Engaging the Transnational Lives of Immigrant Youth in High Schools

• In Event: 56.032 - Research to Action: Equity and Opportunity for Immigrant English Learners in High Schools

Abstract

Objective
Recently arrived immigrant youth negotiate a complex process of acculturation, in which they are simultaneously “here” and “there” thinking about family members and communities “back home” and responsibilities and lives in the US. While most schools do little to appreciate and build on students’ transnational ties, and continue to encourage a liberal assimilationist paradigm, the schools described in this paper provide portable lessons for how schools might recognize students’ transnational experiences to support engagement in school. Drawing on ethnographic data from schools serving newcomer immigrant youth in New York City, we argue that a culturally responsive curriculum for immigrant students must recognize and engage students’ transnational experiences and attachments.

Perspective
Our research draws on the scholarship in diaspora studies and transnationalism to consider how immigrant youth living in New York City think about their identities and their futures. We also engage the scholarship on immigrant education and culturally relevant pedagogy to consider how schools might build on students’ transnational connections. The questions addressed in our paper are: What are immigrant youths’ transnational attachments and how do these attachments shape their identities and future aspirations? How do schools recognize and draw on students’ cultural, linguistic and transnational experiences to create a culturally relevant pedagogy?

Methods
In the tradition of school ethnography, our research explored the everyday interactions
and practices of schools that inform how youth make sense of their identities and their futures as new members of the United States. This paper draws data from a larger study that documented the trajectories of a cohort of students at the two high schools from the second semester of their senior year through their first year of college or their first year after high school. In this paper, we focus on findings that emerged in the course of our research related to students’ narrations of transnational attachments and the ways the schools engaged and recognized the transnational realities of their lives.

Findings
Our data demonstrate that the recognition of students’ transnational experiences and attachments promoted school cultures where students felt free to express themselves, to use their emerging language skills and where students don’t feel that they have to give up their identities to belong.

Significance:
This study extends the knowledge base of field-based research in high schools that are successful in serving immigrant ELLs, illuminating how a shift in approach can drastically improve students’ experiences at the classroom level and lead to long term success.

Author

• Stacey J. Lee, University of Wisconsin - Madison