The Role of Schools and Other Community-Based Institutions in the Lives of Immigrant Families

• In Event: Highlighted Session: NGO and Community-Based Education: Global Migration and Identities

Proposal

This presentation will present findings that are part of a dissertation that studies the role community-based institutions, particularly schools, play in the lives of immigrant families in one small town to illuminate the ways in which these institutions can foster a sense of belonging. It is rooted in sociological and educational literature.
For immigrant families, entering a new community involves more than securing work and housing and enrolling their children in school. They must also establish connections and with key institutions as a way to find a social support system and access to resources. It is important to understand the relationship between immigrant families and their new community in order to allow for positive and productive relationships between families and the institutions they interact with to ease the arrival of these families.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical framework for this presentation relies on the concept of belonging and Golash-Boza and Valdez’s nested contexts of reception (2018). Belonging is central to this research because it is a significant indicator of the likelihood of success of resettlement or integration of immigrants. Yuval-Davis (2006) offers an analytic framework for the study of belonging based on classical and current sociological and psychological theory which is employed in this study.
Because a sense of belonging is inherently place-based, the framework of “nested contexts of reception” provides a useful lens to understand the ways in which external political and cultural factors impact integration experiences of individuals based on geographic location. It builds on Portes and Rumbaut’s (2006) context of reception model that seeks to understand the immigrant experience by looking at the political and social context in the host country. The framework of nested contexts of reception adds the additional nuance that immigrants are not entering into a single context of reception, but that they are confronted with different legal and social realities at the international, federal, state and local levels, meaning the integration experience of immigrants can vary greatly depending on location (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018).
Communities are organized into a network of institutions that fulfil a variety of roles for the members of the community. This network of loosely connected individuals and institutions make up a community and are ideal for the spread of information and resources (Granovetter, 1973). Community based institutions include churches, schools, libraries, social organizations such as immigrant associations or fraternal orders, government agencies, commercial centers and even social media (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). These institutions fill a particular niche and help to meet the physical and social needs of individuals in the community through the resources they provide, such as food pantries and access to medical care (Stanley, 2008) and contact with these types of institutions can impact the integration experience of immigrants (Bloemraad et al., 2008) and have been found to have a beneficial effect on immigrants (Kesler & Bloemraad, 2010). Institutions can help foster a feeling of belonging by providing membership in a social group. Gonzales and his colleagues (2020) define “community membership, then, as a feeling that one has invested part of themselves to become a member, earning the right to belong,” (p. 64) a useful way to conceptualize the ways that connecting with community institutions provides for personal identification with the larger group in a new place (Yuval-Davis, 2006) which is a necessary element for development of a sense of belonging.
In addition to tangible resources, involvement in community-based institutions provides access to social capital. Stanton-Salazar (2011) provides a useful definition of social capital, saying it consists of resources and other forms of social support that are embedded within an individual’s network which are accessible through direct or indirect contact with individuals situated within community institutions. He points out that non-family adults play a crucial role in the integration experiences of immigrant youth, and typically relationships are formed with non-kin adults through interactions that take place within the context of community institutions.
In order to understand the network of community based institutions in one small town in the northeastern United States​​ and how they impact the lives of immigrant families, digital ethnography and ethnographic interviews were conducted at community based institutions identified as significant by immigrant students in the local middle school and their families. Institutions included the school, the local health center, library, churches, the recreation and police departments, food organizations, and stores central to the community.
In advance of the interviews, and in place of ethnographic observations that would have been a part of an in-person research plan, digital ethnography (Hine, 2011) was conducted for each institution selected. This digital ethnography took the form of examining the website and available social media presence of the institution (Hine, 2015) along with other publicly available documents, such as articles and editorials in the two local newspapers, in order to understand the mission and regular services of each institution.
Key actors at each community-based institution were then selected for inclusion in the project and recruited to participate in a semi-structured ethnographic interview (Spradley, 1979). These interviews will seek to understand how the stated mission of the institutions aligns with what is happening on the ground. Because no research conducted in the aftermath of the pandemic can be conducted without acknowledging the effects the coronavirus pandemic has had on all levels of individual and community life, additional questions will ask them how their mission, and the way it has been executed, changed since the beginning of the social upheaval that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic. Analytic memos will be recorded immediately following the interview (Horvat, 2013). Data collection has been completed in the Fall of 2021 and findings will be available at the 2022 CIES annual meeting.

Author

• Brittany Kenyon, Teachers College