Schooling Pathways of Newcomer Immigrant Youth (original) (raw)

Helping Young Refugees and Immigrants Succeed, 2010

Abstract

Outside the family, schools are the most important context of social development shaping the lives of newcomer immigrant youth. It is the first sustained, meaningful, and enduring site of participation in an institution of the new society (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 2001). It is in schools that immigrant youth begin to acquire the academic, linguistic, and cultural knowledge necessary for their success in the United States. Immigrant students, new to the American system, rely heavily on school personnel—teachers, counselors, coaches, and others—to guide them in the steps necessary to successfully complete their schooling and, with luck, to go on to college. It is through their interactions with peers, teachers, and school staff that newly arrived immigrant youth experiment with new identities and learn to calibrate their ambitions (Stanton-Salazar 2004). These relationships serve to shape their characters, open new opportunities, as well as set constraints to future pathways. It is in their engagement with schooling, broadly defined, that immigrant youth most profoundly transform themselves.

Carola Suárez-Orozco hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Carola know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.