Book Nook - Now We Are Here: Family Migration, Children's Education, and Dreams for a Better Life

Harvard Professor Gabrielle Oliveira is an expert on immigration and education whose research follows how children learn under the constant threat of deportation.

Her book, NOW WE ARE HERE: Family Migration, Children's Education, and Dreams for a Better Life (Stanford University Press, November 2025), draws on three years spent interviewing sixteen families' stories to show why education is what drives so many Latin American families to risk the journey to the U.S. in the first place—and what happens when the country that hope depends on turns hostile.

NOW WE ARE HERE follows 16 Latin American families who have immigrated to the US over the past decade in pursuit of better education for their children and with it, the promise of a better future. On their long journeys they often faced physical danger and family separation. Once in the US, their challenges continued: endeavoring to assimilate amid public outcry against immigration and schools being unable or unwilling to support them. The question Was it worth it? echoed frequently for the parents. Is there a general consensus on the answer?

Across interviews, parents consistently shared that migrating to the United States—despite the hardships—was ultimately worth the sacrifice. They see this country as offering the hope of greater safety, opportunity, and stability for their children. Yet, their hopes are often shadowed by the vulnerability of their immigration status and the uncertainty of long-term security. What makes the difference, they say, are schools: When their children are learning, supported, and safe in classrooms, parents feel affirmed in their decision. In the final chapter of the book, I return to many of the children I met years ago. Today, they are high school graduates, launching careers, and building lives—evidence that despite all odds, their families’ dreams are beginning to take shape.

Today there’s a dramatic increase in the detention of undocumented immigrants and of the brutality of these detainings. What do they mean for the people you spoke to? How have their lives changed recently?

Detention changes parents and families. For the years that have passed between the time of detention and release to now, children and parents continue to bring up those moments as markers of a period of uncertainty and trauma. They discussed feeling treated as criminals when their “crime” was to pursue a better life. Parents consider the risks they have exposed their children to and how detention and separation made them even more dedicated to their futures. Recently, families are concerned and worried about what can happen to them in this new climate. However, as they have framed their lives as going through multiple disruptions, they will weather this storm as well.

What happens to immigrant children in US schools? Where do they succeed, and what should teachers know when educating recently-arrived students? Beyond being the moral thing to do, what is gained by giving them as strong an education as possible?

Immigrant children succeed in school when they are given opportunities to keep their origins, speak their language, and talk about what happened to them–and to learn a new language, different subjects, and from different peers. These children are now part of American society and will most likely grow up in this country. We all gain when immigrant children are provided an opportunity to learn so they can be productive community members of this country. The U.S. has always cultivated talent; that should be the focus of schools–to cultivate talent and raise responsible, kind, curious humans that will work on solutions to the world’s most difficult problems. Educating immigrant children is not just the moral thing to do, it is a necessity for the U.S. to stay alive as a powerful, diverse country.