This study sought to investigate the willingness of immigrant primary school children to communicate in Turkish as the target language. The research was conducted with immigrant students in the fourth grade of primary school, selected using a convenience sampling method during the 2022–2023 academic year. Given the lack of a measurement tool specifically developed for this target group, a target language willingness to communicate (TLWTC) scale was developed, encompassing various communication styles including listening, reading, speaking, and writing. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis results indicated that the scale exhibits a three-factor structure, comprising motivation, self-confidence, and developmental effort, and demonstrates good fit indices. It uniquely identifies leisure activities as indicators of developmental effort as one of the significant dimensions of willingness to communicate in the target language. Subsequently, the TLWTC levels of students and differences based on gender, native alphabet, school type, length of residence, and Turkish-speaking family members were examined. The findings revealed that students exhibited moderate-to-high TLWTC, with no differences based on gender; however, differences were observed based on native alphabet, school type, duration of residence, and the presence of Turkish-speaking family members. The developed TLWTC scale within the migration context may significantly contribute to the research agenda on willingness to communicate in a second language. The findings may provide valuable insights for researchers, administrators, and educators regarding the TLWTC of immigrant primary school students, a topic that has not yet been explored.

There is a strong achievement-gradient in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), with a higher prevalence in children with low academic achievement. In Sweden, the prevalence of ADHD is also higher among native than immigrant children. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the change in diagnosed ADHD varies across different achievement levels, and whether this change in turn differs depending on students' immigration status. Register data on all students graduating from compulsory school in Sweden between 2001 and 2018 were used. ADHD was measured by diagnosis in specialised care recorded in the year of graduation, and academic achievement by students' grade point average. Logistic regression models with ADHD as the outcome were used. Changes in the association between achievement and ADHD over time were tested by including interactions terms for achievement and year. There was a positive interaction between achievement and year in the pooled sample, meaning that ADHD increased relatively more among higher-achieving students and that the achievement-gradient in ADHD diminished over time. In stratified analyses, the greatest relative increase in ADHD was observed among higher-achieving native and second-generation immigrant students, and the smallest among low-achieving first-generation immigrants. The achievement-gradient was flatter, and diminished more, among immigrant students. The reduced achievement-gradient in ADHD suggests that the absence of academic difficulties to a lesser degree disqualifies children from diagnosis. The limited increase among low-achieving first-generation immigrants may indicate persistent barriers to diagnosis and care in this group.

This study highlights a culturally responsive transformative school, family, and community partnership in the Western Region of the United States. The partnership served over 100 students and 300 parents of Black Pan-African immigrant descent responding to persistent school alienation. Using Critical Race Theory, Community Cultural Wealth, and a critical participatory action research design, we explored the structural forces shaping these experiences and the community-based responses that sought to resist them. Data sources included professional development sessions, counter-storytelling, Theater of the Oppressed, asset mapping, and semi-structured interviews. Findings revealed key partnership members centered five dispositions—Prophetic Activism, Asset-Based Ideology, Critical Consciousness, Trust, and Solidarity—collectively theorized as PACTS, in response to multiple forms of alienation intersecting Black Pan-African families experienced in schools. These dispositions represent a spiritually, culturally, and politically grounded praxis that disrupted systemic marginalization and help reimagine school, family and community partnerships as sites of collective care, resistance, and justice. Theoretically, we advance “spiritual wealth” as a justice-contingent extension in Community Cultural Wealth. Methodologically, we recommend Black Indigenous approach’s centering African knowledge producers. Practically, we provide an audit tool to assess weather partnerships are transformative.

Amid persistent xenophobic and racist attitudes and even denial of immigrant students’ presence, this study examines social media discourse targeting them in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). Using a qualitative netnographic approach, it analyzes posts, likes, shares, and comments on Facebook and Instagram. A dataset of 876 posts reveals dominant narratives portraying immigrant students as economic, cultural, or security threats. The findings show that such rhetoric harms students’ social and educational experiences, fostering isolation and marginalization. The study underscores the powerful role of media framing in shaping public perceptions and highlights the need for more balanced, inclusive representations. It also offers insights that inform pedagogical considerations and responses to discrimination in educational contexts.

ABSTRACT This study examines how racialized school climates shape the academic engagement of Latinx/a students in urban high schools in Northern California. Grounded in Latinx Critical Theory (LatCrit), the analysis draws on in-depth interviews with seven self-identified Latinx/a students to explore how institutional practices and everyday interactions influence their educational trajectories. Participants described encountering low academic expectations, exclusion from advanced coursework, and limited institutional support, particularly for newcomer immigrant students from Central America. These structural barriers contributed to feelings of marginalization and diminished confidence. At the same time, students identified sources of empowerment, notably in supportive relationships with Latinx educators and mentors that affirmed their identities and intellectual potential. The findings extend LatCrit scholarship by illuminating how systemic constraints and relational practices influence academic engagement and students’ sense of belonging.

