Stressors experienced by immigrant and other non-native English-speaking students in U.S. schools and their families

Abstract

This literature-based study of stressors experienced by recent immigrant families focuses on their impact on school-aged children. The author, a trainer of teachers of English as a second language and an education researcher specializing in issues affecting students with non-mainstream language backgrounds, identifies stressors resulting from (a) separation of families, (b) changes in familial roles, (c) social and legislative pressure that targets immigrant families, and (d) school bullying and harassment. Many immigrant students experience stressors in all four categories in addition to the stress of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. To help mitigate the negative impact – which can include difficulty focusing on academics, developmental delays, or problem behavior – the author recommends that schools and communities embrace difference and support the struggles of immigrant students and their families and that schools, in particular, develop cultures and provide resources to help new Americans to thrive despite challenges.     

Marriage and immigration enforcement: The impact of Secure Communities on immigrant women

We investigate if increased deportations under the Secure Communities (SC) program impacted the marriage patterns of immigrant women in the United States. We focus on country of origin-MSA deportation rates, arguing this is appropriate given the dominance of endogamous marriage among immigrants and large heterogeneity in removal rates. We find that rising deportations increased marriage rates and endogamous marriage, decreased exogamous marriage to immigrants from other countries, and had no impact on marriage to native-born men. This is striking because SC likely reduced same ethnicity partners in marriage markets. We find some evidence that increased network effects may explain these results.     

Beyond “the longer they stay” (and say they will stay): Women and Mexican immigrant settlement

While many Mexican undocumented immigrant families have become increasingly committed to building family and community life in the United States, the ways people make settlement happen has not received much attention in the literature. Based on ethnographic research conducted in a Mexican immigrant settlement community in California, this article looks at settlement processes by bringing women to the foreground. Putting women and their activities at the center of analysis highlights their contributions in three arenas that are key to settlement: creating patterns of permanent, year-round employment; provisioning resources for daily family maintenance and reproduction; and building community life. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, Washington D.C. April 1991, and at the Perspectives on Migration: North America After NAFTA conference, University of California, Berkeley, February 1994. The research and writing were partially supported by the Business and Professional Women's Association and by the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at U.C. San Diego. I am very thankful for the help of all the study participants, and for the feedback I received from Michael A. Messner, the anonymous reviewers forQualitative Sociology, and especially Barrie Thorne, who saved me from the seductions of functionalism.     

The crime drop in comparative perspective: the impact of the economy and imprisonment on American and European burglary rates

Influential statements on recent American crime reductions maintain that the crime drop was confined to the USA. Yet other research has revealed comparable crime decreases in Europe. We suggest that the USA and European crime declines occurred in tandem because they were both brought about by upturns in the economy. In light of US research showing crime reductions resulting from growth in imprisonment, we also examine the possibility that rising imprisonment rates reduced European crime rates. We test these hypotheses in a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis of burglary rates in the USA and nine European nations between 1993 and 2006. The results indicate that burglary declines in the US and Europe were associated with rising consumer confidence. By contrast, imprisonment appears to be significantly related to burglary rates only after unusual policy interventions, such as Italy's 2006 clemency measure that dramatically reduced the size of its prison population. We interpret these findings as reflecting the structural similarity and economic integration of the world's developed nations and the uneven convergence in US and European punishment policies.     

Interculturalism in Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students

The present article focuses on quantitative research carried out on a statistically representative sample of Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students. Research data show that schools with a higher number of immigrant students offer a greater number and a wider variety of intercultural initiatives. The presence of immigrant students serves as an effective stimulus in enhancing intercultural approaches. Furthermore, the opinions of head teachers about the proposal of ‘separate classes’ for immigrant students and the proposed ‘limit of 30% on the presence’ of immigrant students are negative. These judgements do not change in a statistically significant manner in relation to concentration of immigrant students: in particular, higher rates of immigrant students are not related to more positive opinions. Continuing education on intercultural issues is widely adopted, mainly on behalf of teachers and less often on behalf of head teachers and other school personnel. Finally, activities by ‘linguistic facilitators’ and ‘linguistic and cultural mediators’ are not significantly related to a decrease in perceived concern regarding problematic situations.     

