As our world becomes ever more connected technologically, economically, and politically, it is difficult to deny the impact of globalization upon our everyday experiences. Educational processes, as microcosms of these larger forces, are necessarily affected as well. But while proponents of globalization - and the unprecedented transfer of information it enables - promote the myriad connections to be made across space and time, at the same time, calls for place-based approaches to education that seek to infuse curricula with the particularities of local history, geography, and artistic traditions (Brooke, 2011) are beginning to take root in the United States. Somewhere between these approaches, however, is the interplay between     the local and the global, or what Baraldi (2006) terms the “glocal.” In this glocal space, a free flow of ideas merges with the historical realities of race, class, language, and nationality to create a hybrid culture marked by transition, conflict, and the desire for self-determination.    

In the United States, these various, interweaving threads are rarely more apparent than in the struggles faced by recent immigrants and their children as they navigate the uncertain waters of public education. A far cry from the “melting pot” once envisioned (albeit problematically), the U.S. indeed is as characterized by ethnic isolation and segregation as it is by any sort of seamless cultural fusion. Added to this are the unique sociocultural and historical conditions whose effects are experienced in distinct and disproportionate ways among different ethnic groups within the U.S.

Though migration from Mexico has slowed in recent years owing to the deflated state of the U.S. economy as well as the record number of deportations under the Obama administration (Immigration Policy Center, 2011), conversely, immigration from India to the U.S. has been increasing rapidly since the 1990s (Terrazas and Batog, 2010). Still, the Midwestern states in the U.S. are generally more ethnically homogenous than the country’s eastern and western seaboards. In Adamsville, a mid-sized capital city in one such state, these two groups represent tiny fractions of the area’s overall demographic make-up. Though socioeconomic indicators exist of these groups’ varying levels of successful integration into their new local community, what is rarely discussed are the insightful definitions of success that are most salient for recent Mexican and Indian immigrants, particularly as applied to their educational hopes for their children.

Over the course of several months, we conducted interviews with members of Adamsville’s small but stalwart Mexican and Indian communities. In the time spent with our participants, we were curious to learn the ways in which they make sense and meaning of their new lives in a community comprised of an overwhelmingly monocultural majority. But beyond their experiences within the public sphere, we wanted to explore the challenges they faced within the educational spheres to which they also belonged as parents of young students within the public education system of Adamsville. As teachers ourselves, we were additionally interested in the implications of our participants’ experiences for educators in an increasingly globalized, transnational context. As such, what emerged from our research, amid the complexity and uniqueness of each individual’s journey, was an insightful comparison of Mexican and Indian parents’ perception of their children’s intercultural integration as they themselves work through obstacles of language, learning, and life in Adamsville.

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