Navigating diversity among nationally diverse children in schools: Voices of teachers, counselors, and students.

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Students who immigrate to a new country are commonly expected to “catch up” to their mainstream peers in language and academics and to complete their education in the new language and culture. Yet little is known about recent immigrants’ academic trajectories, particularly in Germany, where research remains scarce despite the relatively high proportion of children who immigrate after the start of mandatory schooling (age 6 or later). This study focused on reading as a central skill for literacy and school achievement. Design/methodology/approach: The study invoked standardized tests of reading fluency, reading comprehension and vocabulary among 76 (+13) recently immigrated students and 192 of their non-immigrated peers in eight lower secondary schools in spring 2022 and followed up on a small subgroup annually for 2 years to provide exploratory information on learning trajectories. Data and analysis: Analyses using mixed-effects models compared the reading performance of immigrated and non-immigrated students. In addition, individual factors such as vocabulary breadth were analyzed to determine their impact on reading development. Findings/conclusion: Immigrated students consistently scored below their non-immigrated peers across all reading measures, with average performance gaps ranging from 0.2 to 1.2 standard deviations. Longitudinal follow-ups indicated little evidence that these students were closing the gap over time, though individual differences, particularly vocabulary breadth, had some effects. Originality: This study contributes novel insights into the long-term academic development of immigrated students in Germany, an understudied population in this context. It highlights the challenges faced by these students in acquiring academic language skills and the limitations of data collection instruments. Significance/implications: The findings highlight the need to clarify realistic literacy expectations for immigrant students and to better understand how their literacy trajectories vary. Such insight can guide policies and instructional practices that provide developmentally appropriate, linguistically responsive support.

This study explores how teachers develop emotional knowledge about immigration through arts-based pedagogies in a graduate-level teacher education course. Grounded in the concept of difficult knowledge, it conceptualizes emotions as epistemological resources that enable critical and embodied understanding beyond cognitive engagement. Drawing on qualitative data from a 15-week course, the study examines how emotions shape teachers’ advocacy for immigrant students. Findings reveal that empathy humanized immigrant experiences, discomfort illuminated privilege, anger spurred recognition of systemic injustice, and solidarity sustained collective commitments. Arts-based and embodied approaches provided affective scaffolding, enabling participants to transform emotional dissonance into ethical and political action. By theorizing emotional knowledge as central to engaging difficult knowledge in teacher education, this study demonstrates how course design can intentionally position emotions as legitimate ways of knowing. It argues that preparing teachers to feel with and act alongside immigrant communities is crucial for cultivating affective solidarity and sustaining justice-oriented teaching.

ABSTRACT Multiculturalisation is taking place in schools in Bangkok, Thailand, due to the presence of immigrant students from various countries. This study investigates how teachers respond to students from diverse backgrounds at the school level, despite receiving insufficient resources from authorities, using cases from two primary schools. By drawing on the case study of two under-resourced public primary schools in Thailand that use the ‘School as Learning Community’ (SLC), a school reform approach, the study illuminates how teachers respond to immigrant students’ needs by developing their own pedagogical methods and artefacts based on their joint observations and reflections on these practices – key elements of the SLC approach. This study demonstrates how the SLC approaches can be utilised to support the learning needs of students from immigrant backgrounds and their potential for expansion into other learning environment with multicultural and multilingual contexts.

ABSTRACT School counsellors play a vital role in fostering immigrant students’ development through consultation services. However, counsellors often face significant challenges in delivering these services to immigrant families. This study explored school counsellors’ experiences in their consultation roles, focusing on their challenges, competencies, and needs. A qualitative research methodology using a phenomenological approach was employed. Twelve school counsellors (nine females and three males) participated in the study. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews containing six open-ended questions. The results yielded three overarching themes: complexity of addressing immigrant parents’ consultation needs, facilitating support resources, and school counsellor competencies and areas of need. The findings identify the multifaceted and multisystemic issues counsellors face, and counsellors’ assets and needs to provide better consultation services for immigrant families. The findings are discussed based on the literature and several implications are provided for school counsellors, administrators, communities, governmental institutions, and counsellor educators.

