Acculturation and resilience of immigrant-origin youth: Do their school experiences reflect nonimmigrants’ “native supremacy”?

Abstract

The successful integration of immigrant-origin youth is a highly important issue for multiple stakeholders in many countries. It has important benefits both to countries of destination and countries of origin, as well as to immigrants and nonimmigrants. In this article, I examine immigrant-youth adaptation through the lens of a recently developed resilience model integrating acculturation and social psychological influences on adaptation. Who among immigrant-origin youth adapt well, academically, and socially, in the Greek school context? What is the role of acculturation in immigrant youth resilience? These questions are addressed using scientific evidence drawn from the Athena Studies of Resilient Adaptation (AStRA) project, a three-cohort, three-wave longitudinal project on immigrant-origin youth adaptation conducted in Greece, as well as from the international literature. Following an anti-racist research approach to understanding the AstRA findings, I will argue that the lived school experiences of immigrant-origin youth may be a reflection of societal-level xenophobic and anti-immigrant attitudes. Such systemic and structural racism is the key determinant of the difficulties they face in their adaptation. The findings presented reveal the need to promote an equitable and inclusive education that will be beneficial for all students promoting their well-being, and their sense of belonging to school and society.

Family Functioning, Identity Commitments, and School Value among Ethnic Minority and Ethnic Majority Adolescents

“…More specifically, in contexts where minority adolescents' ethnic identities are not welcome or threatened, these identities have been linked to lower school adjustment. Importantly, the Greek context can be characterized as such: there is a strong pressure for minority adolescents to assimilate and relinquish the heritage culture (Motti-Stefanidi, 2023;Pavlopoulos & Motti-Stefanidi, 2017). Arguably, ethnic identities are likely also part of minority adolescents' identity commitments, so that identity commitments might diminish school value over time only among minority youth in the current research context.…”

Emergence and evolution of developmental resilience science over half a century

“…Research on the neurobiology of resilience blossomed when the tools for reliable assessments of processes within the human body became more feasible, including assessments of stress biology, gene methylation, immune function, and brain function (Feder et al, 2019;Feldman, 2021;Gunnar, 2020;Masten & Cicchetti, 2016;McEwen, 2020;McLaughlin et al, 2020;Shonkoff et al, 2021). Research focused on sociocultural processes, acculturation, discrimination, social justice, and historical trauma gained more attention (e.g., Jones et al, 2023;Marks et al, 2020;Murry et al, 2023;Panter-Brick, 2023;Spencer, 2023;Motti-Stefanidi, 2023;Suárez-Orozco et al, 2018;Wilbur & Gone, 2023). Multisystem measures of protective factors became prominent, such as the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (Ungar & Liebenberg, 2011) and indices of positive (rather than adverse) childhood experiences, such as the Benevolent Childhood Experiences scale (Narayan et al, 2023).…”

Application of the Enduring Legacy of the Integrative Model to Investigating White Adolescent Ethnic-Racial Identity Development

“…The Integrative Model offers theoretical framing for why ethnicity and race tend to be separated when White youth talk about their ERI due to the social stratification of whiteness as normal and universal (Lewis, 2004;Perry, 2001) and the dominant ethnic identity as a national American identity (Doane, 1997;. This focus on ethnic and racial identity is also relevant in contexts outside of the USA, especially considering emerging research from Europe that examines the ways in which native supremacy and global white supremacy influence identity development for nonimmigrant individuals (often racialized as White) from various European contexts (e.g., Motti-Stefanidi, 2023). Furthermore, the concept of global white supremacy has been useful in understanding why ERI intervention work designed within the USA context is appearing to have ecological validity in communities outside of the USA (Juang et al, 2022;Umaña-Taylor, 2023).…”