Beyond Refuge: WISE and Migrant Girls in Education - Nicole Luz

A child’s experience in school can be one of the most formative aspects of their social, emotional, and personal development. For many migrant girls, struggling to learn while adapting to a new society, having limited access to educational resources, or being subject to bullying due to difference can hamper their ability to have the most positive experience. American society’s white supremacist and patriarchal structures place an enormous pressure on migrant children to conform and assimilate all while silencing young girls’ voices and keeping them from tapping into their potential—migrant girls are at the intersection of these barriers in both educational achievement and personal fulfillment. According to a Princeton study, girls expressed significantly lower levels of self-esteem than boys as they progressed grades, despite being more ambitious—and these levels were even lower for girls who were fluently bilingual.¹ Furthermore, migrant girls whose families face financial challenges or challenges associated with immigration status can face problems getting to school daily, be less active in the classroom, or not be able to participate in school extra-curricular activities that complement a child’s development. In addition, migrant girls may be neglected in the field of psychosocial support while simultaneously having enormous pressures to succeed placed on them by their families or by themselves. Here, the self-esteem issues seen in the aforementioned study may be exacerbated. In all, migrant girls could do with extra support in the fields of empowerment, self-reliance and other supports, and that is what WISE seeks out to do.

The Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment, or WISE, seeks to mitigate some of the challenges faced by migrant girls and female-identified youth. WISE is a Minnesota grassroots initiative founded in 1995 by a group of first-generation immigrant women of various backgrounds who had experienced obstacles to their education while also trying to learn a second language, and who saw a need for leadership and empowerment initiatives to bring migrant girls closer to their fullest potential. WISE’s current leadership is all comprised of women of color with transnational backgrounds, and this legacy is expected to be carried on, their website saying, “We look forward to a future where WISE is being run by the immigrant and refugee women and girls we have served.” Their mission is to help migrant girls, especially those that are underserved and at-risk, succeed academically and beyond.

The initiative is comprised of three main programs, Girls Getting Ahead in Leadership (GGAL), Women’s Empowerment and Leadership (We LEAD), and Healthy Relationships. The first offers academic support, academic/personal mentorship, and self-sufficiency education to middle and high school girls, while the second is a sister program helping migrant women navigate higher education and providing career support for what follows. The third program engages girls of all ages in activities to “prevent dating violence, stalking, cyberstalking and sex trafficking through knowing how to differentiate between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one”. All of these programs hold to WISE’s central purpose of filling some of the gaps that migrant girls may have in their school environment while empowering them to feel confident in their abilities and their worth. WISE partners with several local Minnesota organizations for educational resources and advising for their empowerment workshops, and it also connects the girls it works with to these and other organizations that may be more specialized in certain areas of assistance, such as women’s shelters.

WISE’s programs and central mission act as a form of resistance by attempting to change the understanding of migrant girls’ place within American society at a grassroots level. This change begins by transforming the hearts of migrant girls themselves, so that they may see their value both as migrants and as girls with agency and potential. One of WISE’s core values is ‘social justice and advocacy’, pushing for “systems change that increases opportunities for all people to develop their unique potential and use their assets fully”. However, WISE does not go about social justice and advocacy in a typically explicit way; it translates it into its work. Systems change is about addressing the root causes of social problems, and WISE does just that through its programs. Through the provision of academic and psychosocial support, WISE is working to decrease the aforementioned social and circumstantial barriers that put down migrant girls mentally and academically and suggest that they have less to contribute to society.

WISE’s work also demonstrates a form of collective care as a form of resistance, in that it emphasizes the importance of mental health and healthy relationships for underserved and at-risk young migrant women, both of which can often be sidelined. By providing a safe space outside of school for migrant girls to be in community with each other, support each other’s goals, and provide comfort over mutual struggles, WISE is indirectly teaching migrant girls how to engage in collective care. These practices will translate into their communities as they grow older, so that they feel empowered to advocate for their collective needs and for each other. By saying these psychosocial services are important, WISE is asserting that migrant girls’ and women’s emotional and mental health matters; they should not be taught or expected to endure anything at all times. Moreover, WISE gives validity to the internal struggle associated with the nuances and challenges of migrant identity, of being perceived as an “other” from a young age by one’s peers; it says that this difference of experience for migrant children at large should not be ignored, as the American culture of assimilation might suggest, but approached head-on so that they may be proud of their identities, not feel limited because of them.

Another interesting way in which WISE embodies resistance is with another one of its core values: ‘art as a powerful tool for learning and healing’. Across histories and cultures, art has been used as a form of resistance. The power that rests within the individual or collective expression of a marginalized person or group through art is unmatched, as it can convey worlds that cannot be conveyed in any other medium. Allowing girls to represent their identities, process their emotions, and express lived experiences and memories through arts and crafts not only gives them the room to fully be themselves where they may otherwise have felt suppressed, but it also asserts that their person has beauty and value that is worthy of being shared with the world. Another one of WISE’s core values, ‘self-determination and self-actualization’, is manifested in this practice. Through producing art, which can also be understood as communicating knowledge, migrant girls resist the idea that their perspectives should be sidelined, that they must fit within a certain box, and that they should not showcase the things that make them unique.

WISE’s ultimate vision is stated as such: “A world where immigrant and refugee women are honored for their wisdom, celebrated for their leadership, and empowered to create change.” In all, this vision encompasses the immense role that migrant women play in their communities, the depth of knowledge that they have to offer to conversations about the immigrant experience, and the transformations they are capable of fostering when they feel empowered—and this begins with empowering migrant girls.

¹ “Immigrant Children.” The Future of Immigrant Children, vol. 21, no. 1, Spring 2011, https://futureofchildren.princeton.edu/sites/futureofchildren/files/media/immigrant_children_21_01_fulljournal.pdf.