Presentation - History of education and migrations in a transnational perspective, some theoretical-methodological dialogues

ABSTRACT

Throughout different times and spaces, human beings migrated and in doing so, they experienced the intensity of learning related to language, ways of life and ways of signifying, living and organizing their own existence through different cultures. Migrating as a promise, as a choice or a as a refuge produced learning and, in the confrontation with the other, also new ways of being, understanding and living, or surviving. By targeting the displacements of different human groups, paying attention to the educational processes experienced and their forms, in a transnational perspective, we enrich the understanding of the complexity of the history of (school and non-school) educational processes, and this is the objective of this dossier. We consider that such approach enables us to illuminate underexplored dimensions in the relations between migration and education in Brazil and Latin America, under different methodological and theoretical nuances. Mobilizing analyses that relate History of Education and History of Migration, in a transnational perspective, we perceive the constitution of educational and school strategies, production, circulation and distribution of didactic materials, as well as the constitution of school cultures marked by some specificities. When thinking about the subjects’ itineraries, the ways in which different educational agencies and initiatives, religious or civil, state or associative, we perceive the plurality of the history of education in the set of articles that make up the dossier Migratory Processes and History of Education in a transnational perspective.

Keywords:
History of Education; Migration; Transnational; Difference; Identity processes

RESUMO

Ao longo de diferentes tempos e espaços, os seres humanos migraram e ao fazê-lo vivenciaram a intensidade de aprendizagens vinculadas à língua, aos modos de vida e nas formas de significar, conviver e organizar a própria existência mediante diferentes culturas. Migrar como promessa, escolha ou refúgio produziu aprendizagens e, no confronto com o outro, novos modos de ser, compreender e (sobre)viver. Ao mirar os deslocamentos de diferentes grupos humanos, atentando para os processos educativos vividos e as suas formas, em perspectiva transnacional, enriquecemos a compreensão da complexidade da história dos processos educativos (escolares e não-escolares) e este é o objetivo do presente dossiê. Consideramos que tais investimentos nos tornam capazes de iluminar dimensões pouco exploradas nas relações entre migrações e educação no Brasil e América Latina, sob diferentes matizes metodológicas e teóricas. Mobilizando análises que relacionam História da Educação e a História das Migrações, em perspectiva transnacional, percebemos a constituição de estratégias educativas e escolares, produção, circulação e distribuição de materiais didáticos, bem como a constituição de culturas escolares marcadas por algumas especificidades. Ao pensar nos itinerários dos sujeitos, os modos como distintas agências e iniciativas educacionais - religiosas ou civis, estatais ou associativas -, se percebe a pluralidade da história da educação no conjunto de artigos que compõem o dossiê Processos Migratórios e História da Educação em perspectiva transnacional.

Palavras-chave:
História da Educação; Migrações; Transnacional; Diferença; Processos identitários

RESUMEN

A lo largo de diferentes tiempos y espacios, los seres humanos han migrado y al hacerlo han experimentado la intensidad del aprendizaje vinculado al lenguaje, las formas de vida y las formas de significar, de convivir y de organizar la propia existencia a través de diferentes culturas. La migración como promesa, elección o refugio ha producido aprendizaje y, en la confrontación con el otro, nuevas formas de ser, entender y (sobre)vivir. Al enfocar los desplazamientos de los diferentes grupos humanos, prestando atención a los procesos educativos experimentados y sus formas, en una perspectiva transnacional, enriquecemos la comprensión de la complejidad de la historia de los procesos educativos (escolares y no escolares) y este es el objetivo de este dossier. Consideramos que tales aproximaciones nos hacen capaces de iluminar dimensiones poco exploradas en las relaciones entre migración y educación en Brasil y América Latina, bajo diferentes matices metodológicos y teóricos. Movilizando análisis que relacionan Historia de la Educación e Historia de la Migración, en una perspectiva transnacional, percibimos la constitución de estrategias educativas y escolares, producción, circulación y distribución de materiales didácticos, así como la constitución de culturas escolares marcadas por algunas especificidades. Al pensar en los itinerarios de los sujetos, las formas en que los diferentes organismos e iniciativas educativas, religiosas o civiles, estatales o asociativas, percibimos la pluralidad de la historia de la educación en el conjunto de artículos que conforman el dossier Los Procesos Migratorios e la Historia de la Educación en una perspectiva transnacional.

