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International Studies in Sociology of Education

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The involvement of migrant mothers in theirchildren’s education: cultural capital andtransnational class processes

Taghreed Jamal Al-deen & Joel Windle

To cite this article: Taghreed Jamal Al-deen & Joel Windle (2015) The involvementof migrant mothers in their children’s education: cultural capital and transnationalclass processes, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 25:4, 278-295, DOI:10.1080/09620214.2015.1083404

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2015.1083404

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The involvement of migrant mothers in their children’s education:cultural capital and transnational class processes

Taghreed Jamal Al-deena* and Joel Windlea,b

aFaculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; bInstitute forSocial Sciences and the Humanities, Federal University of Ouro Preto, Brazil

(Received 15 August 2014; final version received 23 July 2015)

This paper analyses the kinds of capital, practices and investments thatare implicated in the participation of migrant mothers in the educationalcareers of their children, drawing on a Bourdieusian framework. We pre-sent findings of a study of Muslim Iraqi mothers with school-agedchildren in Australia, based on 47 interviews with 25 participants. Thestudy identifies different modes of involvement in children’s educationand connects these to mothers’ cultural and social capital. Involvement,and its effectiveness, is analysed through the analytical categories of (i)high capital-high involvement; (ii) low capital-high involvement; and(iii) low capital-minimal direct involvement. The paper contributes tothe theorisation of family–school relations in the context of migration,and develops a more nuanced perspective for studying social class posi-tioning and repositioning.

Keywords: education; Bourdieu; cultural capital; migrant mothers;social class

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of how supportof children’s education is shaped by the process of migration, and in particularrepositioning of social class. According to Parreñas (2001), migration is oftena process of contradictory social mobility. The situation of having universityqualifications yet being unable to get a ‘good’ job in the host county is com-mon among migrants. Thus, short-hand usage of social class in studies con-cerning the educational investments of migrants can be problematic. Just asqualifications may become devalued through the process of migration, so toocan be expert knowledge of the functioning of formal schooling that enableseffective support of children. Here, we report on a study of Muslim Iraqimothers in Australia, arguing that mothers with lower levels of cultural capital

*Corresponding author. Email: taghreed.al-deen@monash.edu

© 2015 Taylor & Francis

International Studies in Sociology of Education, 2015Vol. 25, No. 4, 278–295, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2015.1083404

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are often just as energetic in supporting their children’s schooling as thosewith high levels of capital, but receive fewer returns on their investment.

Traditional measures of social class based on current occupation andincome (for example, Goldthorpe, 2004) fail to capture the transformationof various forms of capital through the process of migration. Such classi-fication schemes have been developed based on continuity of institutionaland social conditions within the unit of the nation-state. However, migrantshave experienced different institutional and social conditions and the mean-ing of a given level of education and professional category is not stablebetween nation-states. Bourdieu contemplates this variation in relation tohistorical periods, with some forms of capital losing value over the twenti-eth century as educational credentials increasingly regulate access to posi-tions of social power (Ball, 2003). From a different theoretical perspective,it can be argued that ethnic minority status itself, along with gender, providedistinctive and interlocking vectors of oppression that intersect with socialclass in the experiences of migrant mothers (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995).Minority parents are viewed, particularly by schools, as less involved intheir children’s schooling (Crozier & Davies, 2007). At the same time,schools increasingly require parents to be active participants in their chil-dren’s schooling (Vincent, 2012; Vincent & Maxwell, 2015). A failure ofactive participation can be framed as a ‘lack of will, knowledge or aspira-tion rather than resources’ (Allen, 2011, p. 57).

Other research suggests that many migrant parents are intensely engagedin their children’s education (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005), although botheducational efforts and their returns obviously vary within and across differ-ent groups. Archer and Francis (2006), for example, found that a key strat-egy used by Chinese parents in the UK involved ‘drawing upon andcreating forms of social, cultural and economic capital and providing a habi-tus in which the expectation of mobility forms a central narrative’ (Archer& Francis, 2006, p. 42). Archer and Francis also found that many parentsfeel they lack the cultural capital to support their children’s educationalachievement. Thus, economic capital is deployed to support achievementby, for example, paying for private tutoring and/or additional schooling.

