Generación Uno: Education as Migration

Every year, in the United States, approximately 2.9 million people leave home and head for college. Many leave knowing in their heart of hearts that they will return. Others, just as resolutely, know this is their spatial, social, and potentially economic departure from home. Ethnic Studies scholar, migration expert and first generation faculty member David Hernandez argues that this migration – the cultural geography of class mobility – deserves the kind of attention that cross-border migration gets and that many immigration frameworks – transnationalism, diaspora, push-pull, empire, liminal zones, barrio formation, segmented labor markets – can help explain the dynamics of first-generation college attendance.  Education as migration. A platica. A conversation. A strategy.

David Hernández is Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies at Mount Holyoke College. His research focuses on immigration enforcement, in particular, the U.S. detention regime. He is completing a book manuscript on this institution, titled "Alien Incarcerations: Immigrant Detention and Lesser Citizenship," and he is also the co-editor of Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press 2016). His work has appeared journals such as Border-Lines, Harvard Journal of Hispanic Policy, Journal of Race and Policy, Latina/o Studies, and NACLA: Report on the Americas.