Immigration Motherhood and Parental Involvement is based on the vivid accounts of seven Latina
immigrant women of how they learned to navigate the school system in the rural southwest of the
United States. Their stories are presented within several contexts the socio-political
conditions of immigration overarching them all. The process of acquiring a new socio-cultural
script offers a common frame to the narratives which illustrate the central role of the
community in finding spaces for agency in circumstances of vulnerability. As a contribution to
educational theory this book explores the official discourse of parental involvement within
the broader context of social policy by pointing to a common underlying ideal parent norm
across areas of policy related to family and women. It also revisits the concept of parental
involvement through contrasting ideologies of motherhood as it applies the concept of
participation parity in everyday institutional interactions as a fundamental measure of social
justice. Immigration Motherhood and Parental Involvement offers deep insight into the
institutionalized patterns of formal inclusion informal exclusion in the relationship of
schools with Latina immigrant mothers even within the best intended programs. Its focus on the
persistent need for the implementation of culturally and linguistically sensitive approaches to
home-school relations makes this a must-read for undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher
education education leadership and sociology of education. Teachers administrators and
policymakers committed to moving away from the prevalent view of mothers as people who mainly
need to be educated also need to read this book.