While some migrant families and groups appear to be educational suc-cess stories, the returns on educational investment have been fewer formany others (Platt, 2007). Many migrants are hampered by language bar-riers, limited educational experiences, limited economic resources, differ-ences in child-rearing practices, physically demanding jobs, lack of socialnetworks and cultural differences (Kim, 2009). Such difficulties are ampli-fied in the case of migrant populations that are the product of conflict – asis the case for migrants from Iraq. Iraq’s involvement in two wars (theIran–Iraq war from 1980 to 1989 and the Gulf war in 1991), subsequenteconomic sanctions, and the 2003 US/coalition invasion has had a devastat-ing impact on the population and has been the major cause of flight from

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poverty, dictatorship, threat of war and, lately, civil war. Since 2003, almost5 million Iraqis, around 20% of the population at the time of the invasion,have become refugees with around half seeking refuge formally or illegallyin Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East and later seeking migrationabroad (Manderson & Vasey, 2009).

Focusing on this community in Australia, we adopt Bourdieu’s theoreticalframework in order to provide a multidimensional account of the workings ofsocial class in the process of migration. According to the 2011 census, Iraqimigrants are mainly concentrated in the states of New South Wales andVictoria, where the first Iraqi immigrants settled (Department of Immigrationand Citizenship, 2014). At the time of the 2011 census, there were 48,170Iraqi-born people in Australia, of whom 12,795 lived in Victoria (where thisstudy was undertaken). There are approximately 15,395 Iraqi Muslims livingin Australia. Data on gender show that there are more males (51.6%) thanfemales (48.4%) in the community due to the greater number of malemigrants who originally arrived. Amongst the economically active population(15–65 years), only 35.5% are employed. Of the 12,902 Iraq-born who wereemployed, 41.5% were employed in either a skilled managerial, professionalor trade occupations. However, such figures provide little purchase on theprocesses through which educational and professional histories and currentcircumstances influence engagement with children’s education.

Cultural capital and border-crossing

Bourdieu’s framework is useful for examining the educational engagementof migrant mothers because it identifies how class domination is connectedto forms of cultural and social power (or capital), extending beyond – butalways connected to – the economic realm. Parents’ cultural capital, as itrelates to education, exists in three forms: personal dispositions, attitudesand knowledge gained from educational experience; connections to educa-tion-related objects (e.g. books, computers, academic credentials); and con-nections to educational institutions (e.g. schools, universities, libraries, etc.)(Grenfell & James, 1998).

Cultural capital, in particular, theorises specific gender roles (particularforms of labour undertaken by mothers), and also allows for devaluing orconversion of capital under changed circumstances, such as those occa-sioned by migration. It is mothers who play the preponderant role in thepractical and symbolic work of cultural reproduction (Bourdieu, 1996), andhence it is changes to their status, resources and outlooks, through the pro-cess of migration that are of most relevance to consideration of engagementwith schooling. In The Forms of Capital, Bourdieu (1986) wrote:

It is because the cultural capital that is effectively transmitted within the familyitself depends not only on the quantity of cultural capital, itself accumulated by

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spending time, that the domestic group possess, but also on the usable time(particularly in the form of mother’s free time) available to it. (p. 253)

Cultural capital involves a collection of dispositions that are ‘the productof a process of (conscious and unconscious) cultivation’ (Brubaker, 2004,p. 41). Even though cultural capital is possessed by a person or a family, it isalso a function of the conformity of the educational aspects of the family’shabitus with the practices and values of the educational system with whichthe family interacts (Lee & Bowen, 2006). According to Horvat (2003),when a parent’s habitus is aligned with what is valued by the institution s/heinteracts with, for example a school, and when that habitus assists parents tonavigate that system to obtain their desired goals, it becomes embodiedcultural capital. It is possible to imagine a transformation of this habitus,when confronted with a new educational field in the context of migration,that may either consolidate existing cultural capital, or weaken it andreconfigure the relationship between home and school.

A number of studies have drawn on Bourdieu’s framework to examinethe home–school relationship (Lareau, 1987, 1989, 2003; Lareau & Horvat,1999; Reay, 1998a,b, 1999). Some of these studies point to the usefulnessof the approach for considering intersectionality. Horvat (2003, p. 2) notesthat: ‘the habitus is generated by the social conditions of lived experienceincluding race, ethnicity, geographical location, and gender’. Reay (1998a)found that migrant women who were educated in countries other thanBritain may not be able to mobilise cultural capital with the ease that mid-dle-class British-born mothers did: their experience of attending schooloverseas and recent migration seemed to make it hard for them to accumu-late benefits of cultural capital for their children.