Palabras clave:
Historia de la Educación; Migración; Transnacional; Diferencia; Procesos de identidad

RIASSUNTO

Nel corso di differenti tempi e spazi, gli esseri umani hanno migrato e nel farlo hanno vissuto l’intensità dell’apprendimento vincolato al linguaggio, ai modi di vita e alle forme di dare significato, convivere e organizzare la propria esistenza attraverso le differenti culture. Migrare come promessa, scelta o rifugio ha prodotto apprendimenti e, nel confronto con l’altro, nuovi modi di essere, comprendere e sopravvivere. Nel mettere a fuoco i dislocamenti di differenti gruppi umani, prestando attenzione ai processi educativi vissuti e alle loro forme, in prospettiva transnazionale, arricchiamo la comprensione della complessità storica dei processi educativi (scolastici ed extrascolastici) e questo è l’obiettivo del presente numero monografico. Consideriamo che tali investimenti diventano utili per illuminare dimensioni poco esplorate nelle relazioni tra migrazioni ed educazione in Brasile e in America Latina, sotto differenti approcci teorici e metodologici. Promuovendo analisi che mettono in relazione la Storia delle Migrazioni e la Storia dell’Educazione , secondo la prospettiva transnazionale, cogliamo lo sviluppo di strategie educative e scolastiche, di produzione, circolazione e distribuzione di materiali didattici, così come della costituzione di culture scolastiche connotate da alcune specificità. La riflessione sugli itinerari dei diversi soggetti, sui modi attraverso cui operarono distinte agenzie e iniziative educative -religiose o civili, statali o associative-, si comprende la pluralità della storia dell’educazione nell’insieme degli articoli che compongono il dossiê Processos Migratórios e História da Educação em perspectiva transnacional.

Parole chiave:
Storia dell’Educazione; Migrazioni; Transnazionalità; Differenza; Processi di identità

Introduction

“In History, everything begins with the gesture of separating, of gathering, of transforming into “documents” certain objects distributed in another way” (CERTEAU, 2002, p. 81).

The opening epigraph written by Certeau (2002) inspired the writing of this text that aims to present the dossier Migratory Processes and History of Education in Transnational Perspective. The inspiration brings us the possibility to reflect on the dimensions between the History of Migrations and the History of Education with the emergence of new and differentiated investigative objects, distinct approaches to the subject of the History of Education, as well as the possibility of interdisciplinary dialogues that illuminate analyses with rigorous theoretical and methodological references. The complexity of human processes that involve migratory processes related to Education is relevant in countries like Brazil, which is widely marked in its history with migrations. We recognize that throughout different times and spaces, human beings have migrated and, in doing so, have experienced the intensity of learning linked to language, ways of life, and ways of meaning, living together, and organizing their own existence through different cultures. Migrating as a promise, choice, or refuge has produced learning and, in the confrontation with the other, new ways of being, understanding, and living.

In this way, the present dossier gathers articles that result from broader investigations that aim at the displacements of different human groups, paying attention to the educational processes experienced and their forms in a transnational perspective, as they investigate the complexity of the history of educational, formative, school processes and school cultures capable of illuminating dimensions generally unexplored in the relations between migrations and education in Brazil and Latin America. They are texts that produce a history that moves in different magnitudes of scale to verify the presence of transnational circulation of ideas, movements, pedagogical and schooling experiences, material cultures and practices that produce connotations of multiple forms of migrant education overseas.

We cannot fail to consider that, as noted by Italian historian Emilio Franzina, historical research on international migrations occupies a prominent place in the production of literary, film, and music essays (FRANZINA, 2015; 2022). However, research seems less precise when the angle of investigation moves to issues linking migration and educational processes. Even in this aspect, however, we can see an interesting increase in contributions in the last decade, which mobilized us to organize the present dossier, along with the desire to sensitize other researchers to the set of documents and possibilities of objects, of possible approaches that will complexify what we know about the history of education intertwined with that of migratory processes.

