Newcomer Immigrant Youth Research Articles

"We could see our real selves:" The COVID-19 syndemic and the transition to telehealth for a school-based prevention program for newcomer Latinx immigrant youth.

Newcomer Latinx immigrant youths in the United States are currently in a syndemic of increased risk of behavioral health concerns, disparities in access to related services, and are disproportionately impacted by the COVID‐19 pandemic. This study used qualitative inquiry to examine the impact that the transition to telehealth had on a school‐based group prevention program for immigrant youth, Fuerte, within the context of this syndemic. Data included semi‐structured interviews with group leaders, and focus groups with youth program participants. Themes indicated both positive and negative impacts of the transition to telehealth on program component implementation, youth participant engagement, and youth participant social connectedness. Despite the telehealth model, youth participants reported that they felt socially connected to each other through the program. This study's results provide implications for the potential value and drawbacks of a telehealth prevention model for newcomer immigrant youth, as well as deepening understanding of how virtual behavioral health programs may operate in socially isolating contexts around the world.

Lessons from an Expert Teacher of Immigrant Youth: A Portrait of Social Justice Teaching

ABSTRACT With approximately 40 million foreign-born people in the United States, US classrooms are witnessing an intense concentration of newcomer students and a persistent achievement gap between immigrant students and their English-speaking, US-born peers. Yet, some teachers are consistently successful with “those” children typically marginalized by schools. In this article, we describe, analyze, and theorize the practice of a master teacher who has spent over 20 years working with newcomer immigrant youth in the United States. Daphne invites her students to co-create the curriculum with her around their pressing questions, driven by her strong belief that her students are full of capacity, woke to the world around them, and thinking deeply about issues that affect them. Daphne’s practice demonstrates the power of critical pedagogy, funds of knowledge, and learning communities when they are enacted consistently as an ongoing and regular practice. Her students become agentic learners who thrive in ways we would wish for all students.

Parents, friends and immigrant youths' academic engagement: A mediation analysis.

Parents and friends can help facilitate the academic engagement of newcomer immigrant youth during the early post-migration years. Using an accelerated longitudinal design and the integrative risk and resilience framework, we examined how parent home involvement and friendships were directly and indirectly associated with the development of newcomer immigrant youths' academic engagement. We used data from three waves (Years 3-5) of the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation study where a culturally diverse group of immigrant youth (N=354, ages 10-17, MtimeinUS =3.98 years, SD=1.39) in the United States reported on their perceptions of parent home involvement (educational values and communication) and friendship (educational values and academic support) in Year 3 and on their academic engagement (behavioural and emotional) across 3 years. Findings showed high-stable behavioural and emotional engagement and direct positive associations between perceptions of parent home involvement and initial levels of behavioural and emotional engagement and between perceptions of friend educational values and initial levels of emotional engagement. Additionally, perceptions of parents' educational values indirectly contributed to initial levels of emotional engagement through positive associations with perceptions of friends' educational values. These findings can inform family-school partnerships and school-interventions targeting newcomer immigrant youths' engagement.

Fuerte Program for Newcomer Immigrant Youth

Fuerte Program for Newcomer Immigrant Youth

Use of Digital Photography With Newcomer Immigrant and Refugee Youth to Examine Behaviors and Promote Health.

This project examined health behaviors of newly arrived immigrant and refugee youth through digital photography as part of a health promotion intervention. Students (n = 23) aged 12 to 17 years at a school for newcomer youth in North Carolina used digital cameras to record dietary and physical activity behaviors, barriers, and promoters in their home environment. Eighteen participants completed individual photography projects that revealed consumption of soda, processed foods, limited calcium-rich foods, and limited evidence of physical activity. Photography project results and topics from nutrition education provided during the program were used to tailor health promotion resources. Students used digital cameras and props to create visual health-promoting materials (e.g., large posters for school hallways) that included and represented the wide range of cultures and ethnicities at the school. Facilitated discussion analysis revealed students preferred positive health promotion messages (health benefits of fruits and vegetables) versus negative (sugar or salt content of foods). Students reported they enjoyed using the cameras and developing materials and that as result of their experience they want to increase fruit and vegetable consumption, reduce sugar sweetened beverages, and increase physical activity. Digital photography shows promise as a tool to identify health behaviors and environmental barriers and to tailor health messages, especially with populations experiencing language, literacy, and/or cultural barriers.