Here we raise some fresh questions about the intergenerational accu-mulation of cultural capital, and the role of previous generations in themobilisation of educational strategies in new settings. We consider bothpedagogical strategies – such as homework guidance – and pragmatic strate-gies – such as time management and management of interactions withteachers.

Methodology

The study was designed to examine the experiences of Muslim Iraqimigrant mothers in relation to their involvement in their children’s educa-tion, in particular the kinds of cultural and social resources which thesemothers bring to their engagement with their children’s education. Becausepart of the habitus Iraqi families bring to their educational efforts aregrounded in religious traditions, we focus here on Muslim mothers,acknowledging the presence of other religious groups in the Iraqi migrantpopulation in Australia.

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A qualitative approach was adopted in order to gain an in-depth under-standing of the processes involved in educational support. The purposivesample was recruited through different sources: (1) the Muslim Iraqicommunity in the northern suburbs of the Australian city of Melbourne; (2)an Arab Iraqi1 community association located in a south-eastern suburb inMelbourne; and, (3) three Iraqi ethnic schools2 located in north-west, eastand south-east areas of Melbourne. In total, twenty-five participants wererecruited, with all but three being interviewed at least twice. Data werecollected through audio-taped, face-to-face, semi-structured interviewsconducted in Arabic, the participants’ as well as the first author’s nativelanguage.

According to the ABS (2006) census, the majority of participants livedin areas with a relatively high population of migrants and low socio‐economic status (Al-Khudairi, 2007). All participants had children enrolledat school, had resided in Australia for a minimum of two years and heldpermanent resident visas or were Australian citizens (see Table 1, below).These mothers came from different parts of Iraq, mainly from the south andcentre. The women and/or their husbands and children were forced out oftheir country by war, civil war, life-threatening situations and intolerable liv-ing conditions. Among these women, only two were in paid employment,although some of them were tertiary educated and had jobs in Iraq. Sevenof them held bachelor degrees, four held diplomas from technical and fur-ther education institutions, three had completed secondary school, and theremaining eleven had at most incomplete secondary school studies.

The analysis of interview transcripts sought to identify consonances anddissonances between family structures and educational efforts on one hand,and the demands of schooling as reflected in children’s performance (Lahire,2011). This led to the establishment of the schema of efforts combined withcapital. The analysis of interview data initially identified three broad formsof engagement (the most common): Home-Based Involvement, Home-SchoolRelations and School Choice. Here, we focus on the first theme. Withinthese themes we examined the cultural and social resources these migrantmothers brought to their engagement with their children’s education. Wefound that the classical relationship of engagement in education and culturalcapital as mutually escalating was different in the case of our participants.Therefore, we developed a set of three analytical categories to identify thedifferences amongst the mothers in relation to their involvement in theirchildren’s schooling. These are: High capital-highly involved (HC-HI), Lowcapital-highly involved (LC-HI), and Low capital-minimal direct involve-ment (LC-MDI).3 Our typology represents a set of tendencies, rather thanclosed categories, and we position our participants along the two continuaof capital and involvement. Mothers in a particular group may share charac-teristics with other mothers in different groups in relation to different formsof support of their children’s schooling.

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For the purposes of our analysis, a high level of cultural capital includesa combination of educational qualifications; high level of English profi-ciency; available time; adequate information about the educational system;

Table 1. Participants’ information.

Participant(Pseudonym)

Mothers’occupation and thehighest level ofeducation

Father’soccupation andthe highest levelof education

Numberof schoolaged

childrenSchool childrenattend

Ahlam UnemployedYear 12 graduate

UnemployedYear 12 graduate

2 Primary(public)

Aseel UnemployedBachelor’s degreein civil engineering

Unemployed.Bachelor’sdegree in civilengineering

2 Primary(public)

Asmaa UnemployedBachelor’s degreein physics

Gynaecologist 1 Primary(private)

Bushra UnemployedYear 10 equivalent

Unemployed.Year 12equivalent

3 Primary andsecondary(private(Islamic) andpublic)

Fatima Unemployed Year 9equivalent

Taxi driver.Bachelor’sdegree in arts

2 Primary andsecondary(public)

Haifa Unemployed Year 8equivalent

Taxi driverYear 12equivalent

3 Primary andsecondary(public)

Halima UnemployedGrade 4 equivalent

Unemployed.Year 9 equivalent

5 Primary andsecondary(public)

Iman InterpreterBachelor‘s degreein arts

Project engineerMaster’s degreein engineering

3 Secondary(private andpublic)

Malak UnemployedBachelor’s degreein electricengineering

Currently doinga PhD inengineering

2 Secondary(public)

Noha UnemployedCurrentlycompletingMaster’s degree inengineering

Medical labassistantBachelor’sdegree in science

1 Primary(public)

Sukaina UnemployedGrade 6 equivalent

Unemployed,Bachelor’sdegree inbusinessadministration

3 Secondary(public)

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and skills that enabled some mothers to familiarise themselves with theAustralian educational system with ease and in a short period of time. Lowcapital describes mothers who may have some forms of cultural capital thathave been devalued in the process of migration (including some educationalqualifications and pedagogical support strategies); and those who even priorto migration had limited resources to draw upon in engaging with formalschooling.

The experience of mothers with high-capital and high-involvement

Mothers with high levels of cultural capital frequently emphasised structuredand proactive involvement in homework and extensive amounts of academicsupplementation. Within this group, some mothers came from middle-classfamilies4 in Iraq; yet, after migration, they experienced downward socialmobility. However, the middle-class strategies they used, in relation to chil-drearing, were often successfully transferred to the new setting. Theiraccounts show how cultural capital can be cultivated and transmitted acrossgenerations, and how early socialisation provides a key reference point forparenting practices even in a completely new national and educationalsetting.

Asmaa, for example, proudly talked about the influence of her father, auniversity lecturer in Arabic, on her reading skills during her childhood.She recalled that:

My father made us [Asmaa and her siblings] read every day, especially duringthe summer holiday. He always said to us: ‘you have to read otherwise yourbrain gets rusty’. He used to take us to the book exhibitions when we wereyoung. So we all loved reading … I do the same with my son.

She indicated that she started reading to her son when he was a toddler,taking him to the local library at least once a week. Asmaa also talkedabout the strategies she uses during reading homework:

I discuss with him some of the important parts of the story to check his read-ing comprehension. I go through the story again and find some new wordsand may ask him about the opposites of these words or if the word is singularor plural, things like that. I ask him sometimes to summarize some stories inhis own words. So it is not only sounding out words … I can see the resultsof this in his excellent academic achievements in English especially readingand writing … He is only eight and his lexile measure is more than 7005 …He is performing well above the expected level in English now. Not onlyEnglish, he is generally performing very well at school.

The strategies that most professional and middle-class families in Iraqfollow, in relation to childrearing, are relatively similar to what Lareau(2003) labels concerted cultivation. The parents in these families planned

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and scheduled countless activities to enhance their children’s development –piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museum, etc. Intensive monitoringand measuring of progress is also part of such efforts. These strategiestranslate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, inacademic achievements and in the future workplace.

But such competencies are not static, they are constantly and conscien-tiously built upon. By her own account, Asmaa has good reading skills anda high level of English competency. However, she felt that she needed tofamiliarise herself with the different culture of reading of her new countryto efficiently support her child’s literacy skills. Thus, she decided to attendthe storytelling programmes at the local library, considering them importantfor her and her son:

They helped me a lot to develop skills as my son’s first teacher … I havelearnt how to read a story to him, learnt songs that we could sing togetherand most importantly they helped me to familiarize myself with the Englishnursery rhymes and the fairy stories which I was not familiar with.

Asmaa’s habitus is the product of early experiences; yet, it has beenaffected by new experiences to ‘reinforce’ ‘its structures’ (Bourdieu &Wacquant, 1992, p. 133). In other words, Asmaa, as a migrant mother,learnt to adjust her habitus in response to the new circumstances by adding‘another layer to those from earlier socialization’ (Reay, 2004, p. 434) to beable to navigate the system to obtain the desired goals for her son.

The case of Iman, similarly shows how particular forms of capital con-tinue to be accumulated post-migration when combined with existing cul-tural capital. Iman’s job as an interpreter has helped her gain insiderinformation about the education systems, particularly while she is doing herjob during parent-teacher interviews at different schools. Access to this formof information becomes a way of accumulating capital and, therefore acts toincrease the consequences of possessing other types of resources to max-imise children’s educational gains.

She stated:

My job helps me a lot to help my kids with their education. Most of thetimes I have jobs at schools, especially on parent-teacher interviews … whenI do my job, I come into contact with parents as well as teachers … I listento teachers’ recommendations to parents and parents’ questions to tea-chers … I would always go back and look at my weak points in relation tomy children’s education and try to fix them … When I look back at my pastexperience with schools, particularly when we first arrived to Australia, Ithink I have learnt more and more about schools and my job definitely hashelped me in this matter.

Even though Iman and two other mothers did not engage directly in thehomework process by teaching their children, in these mothers’ households,

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as indicated by their responses, homework was accomplished under theirsupervision and explicit school-like structure to promote successful perfor-mance. Iman noted: ‘I finish my work at 4 pm so I can be at home with mykids after school’. She further explained:

I set aside time for homework … No TV or phone calls after 5:30 pm. Allmobiles and IPods are on a table in the lounge room during homework time.No internet, only for looking for information related to homework under mysupervision of course … they have to get used to the habit of workinghard … They should know that their education is a priority.

While some mothers of high school children did not teach their childrenat home, other mothers, like Malak, engaged in the homework process byteaching their children in direct and structured ways. Malak brought herprofessional skills as an electrical engineer to the homework table byinvolving herself directly in her 15-year-old daughter’s and 12-year-oldson’s maths and science homework.

I always teach them maths and science. I make sure that they understand thefacts and the concepts before moving forward because maths builds uponconcepts previously learnt otherwise you have to go back and fill the gaps. Ialways encourage them to do as much maths activities as they can at home…I create the material for them or sometimes buy maths work books … I alsohelp with science especially physics. I explain whatever lesson they havedifficulty with, for example my daughter is doing VCE6 physics next year. Sowe spend a lot of time on physics this year preparing for next year. I alsogive her some techniques to read the subject material and understand it in ashort time … Things like that.

According to Malak, her children receive consistently high examinationresults. As in the case of Asmaa, Malak adopted strategies that were suc-cessful in her own schooling in Iraq:

My parents were teachers and gave more importance to education … Theymade me and my siblings finish the books decided for the next year levelbefore the start of the school year. So we had to spend summer holidaysstudying to be fully prepared for the next level. It really worked for us. InIraq, we learnt that learning is achieved through hard work. My husband andI hold the same belief … I usually engage my kids in English and mathsactivities almost every day even during the holidays. I make sure that theyare always ahead of what they are doing at school.

Mothers with access to the type of cultural capital which meets theeducational standards and expectations set by the Australian educationalsystem, further had access to a wider social network of others with thisform of cultural capital. This kind of ‘high volume’ social capital (Ball,2003, p. 83) acts to increase the consequences of possessing other types ofresources to maximise their children’s educational gains (Croll, 2004). Aseel

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for example, gained key advice from a pharmacist friend who is not Iraqi;what Chanderbhan-Forde (2010) terms a ‘knowledgeable outsider’ (p. 148):

My friend suggested this … I trust her because she is well educated and sheknows very well about the school system here. She has older children whoare doing really well at school … Last year her eldest daughter achieved anATAR of 98.814.7 She always advised me to supplement my kids’ educationat home. I’ve learnt a lot from her. I’ve learnt about schools and how the sys-tem works. You know the education system here is different to the Iraqieducation system. … I’ve also learnt how to provide my children with extrawork at home … She told me that I can find a lot of resources on the internetor I can purchase an extra workbook … Her older kids also helped … I foundthat their advices were really helpful.

Noha identifies the importance of sourcing such information frombeyond the Iraqi community:

I have two Indian and Pakistani friends. We do the same course at university.So I would speak to them and ask them what they think because I know thattheir children are doing well at school … You know most Indian kids are highachievers. I think because their parents push them to study and support theireducation. My Indian friend is on top of all the educational activities.

With university qualifications, fluency in English and children doing wellat school, many mothers with the right sort of cultural capital were able toproject themselves beyond difficult material circumstances that ofteninvolved unemployment for both spouses. Most mothers’ responses indi-cated that their understanding of their class position focuses on what theyexpect to achieve in the future, particularly what their children will achieve.These mothers’ situating themselves beyond the system of class does notprevent the stigmatisation of being ‘other’ and does not prevent them fromclassifying people, particularly members of their Iraqi community, but itmay help them to create their own ‘comfort zone’ in which they canSucceed (Lopiz Rodriguez, 2010). These mothers are, therefore, differentlypositioned in relation to the constraints of class structure, as Aseel men-tioned: ‘… We are migrants here, so I don’t really compare myself to whitemothers … I know that there are migrants who have a good education andgood jobs and others who still live on the dole like us [her family]’.

