Articles | Postado em: 13 August, 2025
Primary Education in the context of migrations
By Jádia Naftali Câmara, PhD in Education, researcher at the University of Bristol, England, and Global Representative for the SETA Project
Close to twelve thousand migrants, a large portion of them children and indigenous people, arrive in Brazil monthly through the cities of Pacaraima and Boa Vista, Roraima, according to Operação Acolhida (Operation Welcome), which serves this community at the border with Venezuela. Migrant children and adolescent have a guaranteed right to education in Brazil. Law CNE/CEB nº 1, enacted on November 13, 2020, provides the right to enroll migrant children and adolescent, refugees, stateless people, and asylum seekers into the Brazilian public education system. Considering that access to education is fundamental for accessing other rights, my research addresses how migrant children and adolescent, including refugees, have experienced education in the northern region of Brazil and the implementation and adaptation of this resolution in schools in the Amazon region: the states of Roraima, Pará, and Tocantins.
Although the right to education is protected by the Law CNE/CEB nº 1 of 2020, there still is no serious discussion regarding the realities and challenges faced in the nexus of primary education and migrations, particularly concerning the context of the country’s northern region. The resolution was crucial in facilitating access to education by guaranteeing the enrollment of children and adolescents in mandatory primary education in Brazilian schools and establishing that enrollment cannot be hindered due to a lack of documentation. Nonetheless, there are reports that some schools still refuse student enrollment if the families do not show valid documentation. In the Amazon, the administrator of a school reported that they receive students whose enrollments had been rejected in other public institutions because they lacked documents. Despite the resolution, child migrants, including refugees, face inequalities in accessing education, learning, staying in school, and surviving due to factors such as poverty, lack of adequate housing, unemployment for the heads of the household, emotional abandonment (a type of parental negligence that fails to provide a nurturing environment for the child), and child labor.
Barriers to accessing education
Kinan*, a Venezuelan child in primary education, told me: “Miss, I’m tired.” He and his mother are homeless, like many other Venezuelan families. It is common to observe migrant Venezuelan families cooking on wood-fired ovens and open fires in the streets of Pacaraima and Boa Vista. Thousands of people sleep in shelters supported by Operacão Acolhida, UNHCR, and other partners. However, I noticed that during the day, the shelters are closed and the people are left homeless in the streets. In Boa Vista, the administrator of a school where almost 50% of the students are immigrants reported a family had recently arrived from Venezuela. During enrollment, they asked for their address, and the father said they stayed on the sidewalk in front of a house. He described the house and gave some reference points, in case the administrator needed to find them. According to the administrator, the father added that if someone from the house expelled them during the day, they would find “a tree to stay under”. In this school alone, there are at least six families experiencing homelessness.
At the age of nine, a Venezuelan child was enrolled for the first time in an educational institution in November of 2023. The child, who was experiencing homelessness under a bridge with the mother, had never been taught how to read and had never been to school in any country. Migrant children experiencing homelessness, and even those who sleep in shelters, have difficulty accessing bathrooms and clean clothes every day. These instabilities create barriers that hamper access to education. Kinan does not get enough sleep at night and spends the day with his mother, asking for help and working at the stop lights in the downtown area of the city where they live. Therefore, despite studying at night, Kinan arrives at school very tired, and he usually sleeps during class. He is not the only one. A teacher in Boa Vista explained that she and other teachers allow students to rest if they sleep at the beginning of class because they know that some children are not able to get enough rest at night due to the precarity of their living conditions.
Families that live in extreme poverty have difficulty in prioritizing education because they need to do what they can to survive every single day. Many youth skip school and drop out because they need to work. In Belém and Manaus, instead of studying, many Warao children and adolescents solicit donations on the street, asking for money, or selling handicrafts and other products to contribute to their families’ survival financially. Even those who attend school regularly are denied the right to learn on the most basic level – reading, comprehending, and writing effectively – because of the structural factors and socioeconomic inequalities.
Underfunding and Unpreparedness of the Educational system
The Resolution CNE/CEB nº 1 of 2020 was an essential step in protecting the right to education in the context of migration in Brazil. Nevertheless, measures must be put in place that all schools invariably follow its provisions. Despite still suffering from inadequate physical structures and limited resources, public schools offer more than just education for their students; they also provide community, dental services, vaccinations, and breakfast, in addition to the school meals. I speak daily with teachers who pay for the students’ school supplies from their salaries and teaching materials to support their teaching practices. In a school in Boa Vista, the teachers organized themselves to donate clothes and shoes to children who had recently arrived from Venezuela.
Furthermore, education that corresponds to the necessities of the migrant children, who arrive with their own linguistic and cultural mores and varied lived experiences, is not guaranteed. Depending on the year, more than 50% of the students enrolled in any public school in Boa Vista and Pacaraima may be Spanish, Warao, and Criolo speakers. Within this group, even though they are old enough, they were not taught literacy in their first language. Considering that enrollment can not be impeded as stipulated by the resolution, some classrooms may have more than thirty students, where the majority are still learning basic communication in Portuguese, and with an educator who only speaks and understands Portuguese. Teachers and school administrators who participated in the study suggested that the linguistic barrier, lack of resources, and the need for additional support in the school and classroom are some of the major difficulties they face in adequately executing their job assignments. The majority of teachers who teach migrant children lack relevant prior experience, and, at the same time, they receive the least amount of support in professional training and development.
For schools to adequately and timely implement the 2020 Resolution CNE/CEB nº 1, more national and municipal policies are necessary to ensure that the right to education can be implemented beyond enrollment. Educators need support both for teaching Portuguese to speakers of other languages and for meeting the needs of their diverse student body. The Ministry of Education should develop and adopt national policies that support schools and educators with measures to diversify educational provisions and invest in the schools’ physical infrastructure to accommodate a growing number of migrant students.
The Resolution, though limited, attempts to promote school inclusion. However, the authorities must take the issue of migrant children experiencing homelessness seriously, mainly in Pacaraima and Boa Vista. Public policies need to address international migration as a permanent reality, not only as an emergency or temporary humanitarian situation, but for the long term. Access to education is connected to access to other fundamental rights. Therefore, children and their families need support to access their rights, which includes prioritizing children’s well-being, listening to them, and putting their needs at the center of education and migration policies.
This article is available on the website Le Monde Diplomatique Brasil. Read it here.
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Jáfia Naftali Câmara has a PhD in education, is a researcher at the University of Bristol, England, and is an international representative for the SETA Project. Her work falls within sociology of education and critical geography of education. Her interests include politics of education, the political economy of education, and Marxism.
