Brown, Danielle. “Kirksville R-III Adapts in Order to Better Integrate Congolese Students.” Kirksville Daily Express, 14 December 2015. ? http://www.kirksvilledailyexpress.com/article/20151212/NEWS/151219704
After completing a close read of the above article, I began to think more of not just the interpersonal and individual obstacles presented to immigrants, but of roadblocks (so to speak) on the institutional level. The main focus of this article is on the school system itself and the changes it has had to make to better accommodate the needs of the Congolese immigrant children and their families. There is, after all, only one ESOL teacher for the entire district, which isn’t conducive for the rapid language acquisition needed in order to participate fully in class.
Outside of the institution of the school, the article also mentioned how the role of government can really impact the immigration experience–even after people are granted visas. For example, government funding directly affects school programs (and other programs) like ESL. The article describes how requests for aid usually don’t reach the school district until a year or a year and a half later, so they are constantly behind and trying to play catch-up.
There is no question that institutional bodies in the United States affect immigrants to this country, but we must also consider institutional factors in the country from which they are immigrating. These can point to a “why” in terms of the migration, or at the very least part of the answer to that question. In the article, Celeste Yampanya explains that in the Congo, the area where they lived was not well off economically, and schooling was very expensive. It would be interesting to explore the historical and political context behind this to help further explain the driving factors for migration.
This is relevant not only to the project Maggie and I are working on, but to the rest of our classmates’ projects as well. Structural systems in place in our country have an impact on everyone, though that impact might look different in different cultural areas. By taking into consideration these macro scale forces on the migration process, we might be able to cultivate a deeper understanding of the process and experience.