What Does It Mean to Learn and Teach While Migrating?

Discussions of immigrant education in the U.S. often center on what happens after families arrive in the United States. But that focus misses the critical learning that begins long before arrival and unfolds throughout the journey. The places where immigrants are born and where they teach and learn as they grow, as well as the places they migrate through—and what they experience there—shape their learning as much as their final destinations.

For Dr. Alicia Rusoja, the journey itself is educational. With critical support from a Hellman Fellowship and a UCD S.E.E.D grant, she has launched a new transnational research project examining the education of Venezuelan immigrants, including what these immigrants learn as they move between countries, contributing to the expansion of how immigration education is typically defined, and where it is understood to occur.

“What are the educational experiences and practices of un/documented Venezuelan immigrants from a transnational perspective?” Rusoja asks. The question points to a broader idea at the center of her research: migration is not just a journey, but an intergenerational pedagogical process of learning and teaching, shaped by movement across borders, time, cultural identities, and by transnational ties.

Lessons Carried Across Borders

Rusoja argues that in-transit learning is both complex and essential. “Immigrants learn how to navigate transportation, share resources, build support networks, and teach others how to do the same,” she said. Her research focuses on the intergenerational experiences of Venezuelan children and their families as they traveled across South and Central America to California—a journey of more than 4,000 miles, often made on foot and under uncertain conditions. “Several people participating in, and co-constructing, the study are immigrants who left Venezuela in the last ten or so years, and walked through the Darién Gap, a dangerous jungle that connects Colombia and Panamá, in their journey from Venezuela to the U.S.” Rusoja said. “Other study participants in the U.S. include immigrants  who came to the U.S. in the 1970s, 1990s and 2000s who didn’t walk through the Darién yet are teaching us important lessons about the pedagogical nature of migration.”

Along with her team of School of Education graduate and undergraduate researchers who are immigrants themselves —including Ph.D. students Anna Peñaloza (Colombia), Ana Castellón (El Salvador), and Solange Ramirez (Venezuela), and Education Minor student Allison Lopez (Venezuela)—Rusoja is building partnerships with Venezuelan immigrant communities in California and in Colombia to together understand what they have learned and taught others before, throughout, and after their migratory journeys. 

Part of that learning involves navigating complex immigration obstacles: figuring out routes, exchanging and safe-keeping monetary and other resources, and moving as safely as possible across borders. Rusoja’s team, and the Venezuelan immigrant community co-researchers joining them, are interested in what happens outside formal systems—the moments in transit when individuals and families exchange information, preserve cultural and linguistic practices, and create community across ethnic, racial, linguistic, and other boundaries.

Centering Immigrants as Knowledge Producers

To understand migration as a site and process of learning, Rusoja is also rethinking how that learning is studied. Rather than situating Venezuelan immigrants solely as subjects, this research project engages them as co-researchers and co-producers of knowledge about their own migration and related educational lives. Through interviews, dialogues, storytelling, and ongoing collaboration that involves learning/teaching about qualitative research, study participants are becoming co-researchers, as well.

This community-based approach to educational research treats participants as authorities on their own experiences. “Together, we will fill a significant void of knowledge as there is very little research about the educational experiences of Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S.,” Rusoja said. “And dominant research on immigration, and on immigrant education, has overwhelmingly been research ‘on’ versus research ‘with’ immigrants, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Our work is groundbreaking because it centers the ‘epistemic rights’ of Venezuelan immigrants, engaging them as knowers and knowledge producers, rather than subjects without agency.”

Countering Deficit Narratives in Education

By focusing on learning before, during and after migratory journeys, instead of only after arrival, Rusoja aims to expand how educators and researchers understand immigrant students’ experiences in schools. “If schools recognize the knowledges, skills and expertise that children, families and communities bring with them, especially because of their migratory journeys themselves,” she said, “schools will be better equipped to support them and to learn from them.”

Rusoja’s work also challenges narratives that position immigrants as victims of their circumstances. Crossing borders requires a wealth of pedagogical practices, critical linguistic and literacy practices, collective and individual problem-solving, courage, resistance, and adaptability—all important forms of knowledge that often go unrecognized. “This work is about centering the voices and practices of people whose lives are obscured and harmed by anti-immigration rhetoric and policy,” Rusoja said. “Together, we want to shine a light on the knowledge and power they’ve always had, and the ingenuity required to leave home, journey through multiple borders, teaching and learning toward resisting oppression, and building something new.”