In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, the United States has been experiencing large scale and continuing immigration of people from around the world, but particularly Latin America and Asia. Estimates are that by 2020, 15% of the U.S. population will be foreign born, surpassing the impacts of immigration on the U.S. at the turn of the 20th Century. This makes understanding processes of acculturation and their relation to successful social adjustment, especially educational attainment, critical issues. This proposal responds to the call in the report Questions that Matter (SSRC, 2005) for research that examines the impacts of ethnic identity, family, and community factors on the successful transition from high school to college. It complements the literature on the adaptation and adjustment of immigrant and second generation youth to secondary schools. It amplifies recent work supported by NICHD that focuses on educational success among immigrant children and the development of skills to have a successful, productive, and healthy adult life (Glick &White, 2003;Fuligni &Witkow, 2004;NIH News, 2004). More broadly, the proposed study focuses on resilience factors among immigrant children and their families that promote the ability of immigrant youth to take succeed in this important developmental transition. The goal of this application is to carry out a study of immigrant students who have entered Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, to delineate the key processes of adaptation and adjustment that immigrant youth and their families go through to successfully negotiate life in the United States. The proposed study will employ focus groups with 200 immigrant students to understand in-depth their experiences of adaptation and adjustment to U.S. society and the factors that helped them successfully attain college admission. A final product of the proposed study will be the identification of key items for a new acculturation measure.
In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, the United States has been experiencing large scale and continuing immigration of people from around the world, but particularly Latin America and Asia. Estimates are that by 2020, 15% of the U.S. population will be foreign born, surpassing the impacts of immigration on the U.S. at the turn of the 20th Century. This makes understanding processes of acculturation and their relation to successful social adjustment, especially educational attainment, critical issues. The future health of American society and of young adults who are immigrants or children of immigrants is dependent on their successful educational attainment and adaptation and adjustment.
| Guarnaccia, Peter J; Hausmann-Stabile, Carolina (2016) Acculturation and Its Discontents: A Case for Bringing Anthropology Back into the Conversation. Sociol Anthropol (Alhambra) 4:114-124 |