The transmission of language and religion in immigrant families: a comparison between mothers and children

The aim of this paper is to explore intergenerational transmission of values in immigrant families, focusing on the mother–child relation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with women and young people of immigrant origin, the paper analyses how mothers and children negotiate parental styles on transmission of cultural values – the importance of language and religion. The following dimensions will be analysed: (1) the language: which language is spoken in the family – mother tongue or Italian – and how the mother tongue is transmitted to children; (2) the importance given to the meanings and the practices of religion that the family professes. For this purpose we are going to compare Asian and East European women and children living in different urban and rural contexts of the Lombardy region.     

Low-status work consequences on immigrant workers' organization: the cases of five immigrant groups in Athens

The article centres on the repercussions low-prestige work has on the collective organization and representation of immigrant workers. This micro-sociological analysis focuses on the cases of Egyptian, Albanian, Bangladeshi, Palestinian, and Philippine immigrants in Athens and how the frame of their work and their employment affects their participation in their immigrant work associations. Evidence from in-depth interviews proves that the majority of immigrants do not claim established workers' rights and do not seek membership in any unions. On the contrary, they rely on a network of friends and relatives for support and develop individual behaviours and alternative solutions to achieve survival and protection.     

Chinese in France: diasporic experiences vary depending on generation and age of arrival

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study is to identify the factors that contribute to the successful or unsuccessful integration of the Chinese diaspora in France. There is already a significant amount of literature that probes into the immigrant experiences of various other groups in France. However, the Chinese diaspora in France has remained insufficiently studied. This study aims to address this gap. The main findings of this study are that 1) unsurprisingly, the older the age of arrival, the less well integrated immigrants are in French society, 2) somewhat surprisingly, the less well integrated an immigrant is, the more likely he or she is going to believe that France is a tolerant and open-minded country, and 3) counterintuitively, the more deeply a member of the Chinese diaspora is immersed in French society, the more likely he or she is going to believe that France is hostile to people of Asian heritage.     

Acculturative stress in the adjustment of immigrant families

This study reviews the issue of acculturative stress in immigrant families. Acculturative stress includes behaviors experienced by immigrants that are a direct consequence of the process of acculturation and adaptation to a new society. A number of stressors impacting on the acculturation of immigrant families is discussed. These stressors include lack of English language skills, employment and economic status, educational background, family life, and sociopolitical and immigration status.     

#FamiliesBelongTogether: Facts and Fictions of Race and Family in U.S. Immigration Policy

Family reunification is widely seen as a relatively stable feature of the contemporary U.S. immigration regime protected by the nation’s liberal democratic institutions and humanitarian values. Drawing on critical scholarship that situates immigration policies in racial nation‐building projects, this article explores the development of U.S. family‐based admission policies from 1965 to the early 2000s. I bring attention to the role of racial family logics in the changing character and meaning of these policies. Racial family logics reflect the emergent and contested ways in which families are both idealized and institutionally organized in relation to the state, the economy, and other social institutions to support racial projects. A normative conception of “the family” as a white, heterosexual, male wage earner, nuclear household unit informed the 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and its emphasis on family‐based admissions. However, by the 1990s, the landscape of immigration, race, and family in the United States had shifted quite dramatically. The family‐based admissions system was now associated with immigrants from Asia and Latin America rather than Europe. The “browning” of the system was accompanied by its incorporation into racialized projects of state discipline, surveillance, and control over those deemed “undeserving” in relation to neoliberal values of self‐reliant and self‐regulating families.     

The academic achievement of socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents: a social capital perspective

A sizable body of literature reports that social capital, derived from relational resources embedded in micro social contexts, is crucial for student achievement. This study aimed to examine whether this applies as well to socioeconomically disadvantaged immigrant adolescents in the US. In so doing, the study first identified the types of relational features that were strongly associated with immigrant adolescents’ academic achievement, before exploring how high- and low-achieving immigrant adolescents coming from similarly socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds differed in terms of these relational features. To this end, the study used the dataset of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS). There was a significantly positive association found between academic achievement and a number of positive characteristics of social relationships with friends and teachers. In addition, a significant disparity in these relational features was found between high and low achievers among the socioeconomically disadvantaged. The findings illuminate the salience of peer contexts and of interpersonal trust in shaping immigrant adolescents’ educational outcomes in a way that transcends socioeconomic boundaries. It is pertinent for educators and policy-makers to empower immigrant youth as independent agents capable of generating academically relevant social capital on their own outside their families and ethnic communities.     

