Community, Diversity, and Marginalization: An Ecological Construction of Immigrant Parenting within the U.S. Neoliberal Home and School Contexts

Abstract

Although studies have explored issues related to the partnerships between immigrant families and mainstream schools, tenacious challenges of marginalization within education persist, warranting new frameworks that challenge the present understanding of the immigrant parents’ interactions with the local school. This constructivist grounded theory study analyzed narratives of immigrant families who crossed socio-economic status, cultures, and languages as they parented their children. The findings revealed how the view of community and approach to diversity within the neoliberal climate interacted with the immigrant parents’ pursuit of “becoming American.” The neoliberal approach to diversity emerged as contentious in the school setting, promoting marginalization and compelling the immigrant parents to seek communities outside of the school. The resulting model summarizes their parenting approach toward school, reflecting individual and collective goals around concepts of community and approach to diversity in the home and school contexts. The discussion of findings is informed by and contributes to Neal and Neal’s networked ecological model, problematizing how schools address community and diversity, suggesting the need for identifying and valuing the networked communities in which immigrant families pursue the goal of “becoming American.”