Becoming American, Constructing Ethnicity: Immigrant Youth and Civic Engagement

Developing Transformative Space for Student Resistance: Latina/o Students’ Interruption of Subtractive Schooling Practices

“…That is, students employ their funds of knowledge (Gonzalez & Moll, 2002;Moll et al, 1992) in the form of experiences with discrimination and profiling in stores to form bonds with one another and with their teacher. This bonding fosters the establishment of solidarities across class, gender, and race/ethnicity (Stepick & Stepick, 2002). Further, students' identities as Latinas and Latinos connects them to a long legacy of activism in social movements informing a conception of themselves as legitimate members of their school.…”

The New Second Generation in Switzerland: Youth of Turkish and Former Yugoslav Descent in Zurich and Basel

“…Identification with a given collectively constructed identity (such as Swiss, Yugoslav, Serb, Muslim or Basler) must therefore be seen as a sign of both personal affinity with a given identification (or better yet, some of its parts) and as a strategy elaborated in consideration of the wider arrangements of power within a given society (Camilleri et al 1997). Recent theoretical emphasis on so-called reactive identities -identifications taken up as a result of social marginalisation and lack of other possibilities for identification (such as public discourse which excludes immigrants and their children from identifying with the national culture or demonises their religions and ways of life) -show the importance of wider social arrangements for the processes of personal identity construction (see Stepick & Stepick 2002;Pieterse 2007). …”

“…In the U.S., religion has often been theorised as one possible identification source for immigrant groups whose parents' ethno-national identifications have been looked down upon in their country of residence Stepick & Stepick 2002;Foner & Alba 2008). …”

Perceived effectiveness of conventional, non-conventional and civic forms of participation among minority and majority youth

“…Youth political and civic participation has now been examined using a range of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Stepick & Stepick, 2002;Jensen & Flanagan, 4 2008; Simon & Ruhs, 2008;Brooks, 2009). Despite these different methodologies, many studies over the last 10-15 years have reached the same conclusion: today's youth is neither apathetic nor disengaged.…”

“…Compared with research on participation by ethnic majority individuals, research on participation by ethnic minority individuals has been relatively recent and is not extensive, but has revealed that such populations are no less active than majority populations although the forms of participation in which minority individuals engage may be different in that they may focus particularly on issues affecting the minority ethnic group (Jensen, 2010;Seif, 2010;Stepick & Stepick, 2002;Stepick, Stepick & Labissiere, 2008). These studies have shown the importance of education, language proficiency and income (Wu, 2003), social trust, social links and culture (Fennema & Tillie, 2001) and the prevailing political opportunity structure (Ahmad & Pinnock, 2007;Penninx, Martiniello & Vertovec, 2004) for participation by minority individuals.…”