Support, Setback, and Exploitation: How Religion Shapes the Adaptation of Unaccompanied Latino Youth in LA

• In Event: 305 - Section on Sociology of Religion Paper Session. Race, Immigration, and Religion

Abstract

Grounded in segmented assimilation theory, immigrant youth incorporation scholarship focuses on two socializing institutions, family and schools. Churches are recognized as pillars of solidarity and support within immigrant communities, but research focuses particularly on church participation among adult migrants or the family unit as a whole. Drawing on twenty-four months of participant observation of two Catholic churches and twenty-five in-depth interviews with unauthorized, unaccompanied Guatemalan youth church members in a Los Angeles, California community, this study examines the complex role of the church and religion in youth’s adaptation trajectories. This research finds that while churches and religious practices provide spaces and resources of spiritual support, unaccompanied youth also experience adaptational setback as they are guided to rely solely on faith for provision. Churches may also exploit youth who are vulnerable and seeking social inclusion by requiring money, manual labor, and service in exchange for associational membership and good standing within the church. In this way, social ties developed through church can therefore vary from traditionally supportive surrogate families to networks of exploitation that exacerbate poverty, isolation, and mental, emotional and physical health instability. This investigation elucidates that unaccompanied, indigenous Guatemalan Maya children are especially vulnerable to exploitation and social marginality as they are disparaged for their ethnic and cultural differences within the Los Angeles Latino community. This study contributes to the growing scholarship on unaccompanied children migrating from South to North, and extends sociological studies of immigrant assimilation and youth.

Author

• Stephanie Lynnette Canizales, University of Southern California