A discussion of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learning in Spanish-speaking migrant workers' children focuses on the relationship of language identification and achievement. The first chapter briefly tells the story of the education and ESL instruction of one migrant adolescent. Chapter 2 offers a demographic and historical overview of migrant labor in the United States, and its Latinization after World War II, and chapter 3 describes its culture as determined by distinct economic, social, and educational variables. The fourth chapter outlines past federal migrant education legislation. The discussion then turns, in chapter 5, to the relationship between language and identity and the conflicts that may arise when the student's first-language identity is challenged or denigrated in the second-language environment. The next two chapters review theories of academic underachievement among minority students, discuss the pedagogical implications for migrant children, and offer corresponding classroom techniques for work with this population. (Contains 134 references.) (MSE)