Immigrant-Origin Students With Disabilities’ Barriers and Strategies to Access Education: A Systematic Review

• In Event: Quest for Access to Education: Experiences of In/Exclusion at the Intersection of Migration and Disability

Abstract

The field of special education has been making strides to better serve culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students who are receiving special education services. This effort has been largely focused on examining the disproportionate representation based on students' race (Artiles et al., 2010; Bal et al., 2014; Harry & Klingner, 2022; , Sullivan & Bal, 2013) and documenting experiences of students of color receiving special education services (Connor, 2008; Craft & Howley, 2018; Miller & Kurth, 2022). A group within the CLD student population that warrants greater attention is those who are living at the intersection of being disabled and having immigrant-origin (Strom, 2021). Bal and Perzigian’s (2013) systematic literature review on evidence-based intervention for immigrant students who are experiencing academic and behavioral challenges identified six empirical studies published between 1975-2010. More recently, Malloy and colleagues’ (2023) highlighted the paucity of empirical studies examining the experiences of refugee children with disabilities. The current systematic literature review aims to contribute to this understudied area of educational research by focusing on the context of the U.S. and its special education system.
Thus, this systematic literature synthesizes and examines peer reviewed, empirical studies published between 2013 and 2024, that documented the experience of students of immigrant-origin who are receiving special education services in the U.S. In order to be included in the review, participants in the study had to be first or second generation immigrant or refugee students who had an IEP, family members of such students, and/or those who are directly working with such students in school. Electronic database search across PsycInfo, ERIC, and Education Research Complete, as well as hand search yielded 12 articles that met these criteria. I analyzed the selected articles using a combination of tenets drawn from DisCrit (Annamma et al. 2013) and the concept of citizenship (Waldschmit & Sepulchre, 2019) with two objectives: (1) to identify the barriers that students of immigrant origin experience when accessing special education services, and (2) to highlight strategies used to negotiate the multiple marginalization experienced by students or their family members. Furthermore, implications for research and practice that could guide towards remedy and repair for this community is discussed.

Author

• Miso Kwak, University of Wisconsin - Madison