The signs of the revival of interest of historians of education in educational processes in emigration/immigration contexts are different and their roots are founded in the framework of the broader renewal that has characterized the discipline in recent decades, increasingly oriented towards a social and cultural History of education. For research in the History of Education, the constitution of a documentary corpus is fundamental. We may then ask: Which documents have we chosen for the research we develop? How do we organize and interrogate these documents with our research questions? We think, together with Certeau (2002), that “doing History” is a practice and, for understanding it this way, we consider that the investigations gain distinct contours when historians with peculiar and, at the same time, distinct backgrounds and traditions, elect the same object of analysis, the education of immigrants and descendants in a transnational perspective.

The invitation to look beyond national borders does not mean abandoning national or even local dimensions and dynamics of analysis, but rather placing the nation and the social phenomena that characterized them, such as migration and education, in a broader framework of interconnections. In the case of the History of Education, as Lawn (2014) has indicated, there is difficulty in overcoming this national view, as it is linked to the condition of ‘methodological nationalism’ that has accompanied the work of social science researchers. To consider school and non-school education experienced by subjects who migrated from different countries and settled, especially in Brazil and Latin America, scrutinizing human movements in generational, gender, and social class sections, associated with the ethno-racial one, becomes powerful. In the case of the History of Brazilian Education, there are several singularities, such as schools created and maintained by immigrant groups like Italians, Germans, Japanese, and Polish, among others. In these situations, the educational processes are marked by ethnic nuances, which have repercussions on identities, because these subjects carry with them, over there and over here, their lived experiences. Their identity processes are forged between the experiences and ways of thinking and living from one country to another. They become others.

In researching the history of education, with attention to immigrant and descendant schools, we consider that emigrants and immigrants in foreign lands are constituted by contacts, by the appropriation of new cultures and practices. Their identity processes are forged among experiences and ways of thinking and living from one country to another. They do not remain as they left. They become others. Hybrid subjects in their identity processes, who recreate traditions, adapting and reinventing ways of living, amidst power games. And investigating the complexity of this educational and cultural process requires historians to pay attention to the documentary diversity and beyond what has been preserved within the national borders (LUCHESE et al., 2021).

We understand that when migrating, between the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, one of the remarkable times of transoceanic migrations, for example, those subjects promoted cultural transfers (Espagne, 2017), because when they contacted other social groups they needed to negotiate meanings, ways of life, and ways of thinking. In the historiographical deepening, we think about the set of documentary corpus mobilized to deepen the historical narrative about this object. The set of articles present in the dossier Migratory processes and history of education in a transnational perspective is based on the movement of deepening and signaling the breadth and diversity of investigative possibilities.

Stories of educational processes and migrations, pointing out some theoretical and methodological possibilities

We know that the immigrant schools were organized due to the absence of a public school system in Brazil, that is, as a response to a need of the migrants’ families, on the one hand. On the other hand, as a result - in many cases - of the external policies of some countries, or even of religious institutions, to support the emigrants. The organizational forms of these schools have varied in time and space, and pursuing the evidence that has been preserved to understand these histories is possible considering a diversified documental base consisting of documents preserved in various collections. It is not too much to remember with Chartier that (2012, p. 168) “the fundamental point is to find, to construct a historical object, if possible one that has not yet been really analyzed or, if it has been analyzed in a different way, that is, to mobilize resources, starting with the sources and approaches that allow explaining it”.

In delimiting objects that take into consideration the relationships between migration and the history of education, it is important to consider the reflection proposed by Burke (2017, p. 18):

Transplanting from one’s homeland to what might be called a “welcoming land” involves the trauma of displacement and career disruption, feelings of insecurity, isolation, and nostalgia, as well as practical problems such as unemployment, poverty, difficulties with the foreign language, conflicts with other exiles and with some of the local people (for fear and hatred against immigrants is nothing new) [...]. The shock of exile also includes the loss of the former individual identity.

We believe that documents can be thought of as records of human cultural practices over time and that “they translate into acts, the plural ways in which men give meaning to the world that is theirs” (CHARTIER, 2004, p. 18). Thus, in the diversity of document typologies, we understand that “objects and images, writings and voices, all the testimonies that transmit the legacy of the past of education are semiotic materials, which emit signs and symbologies, building solidarity between practitioners of the trade and among the generations of citizens who used them” (ESCOLANO BENITO, 2017, p. 275-276).

