Working‐class Latina/o youth navigating stratification and inequality: A review of literature

Abstract

AbstractReflecting broader systems of stratification and inequality, sociological research shows that working‐class Latina/o immigrant families experience multiple marginalizations that require their children and youth to transcend the bounds of normative childhood by prematurely taking on roles and responsibilities typically thought of as reserved for adults. Still, the work kids do is largely studied in isolation and treated as exceptional. This paper brings together empirical research on poor and working‐class immigrant Latina/o youth and families to show that, in the face of stratification and growing inequality, these youth's labor is commonplace, spanning across multiple spheres of society, and that it is so because these youth's labor is essential to their personal and familial stability in the short‐term and mobility in the long‐term. Through this review, we conclude that Latina/o immigrant youth's financial, legal, cultural, and emotional labor must be considered when assessing the social forces that determine youth's socioeconomic and socioemotional outcomes in adulthood. We offer this analysis to advance scholarship on Latina/o stratification, immigration, and children's and youth's role in their individual and familial life outcomes.