Saving Face: A mismatch in educational cultural capital among undocumented chinese Immigrants in the US

• In Event: 3251 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 2. Asian Immigrants, Citizenship, and Belonging

Abstract

Scholars have long argued that family practices, conceptualized as cultural capital, directly impact a child’s educational outcome (Calarco 2014; D.H. Kim and Schneider 2005; Lareau 2000; 2011; Weininger, Lareau, and Conley 2015). Studies that focus on cultural capital and immigrant youth often find that mismatches between cultural capital and the field of the US form powerful educational barriers (Cherng and Ho 2017). Following three undocumented and mixed-status Chinese families in New York City for over three years, we show that the practice of saving face can hinder children’s education in the US. Our findings contribute to a growing body of work that uses a Bourdieusian framework to examine the educational lives of immigrant families.

Authors

• Jia-Lin Liu, New York University

• Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, New York University