The experiences of mothers with low-capital and high-involvement

Mothers with limited or lack of access to the right sort of cultural capitalalso believed that they should have an active role in their children’s educa-tional work at home and saw education as a top priority. However, theirresponses indicate that their involvement in home-based activities was notas effective as the involvement of those with a broader combination of

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capital (particularly fluency in English). Following and managing theireducational requirements, such as engaging in homework, become difficultdue to language barriers, and other issues such as unfamiliarity with theeducation system, lack or lower level of own educational qualifications andlack of access to high volume social capital and financial resources.

Most mothers’ discussions of strategies for helping their children, par-ticularly primary school children, showed that they help with spelling testsand simple mathematics algorithms more often than other areas like reading,writing, word problems, other areas of mathematics, or helping with schoolprojects or assignments. This possibly mothers’ greater comfort with aca-demic tasks that are less reliant on English.

Ahlam, like most mothers in this study, set high expectations for herchildren’s education and believed that academic success can be achievedthrough hard work. Ahlam could not get a university degree due to the eco-nomic downturn which took place after the Gulf War in 1991 and whichundermined university attendance, particularly among female students. Shereported that she assists her children with their homework; yet, she pointedout the issue of effectiveness in terms of her perceived inability to teach herchildren due to language barriers.

I make sure that they do their homework. I help them sometimes when theactivities are easy for me and do not require English proficiency. I use thedictionary sometimes to be able to help them. I can teach them maths forexample, simple algorithms or time tables but I find it hard when it comes toword problems or other areas where English is required. My son is in gradesix now but he is performing under the expected level in maths and English.

Another area of homework where mothers showed their ability to teachtheir children is spelling, which was mentioned frequently by the majorityof mothers. Ahlam stated that: ‘I have them write the spelling words andI’ll give them a spelling test and then go back over the words, switch themaround.... She also discussed the strategies she used to help her juniorprimary school daughters with their reading homework:

They bring reading books with them almost every day. I listen to them whilethey are reading but I don’t really know the meaning or the pronunciation ofsome of the words. When I try to read to them sometimes, my daughterswould laugh at the way I pronounce some of the words and they go: ‘mama,this is not correct’ … Then I would let them copy the whole book in theirbooks. When I was in primary school, Arabic teachers would ask students tocopy the lessons from reading textbooks two or three times. I am doing thesame with my kids.

Ahlam attempted to rely on her own schooling experience to support herchildren’s education at home. Having their children copy the reading books,

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common among mothers of this group, is a traditional teaching model thathas been used in primary schools in Iraq. It may help children to improvetheir handwriting, but not to understand the content of the story, learn newexpressions or grammatical rules or generally to improve their literacyskills. This type of home learning experience may not be a good match withthe constructivist learning styles expected in Australian schools.

Four mothers in this group were long-term settled migrants and still unableto engage as effectively as the mothers we categorised as ‘high capital’.Fatima explained that she cannot teach her children directly due to insuffi-cient language skills and lack of educational knowledge. Like new-arrivalmothers, she was able to help when some activities did not require Englishproficiency. For instance, she discussed the way she helps her 11-year-olddaughter with her school project:

I can’t help with the project itself but I can help by taking her to the libraryto collect information and purchase the items she needs for the project. I canalso help with printing some pictures and cutting them and pasting them but Idon’t really help that much with the content of the project itself because myEnglish is not that good.

In addition to language barriers, these mothers’ stories demonstrate theyhave inadequate access to information about the education system – in partbecause they are heavily reliant on information from others in their Iraqisocial network and cannot draw on ‘expert outsiders’ in the way that thefirst group can. They struggle, for example, to identify appropriate tutoringand supplementary education programs for their children. Mothers withlower levels of cultural capital who are trying to support their children’seducation encounter a new field (the Australian education system) uponwhich their educational expertise is unable to find effective purchase. Inspite of their efforts, their cultural capital is in the wrong currency and istherefore rendered relatively worthless (Reay, 1998a).

The experiences of mothers with low-capital and low-involvement

Like mothers in the other groups, mothers with low levels of cultural capitaland limited involvement in their children’s education believed that theyshould have a role in their children’s education at home. However, becauseof many restrictions, there was a noticeable degree of detachment and mini-mal direct involvement in the schooling of their children. Most of thesemothers had to drop out of primary school and get married at an early agedue to wars, economic sanctions and family obligations. In addition to alack of resources such as good educational background, familiarity with theeducation system, English proficiency and a lack of access to high volumesocial capital, these mothers’ reports suggest a lack of self-confidence, or ofentitlement in relation to their involvement, since they themselves were not

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very educated. Some did not have high expectations of their children’seducation. This is derived from their own life experiences, particularly theirchildhood encounters with their parents who were not educated themselvesand did not have high expectations of them. The mothers in this group whoattach a greater priority to their children’s education relied on indirect formsof involvement, such as facilitating support in their children’s educationfrom siblings and friends.

