Learning to Belong? Late-Arrival Chinese Immigrant Youths' Civic Identities and Their Social Studies Learning

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Youth Experiences of Social Studies and Civic Education (Table 13)

Abstract

The ongoing US-China adversary occupies media headlines, but there is insufficient research on the impact of this adversarial discourse on social studies education or on Chinese American students’ civic identities. Through interviewing youth who immigrated from China and enrolled in US secondary schools, this research explores these youth’s civic identities, their social studies learning experiences, and the relationship between the two. Preliminary findings show that the youth adopt a transnational citizenship discourse that challenges the US-China binary; through centering US identity on the history of immigration, they use their social studies learning to resist the ostracization they face as Chinese immigrants; while they disagree with the dominant discourses of citizenship defined by nation-states, they feel powerless in changing those discourses.

Author

• Chenyu Li, Indiana University - South Bend