This study examined the association between youth immigrant generation background and mental health outcomes (internalizing and externalizing symptoms), the extent to which these associations were moderated by school immigrant concentration and the potential mediating role of school loneliness and sense of belonging in these associations. Data come from a population-based cross-sectional study of 1,449 immigrant and nonimmigrant youth aged 9-15 years and their caregivers from 36 schools in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Multilevel hierarchical linear regression and multilevel structural equation models were run separately for parent and youth reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms. First- and second-generation immigrant youth had lower levels of parent and youth reported externalizing symptoms and parent reported internalizing symptoms than nonimmigrant youth. The association between immigrant background and externalizing symptoms was moderated by school immigrant concentration, such that higher concentration was associated with a decrease in average externalizing symptoms for immigrant students, but not for nonimmigrant students. Perceptions of loneliness at school mediated the association between immigrant background and both externalizing and internalizing symptoms when school immigrant concentration was high across parent and youth reports (conditional indirect effects all p < .05). Levels of mental health symptoms were lower among immigrant youth when school immigrant concentration was high, with decreased perceptions of school loneliness potentially offering some insights into protective mechanisms. Longitudinal studies are needed to advance our understanding of the underlying social processes that give rise to differential associations across immigrant groups to inform school-based approaches to integration of immigrant and nonimmigrant youth.

Abstract Background Student achievement is shaped by family background, gender, migration status, and school context, yet little research has compared how these factors operate across distinct world regions. This study examines how parental education, educational resources, study supports, gender, and migration status predict Grade 8 mathematics and science achievement in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Asia–Pacific regions. Methods Using TIMSS 2023 data from twelve countries—six GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) and six Asia–Pacific systems (Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore)—we estimated multilevel models separately for each country following a four-step specification. Models incorporated student gender, immigrant status, parental education, home educational resources, home study supports, and student-level interaction terms. Results Patterns differed across regions. In the GCC, girls consistently outperformed boys—especially in science—and immigrant students often outscored native-born peers., In Asia–Pacific countries, gender gaps were small and typically domain-specific, and immigrant performance varied. Parental education persisted as a robust predictor of higher achievement across all systems. Greater home educational resources were associated with higher achievement across countries, while study supports benefited students unevenly, with clearer advantages for girls in several GCC systems. Interaction effects indicated that students with both higher parental education and richer home resources experienced the largest achievement advantages. School-level variance was notably higher in GCC countries, reflecting greater stratification. Conclusions The findings highlight that gender, migration status, and family background do not operate uniformly but are shaped by regional opportunity structures and educational environments. GCC systems may benefit from reducing school-level disparities and strengthening supports for boys’ academic engagement, whereas Asia–Pacific systems may prioritize addressing family-level inequalities and immigrant integration. The study provides region-specific insights for promoting equity in diverse educational systems.

This article employs a case-study approach to explore how immigrant populations, particularly children and youth, develop a sense of belonging within Icelandic society, with a focus on the educational system. Iceland offers a unique context due to its relatively recent immigration history, small population, and comprehensive yet homogenous educational system. By analysing secondary data, including statistics from Statistics Iceland and OECD reports, as well as qualitative insights from academic and institutional studies and media, this research examines the interplay between societal attitudes, educational policies, and immigrant experiences. The article highlights the opportunities and challenges inherent in fostering belonging among immigrant students in a rapidly diversifying society. Iceland's comprehensive school system, which emphasises inclusivity and equal access, provides a foundation for integration. However, significant barriers remain, including language acquisition challenges, social isolation, and uneven policy implementation. Furthermore, the article warns against the potentially harmful effects of increasingly critical political and public discourse around immigration, which risks undermining efforts to foster inclusion and belonging. This article underscores the importance of educational systems as central spaces for cultivating belonging and inclusion, offering lessons applicable to other countries navigating similar demographic changes.

This article explores the relationship between digital access, migratory background, and educational performance among Grade 10 students in the Italian region of Campania. Using data from the 2022-2023 INVALSI assessment and employing multilevel modeling, the study examines how inequalities in access to digital technologies impact proficiency in the Italian language, focusing particularly on differences between native-born students and those with a migratory background. The findings reveal significant disparities in digital access, especially among first-generation immigrant students; over one-quarter of these students report lacking both a personal computer and an internet connection at home. These material disadvantages are strongly correlated with lower educational achievement. For students with a migratory background, access to digital resources emerges as a strong predictor of language proficiency, regardless of socio-economic status. Additionally, second-generation students consistently outperform their first-generation peers, although both groups still fall short compared to native-born students. The analysis indicates that while digital inclusion is important for addressing educational inequality, it is not sufficient on its own to overcome the broader socio-cultural and institutional barriers faced by youth of immigrant origin. The results highlight the need for targeted policy responses that combine improved access to technology with broader integration strategies, particularly in regions experiencing significant structural disadvantages.

