Understanding the Lives of Migrant Children in America

With about one in four children in the United States now living in immigrant families, Associate Professor Gabrielle Oliveira argues that supporting their wellbeing should be a national priority — not just for the children themselves, but for the strength of society as a whole.

Yet for many Americans, migration is often seen as risky or even reckless, especially when it involves bringing children across dangerous borders and leaving everything familiar behind. Oliveira reframes this perspective to migration is an act of profound care.

“Almost [no one] wants to leave their homes,” she says. “All things being equal, you want to stay where you were born with the people that you know, and love, and close to your roots. Most people that are coming, they're running for their lives in many ways. So, this is not this idea of people trying to come here to take something from the society, here to take their jobs, to take their safety, to take any of that, but it's kind of almost this beautiful thing about the United States being the safe haven where things are possible, and there's hope.”

She has spent years embedded with Latin American migrant families living in Massachusetts, documenting their journeys, their struggles, and the hopes that drive them to uproot their lives, which she shares in her book, Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children’s Education, and Dreams for a Better Life.

Oliveira explains that while public conversations about immigration center on fear and scarcity, the families she followed see education as a stabilizing force and a pathway to dignity. For parents, schooling in the U.S. represents the chance for their children to flourish, not merely academically but as kind, purposeful human beings. Yet for teachers, supporting these students can be complicated by the pressures of curriculum, testing, and limited training in trauma-informed practice or what Oliveira calls “constrained care.”

“If you're going to talk about a multicultural piece, why not actually talk about the home country of that child, and let that child write, and talk about that, and tell the stories, which then will increase trust in the classroom,” she says. “We know that if teachers, and students trust each other, the students are going to be a lot more inclined to want to engage more, to want to show up, and learn more in the classrooms versus if they feel that they cannot be their whole selves in the classroom.”

In this episode of the Harvard EdCast, Oliveira shares how children and families navigate migrating to America and its schools, and offers strategies for educators.

Transcript

JILL ANDERSON: I am Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. 

Gabrielle Oliveira calls migration an act of profound care, but also one marked by separation, trauma, and uncertainty that deeply affects how children learn, and adjust. She's an associate professor at Harvard who has spent years studying the lives of migrant families. What she's found reshapes how we think about children arriving in the United States, and how we view migrants altogether. The national conversation about immigration is often loud, polarized, and driven by fear. Gabrielle's work reminds us to look closer at the real families behind the rhetoric, and the hope that drives most people to leave the places they love. I ask Gabrielle what she wishes Americans better understood about the realities behind migrating to the United States.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: A lot of the narrative of this country was built by immigrants, and all of that. I think it has lost the power that it once had. I think that doesn't hold as much meaning for many people these days, because the fear is actually what's informing how people are thinking about immigrants. So, I always say that almost never people want to leave their homes. That's almost never the outcome that you want. All things being equal, you want to stay where you were born with the people that you know, and love, and close to your roots. Most people that are coming, they're running for their lives in many ways. So, this is not this idea of people trying to come here to take something from the society here to take their jobs, to take their safety, to take any of that, but it's kind of almost this beautiful thing about the United States being the safe haven where things are possible, and there's hope.

So, not to be all positive, but I really try to bring this part of the dimension for people to think about as a hopeful, fruitful, powerful place to grow, and learn, and raise a family, and work hard as opposed to this idea that it's just people coming here to do something that is bad. The anti-immigration sentiment keeps increasing also because of that fear. And that's my biggest concern is that we're leading with fear, and not with the understanding that for these people it's about hope.

JILL ANDERSON: You have spent years following migrant families who came to Massachusetts from Latin America, and one of the things that's fascinating is how you really immersed yourself so deeply with I think 16 families. You were embedded in their daily life. You almost became part of their families it sounds like. What did that experience really reveal about how these parents, and children think about education here?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Yeah. And this is part of my work as an ethnographer, which means that I spend all this time close to people documenting their lives. So, that's the type of research that I do. And that comes with a lot of responsibility because you're being trusted. And when I first started doing this work many, many years ago, I wasn't a parent myself. I didn't even have kids when I wrote my first book. And then it's just very different. I was learning alongside parents, and mothers what it means to raise kids, to take them to school, to help them with homework, and to do all of that. And now that I have my own kids, what I've learned from these parents is the meaning of education is so much bigger than schooling.