According to Hartog (2017, p. 15), humans are the ones who contribute to the making of “a history that certainly escapes him, but which no less needs his help to accomplish. And, deep down, the more he knows this, the better he does it, because he is thus duly warned of his limits and his ignorance.” In this sense, we understand the many limits that exist, regardless of the efforts invoked in the historical-educational research we conducted, despite the potentialities and numerous analytical possibilities. When it comes to thinking about the relationship between migrations and education, as Demartini (2004, p. 221) puts it, “the meanings attributed to school and to school knowledge by the several groups that came to compose the Brazilian society were not always the same and also varied throughout history”. Thus, the web of meanings of the migratory experience in interface with education may have been quite distinct.

We consider that contacts, cultural exchanges, and coexistence with other ethno-cultural groups have produced dynamics and appropriations of new cultures and practices. Finally, we think that the encounter of the history of education with the history of migration processes opens new opportunities in the context of historical-educational research, allowing us to elaborate expanded notions of the unique processes of education and, also, of schooling. We can ask: which school forms/typologies emerged and with which cultures? Did the immigrant schools have ethnic marks? Which ones? How were they produced? What relations did they establish with national cultures? And with the country of origin - were there interlocutions? How did school and non-school activities foster the maintenance of ties with the Motherland? And with the adopted homeland? What other educational agencies? Also with markers of ethnic belonging? When thinking about migratory experiences and the deep resonances produced in individuals, how can we think about the educational dimension? In previous studies already produced by the organizers of the present dossier, in dialogue between Brazil and Italy, we have mobilized important interlocutions on the subject that demand further studies, new analyses and investigative possibilities and that we wish to deepen and extend, thinking of other ethnic groups and going beyond national boundaries.

There are countless sources that the historian of education can mobilize to seek the evidence, locate the indications that are significant to them in their investigation, as well as the places where they access them (BARAUSSE, 2022). We can mention, considering the documental set that we have mobilized and that we share to think about the history of education and migrations:

• a) Archival documents preserved in national, state or municipal public spaces where we found minute books, reports from consuls, school inspectors, political authorities, various correspondences. Some of them also preserve Minute Books of Associations, especially those of Mutual Help. There are also the libraries with newspapers, magazines and/or educational printed materials that dealt with or reported on themes related to research. Such documents, as shown in some of the articles mobilized in the articles of the present dossier, can be, at the same time, source and object of investigation.

• b) Documents from collections kept in school institutions or archived in public spaces in which we find documents such as school notebooks, teachers’ diaries, textbooks, photographs, correspondence, school records in general.

• c) Memory Banks with oral history collections or conducting interviews are another powerful avenue for research.

• d) We cannot fail to consider the important family or personal collections with diaries, notebooks, letters, photographs, schoolbooks, objects...

• e) There are also documents such as the Book of Records, letters, reports, publications, and other documents linked to religious collections, such as those kept in parishes by the Catholic Church and/or by Congregations. Also all the documental set produced and filed in different religious institutions.

• f) Official documents produced by governments. In the specific case of Italian, we can mention the statistical sources presented in the Yearbooks of Italian schools abroad, which are a possibility to glimpse statistical maps of schooling among these communities. Or the official bulletins published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are a wealth of documentation for the History of Education. Still, for other ethnic groups, the search for documents sent to the country of departure and which include correspondence, consultation reports and telegrams, for example.

• g) Documents produced by travelers such as journalists, intellectuals, politicians, and others from different countries who traveled through the host country, such as Brazil, and that in their reports, published or not, allow us to glimpse many possibilities for thinking about education.

The crossing and use of documental sources of different typologies has propitiated the highlighting of the construction process of a collective memory. The addition of the contributions of biographies, autobiographies, and memorialistic narratives represents enrichment for the narrative of the history of education intersected with migratory processes. This type of ‘self-history’ documents, as Vinão Frago (2005) mentioned a few years ago, allows the historian to get closer to the daily representations lived and recorded by different subjects. Certainly, the investigative deepening and the use of a richer documentary repertoire, allows us to perceive the diversity of ways of organizing the school among emigrant and immigrant groups, as well as the coexistence of similar, but not necessarily equal proposals of schooling, which is also possible to perceive in the set of articles present in the dossier.

The article that opens the dossier, authored by Michela D’ Alessio is entitled The “Dante” for the “perennial Italianness” of emigrants abroad. The work of the “Book Commission” from the first decade of the 20th century until the rise of fascism. Mobilizing diverse documentary sources the Dante is put in evidence, analyzing the diffusion of free books for Italian emigrants and the actions related to the opening and maintenance of schools abroad, as well as the desire to spread the Italian language and culture, a quest to avoid the ‘denationalization’ of expatriates. The article focuses on the transnational circulation of Italian books considered an instrument for the protection and integration of emigrants from the Italian peninsula, as well as on the Dante Alighieri association and its relations with other Italian institutions and governmental bodies, with publishing houses and other associations, it also points out the organization of libraries on board steamships, the distribution of thousands of books in different countries to emigrants, all strategies for maintaining ties with the Motherland, Italy.

Xosé Manuel Malheiro-Gutiérrez writes Caciques and repression facing the secular model of the schools founded from America by the Galician emigration (1923-1936). In the wake of mass migrations at the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th, Xosé maps the migration of Galician men and women who moved to regions of America, situating the migratory movement, characterizing it and, in particular, focusing on the work of instructional societies, members of the Federation of Galician, Agricultural and Cultural Societies of Buenos Aires (Argentina). It analyzes the repression that the promoters of schooling projects, as well as teachers, students and their families were victims of. In the context of Argentina, but in a transnational dialogue with Italy, the article “L’Educatore”: an educational weekly between didactics, politics and institutional strategies of Italian associationism in Buenos Aires (1880) written by Paula Alejandra Serrao and Paolo Bianchini analyzes a periodical published in the year 1880 in Buenos Aires. A periodical that came to light from the work of two Italian professors Pietro Bertazzoni and Lorenzo Fazio. The analysis of the teachers’ strategies in relation to bilingualism, the curriculum and even the republican and secular position expressed in the publications of the nine investigated editions, allows us to think about the connections between education in two contexts, that of Italy and that of Argentina between the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The fourth article, by Cláudia Panizzolo, is entitled Piccolo Mondo by Fanny Romagnoli and Silvia Albertoni: a study on production, circulation, materiality and content (1901-1938). The author starts from the analysis of two Italian authors, Fanny Romagnoli and Silvia Albertoni, seeking to understand the production and circulation of Piccolo Mondo reading books, approved to be adopted in elementary schools in the Peninsula and Italian schools in Brazil in the early twentieth century. Panizzolo analyzes in detail the work entitled Sillabario, operating with the transnational category when thinking about the circulation of works between Italy and Brazil. And as the author mentions, the works of Piccolo Mondo constituted a project of a ‘new man’, an integral citizen of a State in search of modernity.

The Castillo Method on the pages of the “Revista da Instrução Pública para Portugal e Brasil” (1857-1858) written by Cesar Castro and Carlota Boto analyzes the referred method in the Magazine of Instruction for Portugal and Brazil, which was published between 1858 and 1859 with the aim of strengthening pedagogical relations between the two countries. Considering the Magazine of Instruction as an object and source, its materiality was scrutinized, highlighting the production and circulation of educational discourses, especially with correspondence between the editors, António Feliciano de Castilho and Luiz Felipe Leite, with Brazilian teachers and published in the Magazine. Dealing with a magazine as well, Patrícia Weiduschadt and Elias Krüger Albrecht are authors of the article Circulation and strategies of the magazine “The Young Lutheran”: transnational perspective and crossed stories (1950-1970). “The Young Lutheran” (1929-1970) was a youth periodical produced by the Missouri Synod, currently the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Brazil, to educate and guide the social and religious life of its young people. This journal was responsible for mediating the interlocution and connections of different Lutheran youth realities, as strategies were disseminated in its pages: reading plans, circle of friends, youth trips, in short, possible connections between young people from different parts of the world. The Lutheran institution of the Missouri Synod, through exchanges and adopted practices, like the analyzed Magazine, sought to homogenize the cultural, educational and moral formation of youth unions, but these practices were received and adapted according to the local context.

