No space for being Indigenous in the educational institutions: The everyday experiences of migrant Indigenous children from Oaxaca, Mexico

Development practitioners have been looking to a different way of development that allow other knowledges and epistemologies to be part of the main theories in development studies. Indigenous researchers and practitioners have also been more involved in how to re-make development. This research is focused on an Indigenous children perspective and their understanding of the educational institutions in Oaxaca, Mexico. First this paper contributes to change the perspective that adults in general have about the agency of Indigenous children, with this research under a child centered methodology, were children between 5 to 15 years old shared the main findings. This qualitative research used also, postcolonialism as a way to critique childhood studies, and a child’s rights approach and to understand that Indigenous children cannot be homogenized. They have their own needs; different contexts and they need different solutions. The work with 44 Indigenous children from Oaxaca, allows this research to present forms where children can and want express their opinions and suggestions about spaces that affect them directly, in this case was the way schools in Oaxaca works for them. To improve and to create more inclusive and respectful educational institutions it is necessary that Indigenous children share their own thoughts, the limitations that they see and the changes that are relevant for them. Social inclusion of Indigenous children needs to start creating spaces where these children are able to be agents of change instead of restricting them from the decision-making process.