Resiliency and Success: Migrant Children in the U.S.

This book elucidates the amazing life journeys of academically successful migrant students. Most literature on Hispanic students - especially the children of migrant farm workers who have been referred to as the 'invisible children' or the children of 'ghost workers' - has focused on the sociocultural factors that have contributed to their low level of achievement, high attrition rates, and other academic failures. Such studies lead to a deficit model, portraying Hispanic children as deficient in a variety of ways, and through its negative focus perpetuates these failures.

Offering vivid case studies of successful students, this book offers a corrective, helping teachers, education students, and researchers understand the factors that lead to success in minority language children. The authors develop the lessons of student success stories into recommendations for schools and for educational policy. Readers gain from this book the stories of real students, the challenges they faced, and the means by which students and schools may overcome language and cultural barriers to educational success.