“We're building the community; it's a hub for democracy.”: Lessons learned from a library-based, school-district partnership and program to increase belonging for newcomer immigrant and refugee youth

This community-based mixed-methods evaluation study investigates how a library-based program increases belonging for newcomer youth. This article presents the qualitative analysis from a mixed-methods study in progress. The article describes the library's community practice of advocating for newcomers with meaningful programming that increases understanding of community resources, local politics, and belonging. Key findings relate to the project leaders' perceptions of the library as a hub for democracy, how the program positively increased belonging for newcomers, and challenges and lessons learned from the first year of the program. Implications for practice demonstrate how the asset-based program through the library-school district partnership counteracts hostile political climates toward newcomers.

Cruel Optimism: Migration and Schooling for Dominican Newcomer Immigrant Youth

What is the relationship among migration, education, and socio‐emotional well‐being? This article draws on ethnographic research with Dominican youth to examine the impact of maternal migration on young immigrants and their educational aspirations. We detail how the youth come to conflate mother love, the sacrifices of migration, and educational investment. We argue that this conflation represents a “cruel optimism” (Berlant ), wherein the impossible object of desire—social mobility through schooling—impedes well‐being.

Engaging the Transnational Lives of Immigrant Youth in Public Schooling: Toward a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy for Newcomer Immigrant Youth

Drawing on ethnographic research in urban schools serving recently arrived immigrant students in New York City, this article considers the importance of drawing on transnational attachments in culturally sustaining pedagogy for newcomer immigrant students. The authors document how recently arrived immigrant youth narrated real and imagined transnational attachments as they described their past, current, and future lives in the United States and in home countries. Furthermore, they show how educators recognize and build on young people’s connections to homelands in their classrooms and in the teaching of academic content to promote the belonging and engagement of their students. Thus, the authors argue that by recognizing and engaging students’ transnational knowledge, experiences, and attachments, educators are engaging in a culturally sustaining pedagogy that prepares students for our changing globalized world.

THE ROLE OF SCHOOLS IN SHAPING THE SETTLEMENT EXPERIENCES OF NEWCOMER IMMIGRANT AND REFUGEE YOUTH

<p class="CYFSAbstract">This paper draws on focus groups and interviews with newcomer immigrant and refugee youth between the ages of 16 and 22 to consider how schools shape their settlement processes and their sense of social inclusion and belonging. In particular, the paper focuses on newcomer youth’s perspectives and experiences of schooling in a medium-sized immigrant-receiving city in Canada. Analysis reveals that schools function as sites of both inclusion and exclusion in ways that produce ambivalence in immigrant and refugee youth with respect to their sense of social inclusion and belonging to community life. One recommendation emerging from the analysis is that educational practitioners and other community stakeholders interested in supporting the social inclusion of newcomer youth should develop and implement ESL and ELD programs and ensure adequate funding of these essential programs. There is also a need for collaborative, dialogical practices that provide all relevant stakeholders, including newcomer youth themselves, opportunities to come together to create<em> </em>new possibilities for understanding and cooperative action.</p>

‘I Am Doing a Double Thing. It Is For Me and It Is For Her’

This article draws on 30 interviews conducted with newcomer immigrant and refugee youth in Canada to explore how they make sense of their migration and the consequences these meanings have on how they imagine their future selves. The article is based on the understanding that a key task of any immigrant is to negotiate the experiences of continuity and change indicative of the migration experience—a task that takes on unique contours for young immigrants who are simultaneously negotiating their transitions to adulthood. Analysis of the migration narratives of newcomer youth demonstrates that in making sense of their migration, young migrants draw on the general situation of their country of descent, their experiences of emigration and poignant intergenerational links to construct meaning of their lives in their new country of residence. These meanings orient their social actions and animate their life projects in their new host society.