A comparison of path factors influencing depressive symptoms in children of immigrant women and Korean children in South Korea

The aim of this study is to compare Korean children and the children of immigrant women with respect to how depressive symptoms in these two groups are related to potential causes, including paternal neglect, maternal neglect, gender, socioeconomic status, ego resilience, peer relationships, teacher-student relationships, and discrimination. Concurrently analyzing multiple populations, we found that the path model and the path coefficients we used for the study were appropriate for both groups. Peer relationships and discrimination were found to have direct influences on depressive symptoms in both groups. We also found that gender, ego resilience, and teacher-student relationships had indirect effects in causing depressive symptoms in the children of immigrant women. Furthermore, maternal neglect had a more significant indirect effect among the children of immigrant women, whereas paternal neglect had a more significant indirect effect among the Korean children in our study. The results indicate that the same path model could be applied to both groups of children, allowing us to conclude that the same focus and approaches for intervention could be provided to both groups to decrease the levels of depressive symptoms.     

Multigenerational punishments on the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers

Drawing on qualitative research conducted in the United States and in El Salvador, the author examines the experiences of the children of 40 immigrant men and 40 deported men. This study reveals the harmful effects of U.S. immigration policies and enforcement practices on the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers. Their children were found to have experienced the unintended consequences of U.S. immigration laws and enforcement practices in their own lives and relationships. These findings support Enriquez's (2015) concept of “multigenerational punishments” where children of immigrant parents share the risks and limitations associated with their parent's immigration status. They also experience the negative spill-over effects of immigration policies and enforcement practices even though they were not directly targeted by these laws. This study reveals multigenerational punishments manifested in the form of social, economic, emotional, and physical inequalities which negatively affected the children of Salvadoran immigrant and deported fathers. As a result, many of their children experienced harmful changes in their lives and relationships under the U.S. immigration enforcement regime. This study is significant in that it provides insight into the issues that immigrant families face and the need for policy interventions for immigrant and deported parents and their children.     

Connecting Complex Processes: A Decade of Research on Immigrant Families

This review examines research on immigrant families in the United States from the past decade from multiple disciplinary perspectives. This work has used variations on assimilation and acculturation perspectives. In the case of the assimilation perspectives, the focus has largely been on family formation, whereas research using acculturation perspectives has focused more on intrafamily relationships. But, over the course of the decade, an interesting integrative model has emerged to address interactions of attitudes and values with structural conditions in the receiving and sending communities. Some of this effort to integrate perspectives can be found in studies of transnational families. The review concludes with some suggestions for continuing this integration and expanding studies to include dynamics of migration and family processes simultaneously.     

Designing for social inclusion of immigrant women: the case of TeaTime

We present our design of a digital service supporting social inclusion among immigrant women in an ethnically and socially diverse neighbourhood of a small Finnish town. The aim is to explore experiences and perceptions as well as potential barriers and challenges for using the web-based service. The case study is framed as design research having a strong user-centred design approach. We describe the design process and present the results of a mixed-method evaluation. The results are scrutinized from the perspectives of experience design. The analysis reveals a potential to facilitate social inclusion through the fulfilment of needs related to relatedness, autonomy, competence, pleasure and stimulations as well as popularity. However, some challenges in the interface design and communication of the security and purpose of the site were identified in the study. Significant differences were also found between immigrant women and local people regarding the need for this digital service.     

Analysis of Spanish policies for the integration of immigrant schoolchildren

The Organic Law on the Improvement of the National Education Quality (Ley Orgánica de Reforma de la Calidad Educativa) readdressed one of the most significant educational issues: educational policies related to immigrant students. Therefore, this is an appropriate moment to evaluate these types of policies in three singular Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia. This article presents an analysis of the measures taken in three Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia in response to students’ reception, acceptance and enrolment of immigrant students. A qualitative methodology based on the comparative method is used. Diverse similarities, but also specific characteristics and differences, can be found among the three models associated with each region. There are several significant differences that can be appreciated, such as the institutional role, as well as other specific measures. However, singular features are also identified, such as the diverse policies for the use of the vehicular language in each of the cases. Finally, the comparisons highlight various critical aspects, such as attention devoted to the students’ native language and progress towards intercultural education in school strategies and planning.     