Halima indicated that she does not have the capacity to involve herselfin her children’s homework or other activities, not only in Australia but alsoin Iraq.

I don’t help at all … My kids do their work by themselves. I wasn’t used tohelp them with their homework in Iraq because I couldn’t … I can read andwrite Arabic to some extent. I hardly remember what school looked like … Iwent to the village school and then my parents decided not to send me toschool when I was in grade four because my mother had babies and youngkids and I had to help with house chores as well as helping my father on thefarm … if I couldn’t help my kids with their study in Iraq, how do youexpect me to help them here.

Halima’s past life experiences and limited schooling experience informedher current non-involvement in her children’s schooling. Her own experi-ence of dropping out of school at a young age then getting married at 15not only resulted in lack of participation in her children’s education but alsoaffected her perception of the importance of education for children accord-ing to their gender. While most mothers in this study believed that educa-tion is important for their children regardless of their gender, Halima andfew other mothers, not only in this group but also across other groups, per-ceived education as more important for boys than for girls. They believedthat boys will have families and be responsible of the economic status oftheir families so they need to have good jobs, whereas girls will eventuallyget married and have to stay at home and look after their children. Thus,from these mothers’ perspective, girls are expected to learn housekeepingskills and help mothers with the housework and so be good wives andmothers in the future. Even though there has been a growing conflict in Iraqbetween the traditional female role of marrying and bearing children andthe new endeavours of women’s educational attainment and working outsidethe home, Halima and these other mothers still held this traditional belief.Halima indicated that, other than her school-aged children, she has threedaughters who left school and got married at a young age prior to migrationto Australia. She stated that:

We [she and her husband] decided for our[older] daughters to leave schoolwhen they were young … they didn’t like school either … even if they fin-ished high school, we wouldn’t let them go to university. We lived in a vil-lage and it was hard for girls to travel to the city to study … you know from

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where I come, I learnt that any girl should end up going to her husbands’house … I have one daughter who is in year seven now, we might let her fin-ish year twelve before getting married because we don’t live in the villageanymore.

This is, certainly, not to say that all mothers in this group hold the samebelief. Some mothers, in spite of little or no formal educational and/or theirown negative experiences of schooling, highly value education for theirchildren, regardless of gender. Sukaina believed that education is importantfor her daughters as well as her son, if not more so:

I want my daughters to have a good education and get good jobs, beforegetting married. I don’t want them to be like me … My eldest daughter didwell at school and she is studying at the university now.

Sukaina, like Halima, has minimal or no role in her children’s educationsince she does not possess the resources to participate, she wishes: ‘I wish Ican teach them or sometimes even know what they do at school but I can’t,as you know “an empty hand has nothing to give” [Arabic proverb]’.

Even though low involvement in children’s education is common acrossmothers in this group, a whole range of people including older siblings,relatives and friends are often involved. Sukaina mentioned that her eldestdaughter who is currently doing a bachelor degree in science had a lot ofsupport from her youngest uncle who used to live with them at the samehouse: ‘… He came with us from Rafha camp and we lived in the samehouse for ten years. He was young at that time and he could finish hisdegree in engineering and get a good job’. Sukaina has to refer her otherchildren to their eldest sister when help is needed with homework or othereducational matters, since neither Sukaina nor her husband has the requiredresources to support their children’s education at home. In this way, educa-tional knowledge is transmitted by, and passed down from and to, familymembers.

Not only older siblings but cousins and friends are often used for helpwith homework, especially if they had been through the Australian schoolsystem themselves. It was frequently repeated by the mothers that their chil-dren would stay at their uncles’ houses to get help from their cousins. Forexample, Haifa said: ‘… Sometimes, my daughter has to sleep over at heruncle’s house so her older cousins can help her with her studies’. This del-egation of role and responsibility to older siblings and relatives aligns withthe findings of Crozier and Davies (2006) study with South Asian (Pakistani& Bangladeshi) parents in England.