War-exposed newcomer adolescent immigrants facing daily life stressors in the United States

For adolescents new to the United States, the experience of war and acculturative stressors may play complex roles during early stages of adjustment to a new culture and country. The overall purpose of this study was to deepen understanding of the experiences of adolescents who are new to the United States, also called “newcomers”, through the examination of pre-migration war exposure and post-migration acculturative stressors as predictors of psychosocial adjustment and academic achievement. The study sample included newcomer immigrant and refugee youth (N=184) with an average of 3.5 years in the United States. Triangulated data were collected from youth, teachers, and official school records. Results indicated that the participants who were exposed to war (N=57) experienced more self-reported and teacher-reported anxiety, more self-reported conduct problems, and had lower academic achievement than participants who had not been exposed to war. Acculturative stressors also predicted more self-reported anxiety, conduct problems, and lower academic achievement, but only for those adolescents without war exposure, suggesting that exposure to traumatic events like war may change newcomer adolescents’ response to acculturative stressors. This may be related to the development of coping or growth that follows after trauma, which enable youth to navigate other life challenges. Understanding potential risk and resilience associated with war exposure among newly arrived students can assist clinicians, educators, and researchers in creating solutions to difficulties in psychosocial adjustment and academic performance.

“If you don’t find a friend in here, it's gonna be hard for you”: Structuring bilingual peer support for language learning in urban high schools

As schools are called on to educate an increasingly diverse student body to higher levels of academic skill, examination of the role of social resources and social contexts in the learning outcomes and experiences of students classified as English learners is urgently needed to better understand the many factors beyond instruction that contribute to adolescent English language development. Four descriptive case studies of Spanish-speaking newcomer immigrant youth in New York City public high schools examine how schools structured peer linguistic resources. Findings suggest that school policies designed to support language development created boundaries that isolated language learners from mainstream and bilingual peers and had profound repercussions for access to opportunities to use and learn academic English. Hyper-segregation is used to describe the multilayered social separation experienced by emergent bilingual students in this study.

Newcomer Immigrant Adolescents and Ambiguous Discrimination

Cognitive appraisal has been shown to mediate the relationship between stressors and internalizing symptoms, but not among newcomer immigrant youth facing ambiguous discrimination. Using a mixed-methods design with a sample of newcomer adolescents from African, Arab, Asian, Caribbean, European, and Latin American countries, this study measured the perceived occurrence of discrimination (attribution to discrimination) and its perceived degree of severity (cognitive appraisal) in relation to internalizing symptoms and academic achievement. Attribution to discrimination predicted greater internalizing symptoms, and appraisal mediated this relationship. The mediation effect was found for younger, but not older adolescents. Quantitative results suggest that perceiving discrimination to be threatening, not just that it occurred, relates to psychological health. Qualitative results suggest that for newcomer adolescents, discrimination is a highly prevalent and complex stressor with multiple psychosocial ramifications.

Understanding the U.S. Immigrant Paradox in Childhood and Adolescence

AbstractThe immigrant paradox in childhood and adolescence is a population‐level phenomenon wherein U.S.‐born youth (or more highly acculturated immigrants) have less optimal developmental outcomes than newcomer immigrant youth. These patterns, which hold true after accounting for the generally lower income and parent education levels among first‐generation immigrant families, have existed for decades in the United States. In this article, we address this topic in child development research, offering insights into studies to explain why the paradox occurs from the standpoint of both risk and resilience. We also present ideas for research and implications for developing policies and methods for effective practice with immigrant families.

The Language of Learning: The Academic Engagement of Newcomer Immigrant Youth

The current study uses an accelerated longitudinal design to examine the role of three dimensions of academic engagement (behavioral, relational, and cognitive) in explaining the influence of English language proficiency on newcomer immigrant youths' academic performance across adolescence. The sample included 354 youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. As established with other populations, the behavioral, relational, and cognitive dimensions of academic engagement were closely associated to one another and significantly contributed to academic performance. Mediation analyses revealed that immigrant youth with limited English language proficiency were more likely to experience low levels of relational and behavioral engagement, which contributed to lower levels of academic performance over time.