This study examines how structural and cultural forms of capital interact to shape the academic attainment of first- and second-generation immigrant students within urban coethnic communities. Drawing on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study and hierarchical multinomial logistic regression, we integrate Yosso's community cultural wealth and the cultural and structural coethnic frameworks to examine how socioeconomic resources, bilingual fluency, and coethnic community strength predict postsecondary outcomes. Findings reveal that strong coethnic networks, bilingual fluency, and faith-based participation offset structural disadvantage. Results reframe the immigrant paradox through an intersectional, asset-based lens, emphasizing community-driven supports for equity-focused urban education policy.

Objective: This study examined how prior trauma relates to depression and anxiety symptoms among 713 college students across generational immigrant groups – first-, second-, and “later”-generation. Methods: Participants completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-25 and reported bereavement, social support, and trauma exposure. Results: Symptoms of depression and anxiety were similar across generational groups, though predictors varied. Among first-generation students, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores (β = .35, p < .001), age (β = −.30, p < .001), social support (β = −.28, p < .001), and recent bereavement (β = .14, p = .036) significantly predicted depression, explaining 26% of variance; age (β = −.27), ACE scores (β = .28), and social support (β = −.21) predicted anxiety (20% variance explained). For second-generation students, social support (β = −.27, p < .001) was the strongest depression predictor, alongside ACE scores (β = .27, p < .001), trauma exposure (β = .14, p = .008), and male gender (β = −.13, p = .007), explaining 25% of variance; ACE scores (β = .26), social support (β = −.20), trauma exposure (β = .11), and male gender (β = −.10) predicted anxiety (16% variance explained). For later-generation participants, ACE scores (β = .23, p = .025), social support (β = −.18, p = .034), and Hispanic/Latinx ethnicity (β = .16, p = .048) predicted depression (11% variance); ACE scores (β = .30, p = .003) and Black ethnicity (β = −.18, p = .027) predicted anxiety (13% variance). Social support was negatively associated with depression and anxiety across most groups. Conclusions: Adverse childhood experiences are key predictors of depression and anxiety symptoms in immigrant students, though other predictors vary by subgroup. These findings underscore the necessity of considering generational context when addressing mental health in immigrant populations and that interventions should prioritize trauma-informed, culturally sensitive approaches.

The topic of undocumented immigration in literature and cinema is particularly relevant during the uncertainty of Donald Trump’s administration, as sanctuary cities remain under attack. One of the most sympathetic undocumented immigrant groups is the so‑called “DREAMers”, due to their support of the DREAM Act. These are young adults who were brought to the U.S. as undocumented children by their parents. They have grown up in U.S. society, and very often don’t even remember their countries of origin. Many of them speak little or none of their parent’s native language and have been educated in public and private U.S. schools. This essay focuses on young undocumented immigrant students by primarily analyzing the nonfiction texts: Joshua Davis’s Spare Parts: Four Undocumented Teenagers, One Ugly Robot, and the Battle for the American Dream, and Julissa Arce’s My Underground American Dream memoir. I also discuss the Spare Parts film, and Jose Antonio Vargas’s documentary, Documented. Since migration theory has largely failed to recognize the importance of race and racism in the process of migrant integration, my analysis incorporates theories that center on dismantling western binaries to create hybrid, new non‑linear, third spaces of subaltern enunciation, which are valuable in the examination of the always fluid notion of undocumented immigration. Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano’s concept of “coloniality of power”, Argentinian–Mexican philosopher Enrique Dussel’s “principle of solidarity”, and Latina theorist Gloria Anzaldúa’s notion of “Nepantla” provide essential decolonial thinking to my analysis on the notion of immigration and citizenship in Latinx literature and cinema.

Sanctuary School begins with the retelling of the 2016 election, which resulted in the first Trump administration.Of particular concern was the fact that his entire campaign was marred by antiimmigrant rhetoric.Like many educators across the country, teachers in New York City were uncertain about the future that awaited the immigrant students and families they served.This moment in time serves as the backdrop of Sanctuary School, a book dedicated to examining how one high school in New York City provided sanctuary to its immigrant students.

Abstract This study is designed to provide a holistic perspective on the relationship between well-being and academic performance among students with an immigrant background with particular focus on potential moderators. The present study encompasses 14 independent samples, generated from 13 studies that were identified in accordance with the PRISMA principles, representing a total of 9,806 immigrant students from diverse populations. We found a positive significant relation between the well-being and academic performance among immigrant students. Our moderator analysis revealed significant differences in the relationship between immigrant students’ well-being and academic performance by academic performance domain and performance scale type. Meta-regression model indicated the presence of a statistical significance in the domain of academic performance. Finally, we identified that having a positive academic attitude among immigrants towards school, teachers, peers and learning has a key role on the relation between well-being and academic performance.

Understanding the interplay between somatic symptoms, depression, self-efficacy, and suicide risk among Latinx college students.