Bridging Gaps For Immigrant-Origin Children

Families migrate to the United States for various reasons, including (but not limited to) political turmoil, gang violence, and poverty. But access to high-quality education also draws families here from all over the world. We are a country of immigrants—many of us have used the American education system to vault our way upwards. Unfortunately, policies and practices have not always successfully catered to the diversity amongst immigrant experiences.

In a recent report, Intersecting Inequalities: Research to Reduce Inequality for Immigrant Children, Carola Suárez-Orozco, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, and Vivian Tseng explore how poverty, residential segregation and educational outcomes are linked to children’s pre-migration and post-migration circumstances. The authors highlight factors that can pose challenges for immigrant-origin children arriving in the host country, including: parental education and employment, family language use, immigration policies, and various educational outcomes.

America is no stranger to large waves of migration. Between 1820 and 1965, there were large fluctuations of immigrants from mostly European countries. Now, 89 percent arrive from Latin America, Asia, Africa, Oceania, or the Caribbean, speaking over 460 languages. Although Spanish is the leading spoken first language, this remarkable diversity must still be acknowledged within both policy and practice.

“I miss them Mami. All those words I had to leave behind. Also, words that in English didn’t carry the same feeling.” -- Julia Alvarez

That quote came to me at lunchtime while I was writing this post, but Alvarez captures a sentiment held by many immigrant children facing assimilation challenges. In the U.S., 81 percent of these children "have parents who speak English and another language at home." Here in the nation’s capital, 15 percent of the population speaks a language other than English.

Immigrant children are overrepresented within low-income communities, where the population is economically, ethnically and/or linguistically homogeneous. As of 2013, out of 30.7 million children living in poverty, 31% (almost 9.5 million) were children of immigrants.

Immigrant children growing up in poverty often have negative educational experiences. They have to simultaneously master content while attaining academic language proficiency in English. In order to do so, they are frequently placed in various forms of remedial education programs that are segregated from mainstream educational offerings. Many of these programs are characterized by inadequate resources, uncertified personnel, and poor administrative support.

The language acquisition process can lead to a “silent phase.” That is, these children sometimes appear to shut down and withdraw from classes as they wrestle with the challenge of learning in a second language—even as they develop in that language. However, in comparison to monolingual children, bilingual children demonstrate higher levels of executive functioning skills and show some advantages in both their language and literacy skills.

To respond effectively to these students’ needs, stakeholders must understand and address immigrant students’ needs during their transition phase. The report recommends allowing students to comfortably share their personal stories amongst peers with both similar and diverse backgrounds. It also recommends that schools treat immigrant families as powerful resources for supporting their children’s success.

Parents of immigrant-origin children have diverse levels of educational attainment. According to the report, while immigrants make up 25 percent of all physicians in the U.S., a large share also have minimal education and limited job prospects. Immigrant parents living in poverty tend to have low levels of education and skills, resulting in parallel levels of employment possibilities. However, these parents also have important strengths, such as high marriage and employment rates.

As I’ve previously written, opportunities benefiting parental capabilities simultaneously improve child outcomes.The report notes that parental education is a powerful predictor of educational, economic, and life-course outcomes among immigrant-origin children and youth. Immigrant parents receive various levels of education in their home-countries. What can policymakers do to address disparities? The report recommends that they focus on participant retention and program quality within parental education intervention programs. Furthermore, ESL programs should provide appropriately trained professionals with research-based curricula.

The report’s authors identify potential avenues for future research to support immigrants’ success. Even though children of immigrants make up one-quarter of the child population in the U.S., programs and policies are rarely crafted with these children in mind. Additionally, existing data and research on these children contain large gaps. For example, the American Community Survey (ACS) does not collect information on generation status, which means that some differences within immigrant groups cannot be studied. Sociological research could help by identifying the wide variety of family dynamics and structure.

The nation’s foreign-born population is projected to reach 78 million by 2060, making up 18.8 percent of the total U.S. population, according to new Census Bureau population projections. So there’s no time like the present for improving intervention and support systems for immigrant-origin children and their families.

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