Berkeley Review of Education

In 2014, Puerto Rican educators were recruited to teach in Oklahoma City Schools. The resulting labor migration is no minor illustration of the colonial educational experiments that mark the militaristic and capitalist relations between the U.S. and its territories. How do we understand the interplay of the conditions and characteristics of two geo-political contexts that are distinct, but have much in common as “forgotten places” in the colonial project: the occupation, relocation, and political subjugation of Indigenous peoples; the establishment of military bases; the economic plunder of schooling; educational repression; and, the denial of civic personhood through carcerality and territorialization? Through newsmedia, interviews and observations, and archival data, we examine the role of education and educators in the larger network of colonial relations between militarized, occupied territories, sovereign nations, and states. In this concept-forming piece, we observe this labor migration as the junctural focus of these complex formations.