The Italian school in Pelotas during the 1920s and 1930s: between local, national and international contexts is the title of the article written by Renata de Castro Brião that investigates the Italian school in Pelotas in the 1920s and 1930s, mobilizing a diverse set of documents like those Italian consulars, reports from commissions in charge of restructuring the Italian school abroad, reports from the Italian society of Pelotas and from municipal intendants in Pelotas. The author identifies that the Italian school in Pelotas was, in the time period of the analysis, influenced by the fascist Italian policies of the Mussolini government and, on the other hand, by the municipal context of the Pelotas government with the opening of new public schools, as well as by the Brazilian context with the nationalist policies of the government of Getúlio Vargas. This institution, as well as the other ethnic schools in the gaucho context, were closed by decree in 1938.

In the dialogue with schools with ethnic marks, the article Immigrant teaching: male and female teachers in the Slavic and Italian colonies in Paraná (1878-1938) by researchers Elaine Falcade Maschio and Valquiria Elita Renk deals with the different profiles of teachers in Italian ethnic schools and Slavs in Paraná, between the end of the 19th century and 1938, when, as mentioned, the ethnic schools were closed. The authors investigate who the professors were and what were the perspectives of the Governments and the Church in relation to their professional performance, what were the tensions established in the profession of teaching and the incorporation of legal precepts. The authors conclude that the teaching profiles were different, showing that from members elected by the community without pedagogical training to those with any professional training such as priests, nuns and intellectuals held teaching positions. They identified that during the 1920s, the government of Paraná intensified the process of nationalization of children through the school, which generated mobilization of ethnic school associations that sought to face state actions and qualify teachers.

The researchers Manuela Ciconetto Bernardi and Eliana Rela present a microhistorical perspective in the article Domenico Caon and Love for the Work “Divine Comedy”. In the text, they present a narrative of the life of Domenico Caon, born in 1876 in the province of Padua, Italy and emigrated to Brazil at a young age, with a family. Settled where the current municipality of Nova Roma do Sul/RS is located today, Caon experienced reading practices throughout his life, in particular, the work “Divine Comedy”. The authors conclude that the reading practices developed by social actors, as well as those of Domenico, open up investigative possibilities and examine the singularities that involve the historical processes of literacy outside the school environment.

“Lord, if I am the chosen one, open the way”: Willie Ann Bowman and the transnational Methodist circulation (1895-1906), article by Vitor Queiroz Santos and Sérgio César da Fonseca that gives some biographical traits of Willie Ann Bowman, a linked missionary to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which operated in Brazil between 1895 and 1906, investigates the transnational circulation of people, knowledge and practices made possible by the North American Protestant denomination. The authors base their analysis on official documents produced by the Church and focus on female and transnational protagonism, between the United States and Brazil.

Conclusion

In the research program we have built, it is important to recognize that many documents remain unpublished and that the crossings of documents that consider - not just the diversity of typologies, but beyond them - can also be innovative, question them, scrutinize evidence, oppose discourses. As Luchese stated,

In document analysis, I consider it relevant to ask ourselves: What is the social, cultural, economic and political context in which this document was produced? Who wrote it? From what social place? Who did you write for? Who were your interlocutors? What opinions, information and speeches are placed? What discursive cues are reinforced? In crossing the documents, perceive the recurrences, the evidence as ways of thinking about education and the multiple socio-political-economic relations that produce the discourses (LUCHESE, 2014, p. 151).

In this way, in the construction of the methodological contours of the research practice, the documents are not given a priori, but in the doing they are woven, constituted and thought. And as Rogers (2014) suggests, when dealing with French female congregations in a transnational approach, it is in the dialogue between historians from different communities and educational paths that we can build powerful narratives to think about objects of investigation that go beyond national borders. It is necessary to confront narratives with local records, with the documentary diversity produced by those who lived, in different roles, schooling and other educational processes. It is not a question of establishing comparisons, but of confronting documents, crossing them and showing the different representations that circulated about the educational process [and project] between emigrants and immigrants in the different welcoming contexts.

