Language Brokering Contexts and Behavioral and Emotional Adjustment Among Latino Parents and Adolescents

Abstract

This study examined behavioral and emotional adjustment in family contexts in which there was high versus low demand for adolescents to serve as language brokers in a sample of 73 recently immigrated Latino families with middle-school-aged adolescents. Language brokering was conceptualized as a family process rather than merely an individual phenomenon. Multiple agents were used to assess language brokering and parent and youth adjustment. Results indicated that high language brokering contexts had negative associations with family stress, parenting effectiveness, and adolescent adjustment in terms of academic functioning, socioemotional health, and substance use. The findings are particularly important given the limited and mixed findings from formative research on language brokering, particularly in areas within the United States with emerging immigrant populations. Findings suggest the need for advancing practices that increase language and cultural supports for immigrant families and support parents' efforts to foster positive youth and family adjustment.

The Familial Context of Adolescent Language Brokering Within Immigrant Chinese Families in Canada

“…Umana-Taylor's (2003) opinion piece and a recent review (Morales and Hanson 2005) suggest that parents' dependence on their children may diminish their authority, leading to a reversal of roles within the family that negatively affects the parent-child relationship. Supporting this deficit model hypothesis, several studies have found more frequent language brokering or a higher demand for language brokering to be associated with greater family conflict, higher levels of family stress, and lower levels of parenting effectiveness (Jones and Trickett 2005;Martinez et al 2009;Trickett and Jones 2007). However, Chao (2006) found that, for Mexican American youth, language brokering was positively associated with adolescents' respect for both parents.…”

“…In one qualitative study, descriptive accounts of children feeling stress and burdened from language brokering highlight potential disadvantages of language brokering, such as children going to bed well after midnight to accommodate school as well as family obligations, feeling anxious about the consequences of making mistakes during translation, and feeling resentment from the stress and responsibility imposed by family members (Hall and Sham 1998). Quantitative research has found various measures of language brokering frequency to be associated with greater internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Chao 2006;Martinez et al 2009), and lower self-esteem (Oznobishin and Kurman 2009). Taken together, prior research suggests that the psychological experience associated with language brokering may vary greatly.…”

“…In light of the mixed findings regarding the psychological health of language brokers and their relationships with their families, theory and research have begun to shift focus from the individual language broker to the contexts in which language brokering takes place (e.g., Dorner et al 2008;Martinez et al 2009;Oznobishin and Kurman 2009;Trickett et al 2010;Wu and Kim 2009). In particular, cultural-familial environments that may facilitate or complicate the language brokering process and the psychological development of children and their families have become of interest.…”

Integrating Biomarkers into Research with Latino Immigrants in the United States

“…Senior staff from the LRT and the farmworker organization collaborated on the design of the interview. Due to its brevity, specific questions were drawn from a larger assessment battery that had been extensively developed by the LRT for use with the Latino population in Oregon (see Martinez & Eddy, 2005;Martinez et al, 2009). A focus group composed of Latino immigrant farmworkers reviewed the questionnaire, and changes were made per focus group findings.…”

Literacy Brokering among the International Students of a Public University

“…The present study's findings, namely the brokerage of genre and literacy practice of cultural exchange have demonstrated the existence of sociocultural tensions within the formal domain of a classroom or in this case, a decontextualised classroom. As such, while most research on literacy brokering are currently centered on immigrants' home and family (See Mihut, 2014;Perry, 2014;Hua & Constigan, 2011;Martinez, McClure & Eddy, 2009), this study has proven that the classroom setting also possesses similar breadth and depth which would enable researchers to obtain fresh sociocultural discoveries and insights.…”