Migrating to Opportunities: How Family Migration Motivations Shape Academic Trajectories among Newcomer Immigrant Youth

This study describes the relative salience of educational and employment prospects in immigrant parents’ motivations for coming to the United States, and it links these types of parental migration motivations to newcomer immigrant youth's school performance. Data were drawn from the longitudinal immigrant student adaptation study, which includes families from Central America, China, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. Analyses (N= 256 families) involved quantitative descriptions of parents’ responses to open-ended questions and individual growth curve analysis of adolescents’ grade point average (GPA) trajectories over five consecutive years. Work prospects were more salient than educational opportunities in the migration motivations of this culturally diverse sample of families. Children whose parents more often mentioned schooling as a reason to immigrate had higher GPAs. The salience of work prospects in parents’ migration motivations was associated with a more rapid decline in GPA throughout high school years. Policy implication and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Academic trajectories of newcomer immigrant youth.

Immigration to the United States presents both challenges and opportunities that affect students' academic achievement. Using a 5-year longitudinal, mixed-methods approach, we identified varying academic trajectories of newcomer immigrant students from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico. Latent class growth curve analysis revealed that although some newcomer students performed at high or improving levels over time, others showed diminishing performance. Multinomial logistic regressions identified significant group differences in academic trajectories, particularly between the high-achieving youth and the other groups. In keeping with ecological-developmental and stage-environment fit theories, School Characteristics (school segregation rate, school poverty rate, and student perceptions of school violence), Family Characteristics (maternal education, parental employment, and household structure), and Individual Characteristics (academic English proficiency, academic engagement, psychological symptoms, gender, and 2 age-related risk factors, number of school transitions and being overaged for grade placement) were associated with different trajectories of academic performance. A series of case studies triangulate many of the quantitative findings as well as illuminate patterns that were not detected in the quantitative data. Thus, the mixed-methods approach sheds light on the cumulative developmental challenges that immigrant students face as they adjust to their new educational settings.

Supplemental Material for Academic Trajectories of Newcomer Immigrant Youth

Supplemental Material for Academic Trajectories of Newcomer Immigrant Youth

The Significance of Relationships: Academic Engagement and Achievement among Newcomer Immigrant Youth

Background/ContextNewcomer immigrant students are entering schools in the United States in unprecedented numbers. As they enter new school contexts, they face a number of challenges in their adjustment. Previous literature suggested that relationships in school play a particularly crucial role in promoting socially competent behavior in the classroom and in fostering academic engagement and school performance.PurposeThe aim of this study was to examine the role of school-based relationships in engagement and achievement in a population of newcomer immigrant students.Research DesignThe Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (LISA) used a mixed-methods approach, combining longitudinal, interdisciplinary, qualitative, and quantitative approaches to document adaptation patterns of 407 recently arrived immigrant youth from Central America, China, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico over the course of five years. Based on data from the last year of the study, we examine how the role of relationships mediates newcomers’ challenges with academic engagement and performance. We identify factors that account for patterns of academic engagement and achievement, including country of origin, gender, maternal education, English language proficiency, and school-based relationships.FindingsMultiple regression analyses suggest that supportive school-based relationships strongly contribute to both the academic engagement and the school performance of the participants. Qualitative interview data and case studies serve to elucidate the relational processes inside and outside school that influence different academic outcomes.

A Speech Community Model of Bilingual Education: Educating Latino Newcomers in the USA

With the rapid increase in immigration from Latin America to the USA, many US high schools are struggling with the thorny question of how best to educate newcomer immigrant youth with low levels of English proficiency. This paper examines what some might consider an anachronistic educational model – a segregated bilingual high school for Latino newcomers. Drawing on a qualitative case study of an unusually successful high school in Washington Heights, New York City, the paper argues that the school's vision of second language acquisition as a social process building on the speech community itself, and not just as the individual psycholinguistic process of students, is the key to its success. The paper specifies the factors characterising this speech community model of bilingual education. This school's anomalous success educating its immigrant Spanish-speaking population holds important lessons for the schooling of immigrant youth in an era of standards.