International Migration and Religious Participation: The Mediating Impact of Individual and Contextual Effects1

Supported by previous empirical work, theory from sociology of religion and migration provide testable hypotheses in predicting changes in immigrant religious participation surrounding the migratory event. Due to data constraints, however, these hypotheses have escaped broad‐based analysis. Using the New Immigrant Survey (NIS), religious participation from pre‐ to postmigration time periods is found to decrease among recent immigrants to the United States. Individual‐level characteristics (i.e., gender, familial conditions, employment) do not substantially explain this decline; alternatively, contextual‐level factors (i.e., religious pluralism and religious concentration) partially mediate this drop in immigrant religiosity.     

The experiences of African immigrant mothers living in the United Kingdom with a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder: an interpretive phenomenological analysis

Interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to investigate the experiences of six African immigrant mothers living in the United Kingdom with a child diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The mothers took part in one-off, semi-structured interviews. Four themes were identified: caring for a child we did not expect, the pain of stigma and rejection, frameworks of meaning, and negotiating conflicting cultural beliefs. Many aspects of the mothers’ experiences appear related to their position as immigrants from cultures with contrasting belief systems regarding child development and disability. Conflicts between African cultural beliefs and a western, medical understanding of ASD appeared to create a feeling of cognitive dissonance for the mothers. The strategies used to negotiate this appear to map onto Berry’s acculturation strategies, suggesting that the experience of having a child with ASD impacts upon the acculturation process. Implications for clinical practice and policy are discussed.     

Images of Romania and America in early twentieth-century Romanian-Jewish immigrant life stories in the United States

This paper focuses on ethnic life stories written by early twentieth-century Romanian-Jewish immigrants to the US, and attempts to determine to what extent these narratives correspond to the generalised pattern of ethnic life writing at the time, as well as what particularises their texts. I analyse the memoirs of M.E. Ravage, Konrad Bercovici, Maurice Samuel and Edward G. Robinson, all of them born at the close of the nineteenth century but publishing their memoirs at different moments in history. I first trace the images of Romania that spring from these texts, ranging from the legal and educational discrimination portrayed by M.E. Ravage and Edward G. Robinson, to the existence of pogroms and other anti-Jewish feelings foregrounded by Konrad Bercovici, and to the nostalgic shtetl atmosphere evoked in Maurice Samuel's books. I then consider the place of the US in these authors' writings, starting from its utopian image prior to emigration to its more complex image after settlement in the new location. Finally, I show how their return journeys to Romania at different moments in time and the persisting prejudiced atmosphere they found there contributed in all cases to these authors becoming strong supporters of American democracy and its openness to critical debate.     

The role of ethnic identity in school engagement: perceptions of immigrant Tibetan adolescents in select US public schools

This purpose of the study was to ascertain the level of ethnic identity formation and its perceived role on school engagement for Tibetan adolescents enrolled in public schools in two Midwestern states in the USA. The journey of these students from culturally encapsulated schools from Nepal, Bhutan, and India to multiculturally diverse settings was one of the most fascinating facets of the Tibetan Diaspora. Subjects included 16 girls, 25 boys, and 2 who did not identify their gender. The multigroup ethnic identity measure was used to determine the level of ethnic identity formation of Tibetan students while a questionnaire gathered information on school engagement. The overall ethnic identity measure for this sample was high with a mean of 3.58, while the cognitive and affective aspect of the measure was also high with a mean of 3.56 and 3.74, respectively. The girls showed more emotional commitment to ethnic identity, as their mean score was 3.92, while boys scored 3.62. The results clearly corroborated findings and conclusions drawn by other scholars. School and community partnership contributed to the healthy ethnic identity development of adolescents who were thus encouraged to be more engaged in meaningful school activities.