It's not just about our obsession with academic achievement, and grades, and making sure our kids are getting the best math curriculum, and the best all of that, which many of us have, but it's really about education as making somebody a good, kind, thoughtful human being that is going to do good things for the world. And I think this idea of dignity, and purpose was something that was very attached to education for these parents. So, the education is not just about the academics, that's a huge part of it, but it's also about a place, and a space that you can flourish, and you can have a real shot at having a better life, a life that maybe if you had stayed, you wouldn't have had that. So, there's a lot at stake for parents where they think about education, and schooling as these important dimensions of their children's lives.

JILL ANDERSON: Right. And it's so interesting about how that was really one of the big drivers, I think as you just mentioned. And often you don't really hear that when you hear people talking about why someone comes to America.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Right. Most of the studies, and different disciplines have always positioned migration, and rightly so, into this framework we call the push, and pull. So, what are the factors that are pushing people out? Violence, poverty, lack of hope, lack of opportunity, corruption, all of that. And what is pulling people in? Opportunity for jobs, opportunity for work, education, safety, health, all of that. So, we understand that that's why people are making these decisions. So, education was buried under this push, and pull piece, and we tend to think about education for people that are better off socioeconomically. So, I, myself, I am an immigrant myself. I'm from Brazil. I came to the United States, because I wanted to study here. So, I applied for a master's. I came, I did my master's PhD. So, that is one type of migration that it was completely voluntary, and it's coming with the sole purpose of education.

But for a lot of these families that I work with, education was just buried in this idea that you only talk about poverty, violence, corruption as the main pieces, but these are also full human beings with hopes, and goals for their children. But I think we forget, or maybe the media doesn't pay enough attention in that because they're so focused with the basic piece, which is survival. But education is not just one of the main drivers, but it's also a stabilizing force. Once they come here, being able to bring your children to school, have them study, have them learn, it also stabilizes, and justifies a lot of the sacrifice of coming here.

JILL ANDERSON: You've written that to migrate is to care. What does that mean?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: One of the things that we see a lot is there is this kind of discourse often basically saying, why would parents put their children in danger by engaging in these migration journeys, which for many of them, sometimes you're leaving places very far away, and going through countries that are unstable themselves. It's not just that the US-Mexico border, but traveling through Mexico is dangerous for migrants. Traveling through Guatemala, traveling through Honduras, and all of that. So, it is perceived, and it is in many instances, it's objectively dangerous to do it. And then there's this kind of judgment about why would parents do that? And the way that I try to reframe this is that this is actually parents caring for their children. So, what people may perceive as putting them in danger, I try to explain that that's a form of care, because they're trying to take them out of a situation that they thought to be even more dangerous.

And then take on this journey so their children are alive, are healthy, have a shot of surviving, and not being recruited to be in a gang, or a violent group, giving them a chance at childhood, at developing, and growing in a healthy way. That's care, that's parenting. And I always ask this from parents, and people that are caregivers, wouldn't you want the same thing for your child, and how far would you go to actually give that to your child? And as a parent myself, for me, there are no limits of what I would do for my kids. The migration piece is really important to look at a piece of the puzzle as care.

JILL ANDERSON: You talk a lot about how education becomes this currency of love, and I think you're really illustrating that in a way when you talk about just the idea of every parent wants what's best for their kid. And I'm curious about the families you followed, what that looked like when it came to access to the education. And I'm especially curious about the kids, whether they sensed that, whether there was an understanding of that being one of the main drivers of what was happening.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Yeah, that's such a great point, because in many instances, the children are not fully aware, or they're not articulating this way of, well, my parents want me to do well in school. That's their main thing. And for a lot of the kids, the issue that we see in this dynamic of education as a currency of love is that the kids are the assumed beneficiaries, right? So, your parents did this for you, but the kids also, because they're human beings, they may carry resentment, and feel upset, and feel all kinds of ways because of what happened to them, especially for the children who were separated from their parents at the border, or were detained, or went through deep trauma. So, for a lot of these kids, they're still trying to work out where is the benefit? What is happening? When do I get that, because of the things that I went through?

