"Family Is Where I Go To": Parents' Role in Undocumented Immigrant Youth's Civic Engagement

• In Event: Social Capital in a Time of Uncertainty: New Evidence From a National Effort to Study the Impact of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals

Abstract

This paper examines how undocumented immigrant families’ social capital influences and supports undocumented youths’ civic and political engagement. Although undocumented immigrant parents have limited civic opportunities due to their status, their strong social ties to immigrant communities and access to information about immigration policy information serve as resources to encourage their undocumented children’s civic engagement and community socialization.

According to the literature, youth’s civic and political participation can be shaped in two ways. First, through a top-down model, whereby parents influence their children by actively participating and engaging in civic activities. While educational institutions can also impact youth, parents are the most influential in encouraging their children’s civic and political participation (Andolina et al. 2003; Warren and Wicks 2011). Second, the trickle-up model is demonstrated when youths take agency not only in actively engaging themselves but also politicizing their parents (Bloemraad and Trost 2008; Terriquez and Kwon 2014), a model most observed in immigrant families. According to Bloemraad and Trost (2008), distinct from the first-generation immigrants who often remain uninvolved, 1.5 and second-generation immigrants are usually more fluent in English and have more opportunities to get exposed to local politics and programs through schools and various mainstream media. However, little is known about this parent-child interaction in civic engagement in undocumented, or mixed-status, families. According to Yoshikawa (2011), parents’ lack of legal status could impede or limit young children from the benefits of government resources and programs due to fear of sharing their information with the governmental organizations.

In this paper, we examine undocumented immigrant parents’ role and agency in influencing their children’s participation in the DACA policy program, which requires similar levels of vulnerability to the programs examined in Yoshikawa’s study.

Our findings are based on a qualitative analysis of 100 interviews with undocumented immigrant youth in Phoenix, Arizona, to examine the impact of DACA, including their motivations and implications of applying for and participating in this policy program. Living in a state with numerous anti-immigrant policies, many of Arizona’s undocumented immigrants may feel apprehensive about engaging and participating in their local civic organizations. Our findings demonstrate that although undocumented parents cannot engage in civic and policy programs, they are closely involved and influential in encouraging their children’s participation in the DACA program. According to Kasinitz et al. (2008), while many 1.5 generation immigrant youth move away from their ethnic enclaves, most first-generation parents remain and stay closely connected to their immigrant communities and ties. Thus, first-generation parents maintain a strong social capital that serves as resources for their children’s civic engagement.
This paper provides a significant contribution to the growing field of research about undocumented students and supports for these students’ civic and political engagement. While education scholarship has a shared consensus about the positive impact of immigrant parents’ social capital on children’s educational achievement, little is known about their influence on their children’s civic and political engagement. This paper will add to the literature on family engagement in encouraging civic engagement among immigrant youth.

Authors

• Jaein Lee, Harvard University

• Angie Bautista-Chavez, Harvard University