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A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
The Future in Their Hands is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Rachel Grace Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico’s foreign-educated elite. Study abroad began as a private phenomenon for young elites to acquire specific forms of knowledge and to preserve their status. But after the 1910 revolution, elites gradually convinced the Mexican state, under the guise of modernizing the nation, to underwrite their ambitions with merit-based scholarships. Student mobility naturalized the expectation that Mexico’s sovereignty and development required knowledge from elsewhere. For historians of Mexico and other countries with foreign-educated elites, this book reveals the subtle, insidious processes by which states reinforce privilege through education policy.
“Rachel Newman's meticulously researched, engagingly written study of Mexico's foreign-educated elite explodes prevailing myths and sets the bar for future studies of Mexican education. It also raises broader questions about student cultures, nationalist strategies, and the nature of state formation that far transcend Mexico.”—Gilbert M. Joseph, Farnam Professor of History, Yale University
"Addressing issues of class, gender, and race and ethnicity, The Future in Their Hands is the first book in English to chart the long history of the study abroad programs that sent Mexican students to pursue education outside the country."—Christy Thornton, author of Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy
"Newman provides a deft study of an overlooked strata in Mexican state-making: the young elite whose studies abroad bestowed them with political capital to forge Mexican institutions on their return. This is a fine example of transnational history illuminating national narratives."—Elena Jackson Albarrán, author of Good Neighbor Empires: Children and Cultural Capital in the Americas
"This is an original and intriguing book. The life stories of Mexican youth studying in the United States open a new and crucial understanding of nation building, class dynamics, and political conflicts."—Isabella Cosse, Professor of History, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires