There are now nearly four million children born in the United States who have undocumented immigrant parents. In the current debates around immigration reform, policymakers often view immigrants as ...an economic or labor market problem to be solved, but the issue has a very real human dimension. Immigrant parents without legal status are raising their citizen children under stressful work and financial conditions, with the constant threat of discovery and deportation that may narrow social contacts and limit participation in public programs that might benefit their children. "Immigrants Raising Citizens" offers a compelling description of the everyday experiences of these parents, their very young children, and the consequences these experiences have on their children's development. "Immigrants Raising Citizens" challenges conventional wisdom about undocumented immigrants, viewing them not as lawbreakers or victims, but as the parents of citizens whose adult productivity will be essential to the nation's future. The book's findings are based on data from a three-year study of 380 infants from Dominican, Mexican, Chinese, and African American families, which included in-depth interviews, in-home child assessments, and parent surveys. The book shows that undocumented parents share three sets of experiences that distinguish them from legal-status parents and may adversely influence their children's development: avoidance of programs and authorities, isolated social networks, and poor work conditions. Fearing deportation, undocumented parents often avoid accessing valuable resources that could help their children's development--such as access to public programs and agencies providing child care and food subsidies. At the same time, many of these parents are forced to interact with illegal entities such as smugglers or loan sharks out of financial necessity. Undocumented immigrants also tend to have fewer reliable social ties to assist with child care or share information on child-rearing. Compared to legal-status parents, undocumented parents experience significantly more exploitive work conditions, including long hours, inadequate pay and raises, few job benefits, and limited autonomy in job duties. These conditions can result in ongoing parental stress, economic hardship, and avoidance of center-based child care--which is directly correlated with early skill development in children. The result is poorly developed cognitive skills, recognizable in children as young as two years old, which can negatively impact their future school performance and, eventually, their job prospects. "Immigrants Raising Citizens" has important implications for immigration policy, labor law enforcement, and the structure of community services for immigrant families. In addition to low income and educational levels, undocumented parents experience hardships due to their status that have potentially lifelong consequences for their children. With nothing less than the future contributions of these children at stake, the book presents a rigorous and sobering argument that the price for ignoring this reality may be too high to pay. The following chapters are contained in this book: (1) Emiliana, Elena, and Ling Raise Citizens in New York City; (2) The Hidden Face of New York: Undocumented Immigrant Parents' Routes to the City; (3) Life Under the Radar: Legal and Illegal Authorities and Public Programs; (4) Documentation Status and Social Ties: Households, Networks, and Organizations in the Lives of Undocumented Parents and Their Children; (5) The Worst Jobs in Urban America: Undocumented Working Parents in the New York Economy; (6) How Parents' Undocumented Status Matters for Children's Early Learning; and (7) Providing Access to the American Dream for the Children of Undocumented Parents. "Overview of Study Design and Methods" is appended.
Child Migration in Africa Hashim, Iman; Thorsen, Dorte
2011, 2011., 2011-02-10, 20110101
eBook, Book
Open access
Child Migration in Africa explores the mobility of children without their parents within West Africa. Drawing on the experiences of children from rural Burkina Faso and Ghana, the book provides rich ...material on the circumstances of children’s voluntary migration and their experiences of it. Their accounts challenge the normative ideals of what a ‘good’ childhood is, which often underlie public debates about children’s migration, education and work in developing countries. The comparative study of Burkina Faso and Ghana highlights that social networks operate in ways that can be both enabling and constraining for young migrants, as can cultural views on age- and gender-appropriate behaviour. The book questions easily made assumptions regarding children's experiences when migrating independently of their parents and contributes to analytical and cross-cultural understandings of childhood. Part of the groundbreaking Africa Now series, Child Migration in Africa is an important and timely contribution to an under-researched area.
Childhood and Migration in Europe Ní Laoire, Caitríona; Carpena-Méndez, Fina; Tyrrell, Naomi ...
2011, 20160523, 2012, 2016-05-23, 2016-05-31, 2011-02-01, 20110101
eBook
Challenging dominant adult-centric perspectives on contemporary global migration flows and presenting understandings of the lives of migrant children and young people from their own experiences, this ...book presents a detailed exploration of children's lives in four different migrant populations in Ireland. It challenges the prevailing assimilationist discourses underlying much existing research and policy, which often construct migrant children as deficient in different ways and in need of 'being integrated'.
In this book, internationally migrant families invite us to listen to the storylines of their mostly muted voices as they navigate the local schools in their new cultural context. They call us to ...hear them as they grapple with issues they encounter. They implore us to feel like an outsider and see the school as a foreign culture with language and communication barriers. The book is organized to enhance this carework. Each chapter begins with a vignette that includes the voices of one or more members of international migrating families, while introducing the context of the chapter. At the end of each chapter readers will find specific implications to consider. These are constructed with preservice teachers, practicing teachers, and educational administrators in mind.As you read each chapter, there is the call for school transformation. The families in this book entreat school personnel to engage with international migrant families and to embrace a risk and resilience model as we strive together for success. These storylines challenge us to examine our personal storylines for biases and deficit understandings and call us all to purposefully rewrite these in the spirit of possibilities as the families in this book have embodied for us.
Abstract
Policies that expand the rights of marginalized groups provide an additional level of structural integration, but these changes do not always come with broad social acceptance or ...recognition. What happens when a legally marginalized group attains increased rights but not full political or social inclusion? In particular, what are the mental health implications of these transitions for impacted groups? We bring together theories of liminal legality and stress process to offer a framework for understanding how expansions in the legal rights of a highly politicized and vulnerable social group can be initially beneficial, but can attenuate due to renewed or new stress events, chronic stressors, and anticipatory stressors. We use the case of Latina/o immigrant youth who transitioned from undocumented legal status to temporarily protected status under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Analyses of representative California statewide survey data from 2007 to 2018, combined with surveys and in-depth interviews with DACA recipients, suggest that without full social and structural inclusion, legal transitions that expand rights will produce short-term psychological benefits that do not hold up over time.
Dreams and Nightmares takes a critical look at the challenges and dilemmas of immigration policy and practice in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. The experiences of children and youth ...provide a prism through which the interwoven dynamics and consequences of immigration policy become apparent. Using a unique sociolegal perspective, authors Zatz and Rodriguez examine the mechanisms by which immigration policies and practices mitigate or exacerbate harm to vulnerable youth. They pay particular attention to prosecutorial discretion, assessing its potential and limitations for resolving issues involving parental detention and deportation, unaccompanied minors, and Dreamers who came to the United States as young children. The book demonstrates how these policies and practices offer a means of prioritizing immigration enforcement in ways that alleviate harm to children, and why they remain controversial and vulnerable to political challenges.
This edited volume investigates how the role of leadership in education in various countries from around the world have been designed and implemented through educational policies and national ...cultures to meet the needs of new, displaced, and mobile groups of migrants and refugees.
The presence of students for whom the school language is not their first language creates unique challenges and opportunities for teachers. This book provides an accessible guide to multilingual ...teaching using Linguistically Appropriate Practice (LAP) in diverse classrooms worldwide. It is firmly grounded in the latest research on multilingual learners and takes a realistic approach to teaching in linguistically diverse schools today. The author argues that successful multilingual teaching is an option for all teachers, and that it has benefits for every child in the classroom, as well as the wider school community. The book: \- provides profiles of LAP in action around the world; \- explains the relationship between theory and multilingual practice; \- lays out the characteristics of the LAP teacher and the LAP classroom; \- discusses challenges that have been identified by teachers using LAP in their classrooms; \- provides a step-by-step guide to implementing and enriching LAP; \- includes resources to support multilingual teaching and learning. This book is an invaluable support and inspiration for practising teachers and trainee teachers. It will help them transform their classrooms into multilingual environments where all children have equal opportunity to participate, learn and grow.
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