Moving across the Urban/Suburban Divide: Age Differences in Children’s Adjustment to New Schools

• In Event: 523 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 13. Influence of Family Context and Friends/Peers

Abstract

Where families live is still a major determinant of children’s school quality, with significant implications for social inequality and economic mobility. Obstacles to residential mobility frequently restrict the access of low income families to higher performing schools. Residential mobility programs, which facilitate moves to lower poverty and more racially diverse neighborhoods, are one policy avenue for alleviating these residential barriers. Recent work suggests that mobility programs positively affect the long-term outcomes of youth who move while they are young, but not those who move at older ages. However, scholarship that examines how youth experience residential mobility programs across a broad range of ages remains limited, and as a result we have few explanations of the processes that underpin this age variation in youth outcomes following residential mobility. This study capitalizes on a residential mobility program in Baltimore, MD through which families moved from the city of to surrounding suburban counties, to examine how low income, African American students, ages 9-18, experienced dramatic changes in their school contexts after moving. Using in-depth qualitative interviews, this study examines how age plays a role in the process of adjusting to suburban schools and establishing new social networks after moving. Complimenting earlier quantitative findings, this paper illustrates that youth developmental stages intersect with their new social contexts, such that elementary and early middle school students more easily establish new friendships and are pulled into social networks by their peers, while adolescents often self-isolate after moving and more frequently face social exclusion.

Author

• Anna Catherine Rhodes, Johns Hopkins University