From Seigel’s (2005) perspective, comparison imposes limits, so it is necessary to understand the need to overcome the boundaries of the Nation-State in order to think about relationships, connections and other spatialities-temporalities in the game of historical analysis, which is a potential way to the object of investigation we are working on. A connected history, surpassing national borders. A story that thinks about the circulation of people in migratory processes, who carry educational models with them and who, in contacts with other social groups, with other cultural contexts, negotiate, appropriate and tension ways of being and living. We understand that when emigrants leave their homeland and carry speeches, many of them school experiences that demarcate ways of thinking about curriculum, organization of time and school space, as well as memories of pedagogical practices lived as students or even, in some cases, also as teachers. The complexity of international cultural contacts to be scrutinized by researchers requires the expansion of our exchanges as researchers. Thus, considering the context in which cultural exchanges are constituted is fundamental - from which territorialities did the emigrants leave and where did they go, in the case of Brazil, if they went to urban or rural areas, to colonize and become owners of a small land plot or to work in partnership on coffee farms... To the cities or to the countryside. Differences that markedly distinguish itineraries. Issues of social class, generation, gender and ethnic groups also need to be considered when analyzing the documents mobilized in the research.

A transnational history of the school between emigrants and immigrants suggests thinking about connections, interactions, the use of more complex and in-depth interpretative keys, an interpretative exercise that produces a historical narrative that considers, in addition to documentary diversity, the accumulation of experience that each researcher¹ has, based on their specificities and cultural baggage. For Gruzinski (2001, p. 178) “the process of globalization is ineluctably changing the frameworks of our thinking and, therefore, our ways of revisiting the past”, thus, the dialogue between historians of education from different communities enhances perspectives and narratives that, when connected, can narrate the historical process, taking Hartog’s warning into their practice.

The work of identifying regularities, apprehending continuities or updating cracks, ruptures, of emphasizing, according to the moments, a history that is more attentive to series and continuities or more interested in ruptures and discontinuities; to favor socioeconomic models or the biographical approach; and of posing and re-posing, again and again, the question of change in history (HARTOG, 2017, p. 24).

There are many ruptures, gaps, the continuous and the discontinuous that we can identify when scrutinizing our investigative object from the typological diversity of documents that we indicated earlier, but also in ways of reading and interpreting them. Thus, the analysis of the documents is enriched and complexified when the interpretation considers the experiences accumulated by the researchers. That is, when operating with the historical document, it becomes clear, as a methodological procedure, that “of the same set of texts, in fact, several readings can be proposed and none of them can intend to exhaust the totality of its possible understandings” (CHARTIER, 2004, p. 381) after all, we think of history as an “unfolded scripture that has, then, the triple task of summoning the past, which is no longer in a discourse in the present; show the competences of the historian, owner of the sources; and convince the reader” (CHARTIER, 2009a, p. 15).

As historians of education, armed with our theoretical and methodological training, we seek to construct a set of documents, with the necessary rigor for the construction of a plausible and possible interpretative version, with provisional certainties and that establish relationships of verisimilitude, to effectively contribute to narrating in the present, the history of schools with ethnic marks.

REFERÊNCIAS

• BARAUSSE, Alberto. Processi di scolarizzazione etnica italiana nei contesti migratori in Brasile. Un primo bilancio storiografico tra dimensione locale e transnazionale della ricerca. In: RADUNZ, Roberto. HERÉDIA, Vânia Beatriz Merlotti (Org.). Imigração e emigração. Balanço historiográfico no sul do Brasil. Caxias do Sul: EDUCS, 2022. p. 133-184.
• BURKE, Peter. Perdas e ganhos. Exilados e expatriados na história do conhecimento na Europa e nas Américas, 1500 - 2000. São Paulo: Ed. UNESP, 2017.
• CERTEAU, Michel de. A escrita da História. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2002.
• CHARTIER, Roger. A história ou a leitura do tempo. Tradução de Cristina Antunes. Belo Horizonte: Autêntica, 2009a.
• CHARTIER, Roger. Prefácio. In: CHARTIER, Roger (Org.). Práticas da leitura. 4. ed. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade, 2009b.
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• 1
  Result of a research funded by CNPq and FAPERGS

• 1
  It is worth to resume, in this case what Chartier stated “[...] since each reader, from his own references, individual and social, historical or existential, gives a more or less singular sense, more or less shared, to the texts of which he appropriates.” (CHARTIER, 2009b, p. 20).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  25 Sept 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  04 May 2023
• Accepted
  16 May 2023