And the parents are actively trying to explain in this way of, "Look what you have, look where we are", but without a lot of detailing because there's an expectation that you understand the sacrifice that the parents have gone through. So, the kids in all my interviews were very protective of the parents. They never blamed them, or described them as anything, but I came here for my parents, I understand they're bringing me, but they were very critical of the structures that put them in a position that they ended up with a lot of trauma, like the Mexican government of what happened on the trip, or what happened at the Mexico US border. So, they were actually the ones articulating these external forces versus the parents who are talking about their guilt.

JILL ANDERSON: I mean, it feels almost dumb to say this is a very hard transition for kids to come in, and have this access to the US school system. And something I think you describe as teachers that they sometimes offer something called a constrained care. And I want to talk a little bit about what that looks like in schools.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: And I have to say that teachers are heroes, and I feel very strongly about that. And I spent a lot of time in schools, and in classrooms, and these teachers are so pressured, and pushed to focus on curriculum instruction, and not a lot of time to actually think about all the social emotional piece, and how to support the kids. So, what I saw was a lot of the kids that trusted teachers, and wanted to offer them a little window into what happened to them, but the teachers would often react as kind of silencing, or not wanting to engage with some of the information being offered because they felt like it was a big taboo. Or as one teacher described to me, opening Pandora's box. So, what happens if I start engaging with everything that a child says about their trauma during morning meeting on a Tuesday, 9:00 AM? How do we get out of this?

How do we transition to teaching, and to all of that? So, the teachers felt this deep commitment to care, and wanting to be there, and hear the kids, but they felt constrained by what a school day should look like, and by their principals, and other people coming into their classroom, and say, "Are you teaching this? Did you finish with the math curriculum? Are you ready for this?" And the teachers are kind of thinking, "Well, there's a lot more here that I should be thinking about before I even start a math lesson." So, those are kind of their conflicts that they were trying to solve. How do I give space, and what I call this kind of the wiggle room that they have in those moments that they can engage with children more deeply, and build trust versus the kind of more formal we have to move on to something piece of curriculum.

JILL ANDERSON: What ideas do you have for educators, and schools on how they might be able to better support migrant children?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: One of the things is we need more training for teachers, and more support. And that has to be a whole district approach, professional development that is sustained over a year with multiple sessions from the point of view of a researcher, but a social worker, a teacher, a health professional, to give the full picture of what these kids are going through. I do a lot of professional development work with schools, and the number one request I get is what I've come to call, which is the presentations I give that is know the population you serve. So, why, and how did they end up here? What does schooling look like in their home countries? What did the trip look like for them? And that for teachers, give them a tool to expand their pedagogies in the school. So, that's a huge piece is the teaching, and helping the teachers.

But the other piece is really allowing for these connections between what kids are sharing, and their assignments in the classroom. So, an example of that is allowing children to be writing in their own language, if you're doing literacy. Allowing children to be drawing, and labeling different things about their family, and telling their stories, which is linked to a literacy part of phonics, and writing, and all of that. So, linking those pieces, and not isolating them as, we cannot talk about this in the classroom, but bringing that closer to the lessons. So, if you're going to talk about a multicultural piece, why not actually talk about the home country of that child, and let that child write, and talk about that, and tell the stories, which then will increase trust in the classroom. And we know that if teachers, and students trust each other, the students are going to be a lot more inclined to want to engage more, to want to show up, and learn more in the classrooms versus if they feel that they cannot be their whole selves in the classroom.

JILL ANDERSON: I know you followed these families for quite some time, and I'm curious about especially the kids, how, and whether the educational experience changed for them over that time period.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Absolutely, and it did change, and because I followed them for three years, I also had COVID in the middle. We had the pandemic, so I could see this trajectory where they found their footing. So, entry, very hard, complicated, tough, found their footing, felt hopeful, inspired, then COVID hits, and then it kind of goes, it complicates everything. They lose all the services that they had at school, including the meals, the speech therapist, more English lessons. All of that becomes harder online. And then they come back to it with this kind of renewed hope. But there is a lot of this roller coaster feeling of I finally know what I'm supposed to do in school. I learn the norms. I know how I'm supposed to be here, and be a student, but now it's all being mediated by screen. And for English language learners, it's not easy to have to learn in that way as well. It's not easy for any kid. So, even having that other added barrier can even complicate it even more.

JILL ANDERSON: For the parents, was there a moment that it felt like it all paid off, or it was the right move, or if that's something that they continue to navigate, and wrestle with?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: I'm still in touch with everybody, and it's definitely, they do feel like it was worthy, right? Their sacrifice, just because every child in this research is either in school, or has graduated from high school, and there's a few that are in two year colleges, a few that took different jobs, one that is studying to be a nurse. So, there's a lot of amazing things that they are seeing their children do that they really hope for that. I do say, for me, there's a little bit of a cautionary tale about there is this kind of expectations with immigrants in the United States that for them to be worthy of people feeling empathy towards them, and wanting them to be in the United States, they have to be these superhuman overachievers, right? So, oh, we should keep these people here because look at how much they're doing for this, and for that.

And I kind of advocate for this idea of letting people be ordinary because most children are, and that's okay. Let people just live their lives. A lot of what these kids are doing is they are in little leagues, they are playing soccer, they have dance recitals. They're excited about a book they're reading, they're having play dates, they're learning to paint. They're doing all these amazing things that that's what we want for kids to grow, and to be happy, and they're healthy, they have a doctor. So, all these things that for these parents is really what they envisioned, what they hoped for their kids to be able to have a sense of normalcy. They ride their bikes, they go to a friend's house, all these things that they couldn't really do where they were before.

JILL ANDERSON: Right. And it's interesting because I think that in America, oftentimes we just sort of take those things for granted.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Absolutely.

JILL ANDERSON: I think you've already said this, we sort of lose sight of many of the reasons why people may come here. You've already talked a little bit about how the conversation on immigration is often dominated around fear, and misunderstanding, and it's really centralized around this idea of just people coming here to take things. I think you just sort of highlighted in a way, we have people going on to become nurses. What are we missing when we only focus on the taking?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Not only we make very bad policy because we're not actually being driven by the possibilities of what could be. We're actually being driven by imposing painful barriers that are actually going to be pretty bad for an entire generation. So, that for me is a huge piece. When we do that, we make bad policy that is not supportive of the fabric of society, because if immigrant children are succeeding, it's good for everybody around them. It doesn't matter. So, that's what we want. And we're also running the risk of actually dismissing an entire generation. Right now, one in four children in the United States has a parent that is an immigrant. That's over 18 million kids.

So, this is not a one city issue. This is a whole United States piece. And everybody knows somebody that knows somebody, or you yourself that knows that story. Sometimes what I say sometimes is misconstrued, or mistaken by me saying, everybody should be allowed to be here, and there's no limits. And that's not at all what we're saying because countries are sovereign, and I'm a pragmatist. There are laws, and all of that. These are all folks who are asylum seekers. They came here, they are waiting for their court date. They followed everything that they could to be here. They've been working. They've been taking their children to school, they're doing all of that. So, we miss that. We miss by putting every single discourse in one big pot, and just generalizing stories in a way that is not fair. It's not characterizing who people are.

JILL ANDERSON: What do you hope educators, policymakers, and just even anyone who's just listening would take away from your work?

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: I mean, the first thing is that these realities are closer to you, to me than we want to think they are, right? They're a lot closer. And my instincts to answer your question is to think about empathy, and think about people as humans, and give you a whole think about that because I believe in it. I think right now we're so polarized that I find myself actually trying to say, bring people together to think about the well-being of children. Make that your North Star. What is a five-year-old from Brazil, from Honduras, from Guatemala, who's going to school? Why would you not want to make good policy, or supports for them in schools, and outside of schools to support their well-being? We're talking about young children here, who came with their parents so they could have a shot at survival. So, that is really kind of the plight when we see what's happening right now in the country that is further splitting people, and dividing people, my biggest concern is that we're implementing policy again, that's going to separate parents from children once again.

And then these children are going to grow up without a parent. And we know that growing up without a parent is incredibly negative for the development of children. So, that's kind of what I want people to take from, let's think about the wellbeing of children together. In my work, I think a lot about the different countries that people are coming from. And I think it's also an interesting point for people to think about, what are the realities of each of these countries, and how can we think about supporting these countries? So, there's no need for people to actually have to leave, and I think that's a piece of the puzzle that is also important to think with.

JILL ANDERSON: All right, Gabby. Well, thank you very much.

GABRIELLE OLIVEIRA: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

JILL ANDERSON: Gabrielle Oliveira is an associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She's the author of Now We Are Here, Family, Migration, Children's Education, and Dreams of a Better Life. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.