ask, who do these students become as English speakers, who do they see themselves in a global sense, what are the stories they get about English, how do they then imagine their futures and what does the process of learning English do for the student? We found that education systems throughout Mexico continue to position English as a key to success. Through this work, I suggest that educating students in this way continues a colonial project, instilling what I define as a primacy of English. Additionally, it creates a hierarchy of languages and therefore the possibility for a hierarchy of self-worth, of both student and country. This piece aims to look at ways this process may be positively transformed by using research from around the world on bilingual education that can be applied to the education systems in Mexico to uncover what an alternative could look like and how could we use the work of decolonization to transform education. Through a pedagogical shift, education could work to center the needs of individual students and communities throughout Mexico and the native languages spoken across the country, facilitating the students living there to place the highest value within themselves and country. Further, the research suggests if we don’t embark on this project of decolonizing education, that what is most at stake is the future of these students as they become further entrenched in the larger project of capitalism spread through the cogs of globalization and colonialism.

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