Early Childhood Education and Migration

an analysis of School Census Enrollments in the State of São Paulo   

Abstract

Over the last few decades we have observed expressive international migratory flows to Brazil. The state of São Paulo concentrate the largest migratory contingent. Migration’s theme has been mostly discussed from the adult’s flow point of view. In this sense we argue that there are migration projects in which children participate, conceiving them as social actors and subjects of rights. Therefore, the present article aims at profiling them. To do so, we used the quantitative method to analyze variables that make up the microdata of the 2020 School Census enrollment (INEP, 2020) of migrant children aged 0 to 6 years enrolled in Early Childhood Education in the state of São Paulo. The following variables were used: country of origin, gender, color/race, grade level, administrative dependency, and category of private school, as well as, in the case of private institutions, the presence or absence of agreements with the public educational system. From the analyses we can see that the profile of migrant children enrolled in early childhood education in the state of São Paulo is marked by racial and gender issues, in addition to the precariousness imposed on the service provided to the 0-to-3-year age group. We were able to conclude that this migration flow is related to the adult flow, but there are specificities, such as gender parity among children, which differs from the male predominance of the adult flow. The article identifies the importance of analyzing the singularities of children on this subject.