Immigration has become an international phenomenon on a global scale.  Europe, like the United States, has experienced unprecedented numbers of people moving across national borders and significant political positionings relative to these movements. Creating a safe space for people from different backgrounds becomes vital for social justice for people who pass the national borders for various reasons.

Creating practices that honor differences is the key to fostering social justice. While the established scholarship of intercultural education offers a venue for scholars to explore immigration in different contexts, the dynamic nature of human mobility creates the need for dedicated research. Moreover, the current turbulent global times across countries have forced education and educational researchers to be more focused and determined. We are passing through the times when educators and schools must sustain sincere commitments to intercultural living to chart ways forward for the future of social justice education.

For immigrant children and families, lived experiences affect their learning and how they negotiate the educational systems of their destination country. These experiences involve negotiations across homes, communities, and schools. Immigration presents challenges and affordances that manifest differently in various national contexts. In this symposium, we will present three papers that explore the experiences of children from immigrant families in out-of-school spaces as they move between home and school and in classrooms.

Paper 1 (Cultural Contradictions and Educational Experiences: The Challenges of Pakistani Migrant Families in the U.K.) will explore the lived experiences of Pakistani immigrant children in the UK. Paper 2 (Metaphors of Identity and James: Making Sense of Longitudinal Identity Construction for One Student from an Immigrant Family) will explore the longitudinal experiences of a Chinese American student as he moved from preschool to high school. Paper 3 (Honoring what Immigrant Students Bring: An Intrinsic Case Study of an Expatriated Teacher) explores the experiences of a White American language teacher who was previously expatriated and strove to enact culturally responsive teaching practices to serve immigrant students within the US school system.

To serve our social justice interests, we draw on a cosmopolitan perspective (Appiah, 2006). Cosmopolitanism references how people encounter one another, interact, and form relationships within transglobal flows of ideas and resources. While the term has been defined differently across fields, we follow the lead of philosopher and cultural theorist Appiah (2006), who defined cosmopolitanism as “universality plus difference” (p. 151), which enables people to engage with and value commonalities and differences.  Two strands of cosmopolitanism are intertwined in his notion:

One is the idea that we have obligations to others that stretch beyond those to whom we are related by the ties of kith and kind or even the more formal ties of a shared citizenship. The other is that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means taking an interest in the practices and beliefs that lend them significance. People are different, the cosmopolitan knows, and there is much to learn from our differences. (p. xv)

As researchers and educators, we share this perspective across our papers bring it to our respective work in communities, homes and classrooms.

Together, these papers speak to the immigrant experiences of children and teachers across home and school contexts. Immigration is not only increasing around the world due to conflicts and climate, but it is also a phenomenon that particularly affects destination nations, which too often respond with walls and inhumane policies. Teachers and educational researchers must grapple with the implications of immigration and seek ways to honor the strengths and abilities brought by children from immigrant families to serve all children better.

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