Developing Southeast Asian Immigrant Youth as Agents for Social Change in North Carolina

• In Event: 29.075 - Exploring Disaggregation With the Asian Pacific American Community

Abstract

This two-year ethnographic study focuses on twenty adolescent youth with diverse ethnic backgrounds from Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, and Laos. Data were collected from participant observations, focus groups, interviews, and archival data to document how one grassroots organization in North Carolina was able to raise the critical consciousness of Southeast Asian immigrant youth participants through purposeful social justice programming. Results reveal the ways in immigrants navigated systems of social and cultural expectations that have historically positioned them in the margins in their pursuits for education. This project gives voice to a new generation of Southeast Asian immigrants by honoring and validating their lives, experiences, and contributions in the fight for equity in a highly racialized community in North Carolina.

Authors

• Lan Quach Kolano, University of North Carolina - Charlotte

• Liv Thorstensson Davila, University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign