Is the “New Mexican School” Inclusive?: Policy, Practice, and Persistent Barriers in Migrant Education in Mexico

As Mexico consolidates as a destination for migrant children, its latest education reform, the Nueva Escuela Mexicana (NEM), promises a school from which no one is excluded. This study asks whether that promise reaches them, combining content analysis of legislation, curricula, and teacher guides with eleven semi-structured interviews with teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and researchers in Mexico. Tomaševski’s 4-As and Booth and Ainscow’s Index for Inclusion establish what the state owes and where inclusion should become visible; Lipsky’s street-level bureaucracy explains why those commitments stall. In practice, inclusion remains discretionary: teachers report no preparation for it, and the belief that treating migrant students identically is the same as including them leaves their specific needs unmet. NEM has written migrant children into law more fully than any prior framework; whether it writes them into classrooms depends on teacher preparation, and sufficient, sustained training is what could secure it.