Nevertheless, not all of the mothers have access to support fromextended families and friends. Some mothers, like Bushra, do not havemany Iraqi friends in Australia. She mentioned that she did not have a bigrole in her children’s education when she was in Iraq but her husband did:

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‘I wasn’t used to helping them in Iraq because I myself wasn’t good atschool … I had a bad experience of schooling. My husband used to helpthem’ Also, her children used to get support in their education from theirwell-educated extended family and relatives. But the situation has changedhere: ‘… My husband can’t help the kids with their homework because hisEnglish is not good and he doesn’t know about schools here’.

Conclusion

The experiences of migrant mothers discussed here present a number ofimplications for the theorisation of social class relations. Firstly, while migra-tion sometimes appears to create a tabula rasa, it appears that the influenceof cultural capital bound-up in educational support practices, such as reading,represents a strong intergenerational influence. Absent grandparents becomepresent through the work of mothers, modelled on the childrearing theythemselves received from parents who were teachers or university professors.Secondly, the configuration of family economic relations is often altered bymigration, with highly qualified mothers leaving or remaining outside of paidemployment. This throws them into the social role of mother with greaterforce (notably, unemployed fathers do not generally become more involvedin parenting). Traditionally gendered divisions of labour can thus bereinforced. Participants’ central preoccupation with themselves as mothers,reinforced by the process of migration which has kept most in the homerather than in paid employment, also carried on to their expectations for theirdaughters. For mothers who could be described in social class terms asdisadvantaged prior to migration, many expected their daughters to fulfilroles as mothers, rather than economic providers. Others hoped that theirdaughters would be different to themselves, pursuing university studies andprofessional careers.

It is significant that particular forms of capital reinforce and build uponeach other in mothers’ involvement; while weaknesses in overall volume ofcultural capital can seriously undermine the mobilisation of other forms.Mothers with more limited downward economic mobility were also morelikely to be fluent in English and to have a broader social network that con-tributed to establishing effective support strategies. These are all linked. Pro-fessional status and economic resources favour social contacts with otherprofessionals, as does fluent English. Fluent English favours maintenance ofeconomic status, as well as adaptation of pedagogical support strategies.Mothers with limited English, and more limited social contacts, relied on‘fossilized’ or mechanical support strategies. They were less able to recog-nise or manage the demands made by Australian schools, and also hadfewer opportunities to learn what these were.

These considerations indicate that, rather than the possession of isolatedforms of capital, it is the breadth of its composition, and in particular, its

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mobilisation, that is of key importance in the reconfiguration of social classthrough the migration process. Further, mobilisation remains, in some cases,strongly gendered. Other forces, beyond the scope of the present paper, alsoshape mothers’ educational efforts. In particular, the neoliberal reforms ofeducation systems that make them more segregated, competitive, and opento capital, position minority populations in distinctive ways. Further, formsof racism, such as Islamophobia, shape migrant mothers’ engagement withschooling. This influences warrant further investigation, and perhaps requireother sets of theoretical tools than those that capture the relationshipbetween capital and practice.

Notes1. 97 per cent of the Iraqi population are Muslims. The remaining 3% is made

up of Christians and other religious groups. The Kurds, descendants ofIndo-European tribes who settled in Iraq in the second century B.C., makeup 15–20 per cent of the population. Arabic is the official language, butKurdish, Assyrian and Armenian are also spoken.

2. Ethnic schools provide classes to students from specific communities outsidemainstream school hours. The programme enables students to maintain theirmother tongue or heritage language.

3. The category of high capital-minimal involvement was not represented amongstthe sample of mothers, but could be used to characterise some fathers (whoseinvolvement is beyond the scope of the present paper).

4. Generally the middle class in Iraq prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 isconsidered to be composed of small businesses, merchants, craftsmen, profes-sionals, intellectuals, academics, business executives, state officials and others.It is often described as an economically affluent and intellectual class not onlybecause of its income, but also because of its interest in education, culture andart. However, events in the past decade or so have played a crucial role inweakening Iraq’s middle class.

5. Lexile measures provide a quantification of the degree of difficulty presentedby a piece of text and are used to select reading material that complements stu-dents’ reading abilities. It is expressed as a number followed by the letter ‘L’,e.g. 880L is 880 Lexile (700–900L) is the average range for students over10 years old). (Scholastic Australia website).

6. The Victorian Certificate of Education or VCE is the credential awarded to sec-ondary school students who successfully complete high school level studies(Year 11 and 12 or equivalent) in the Australian state of Victoria.

7. Australian Tertiary Admission Rank (ATAR). The maximum rank attainable is99.95.

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