Support and setback: how religion and religious organisations shape the incorporation of unaccompanied indigenous youth

Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States

“…English language learning is widely perceived by youth as important for their participation in Los Angeles society. As unaccompanied young people, separation from left-behind family and the sparsity of local social networks can breed feelings of isolation, loneliness, and depression that can be combatted with local community participation (Canizales 2015(Canizales , 2018. Additionally, as the youth's tenure in the United States increases and they come of age, their curiosity for life beyond the workplace and the immediate ethnic enclave also tends to increase.…”

“…Many of today’s Latinx newcomers come of age in diverse household dynamics (Landale et al 2011) with precarious class and legal statuses (Massey, Durand, and Pren 2016) and complex educational and employment trajectories (Oropesa and Landale 2009). Indeed, the unprecedented rise of unaccompanied youth migration to the United States over the past decade has prompted researchers to investigate the diversification of transnational immigrant households, with children migrating to support left-behind adult parents and siblings (Canizales 2018; Heidbrink 2014, 2020); the tensions that emerge between school and work for migrant youth (Canizales n.d.; Diaz-Strong 2020; Martinez 2019); and youth’s own imagined futures in their transitions into adulthood (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming). Existing findings point to undocumented youth workers’ tendencies to be absent from school upon arriving in the United States and possibilities for stagnant or downward incorporation, but we know very little about their school-going experiences and processes of educational meaning making during their transitions into adulthood.…”

“…These studies situate undocumented immigrant youth’s incorporation within normative households, institutions, and imagined futures (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming). This assumption has been critiqued in recent research that points to the diversity of immigrant youth’s family dynamics (Landale, Thomas, and Van Hook 2011) along with the relative inaccessibility of K–12 education (Canizales 2018; Diaz-Strong 2020, 2021) and the turn to work for unaccompanied youth (Canizales n.d.; Martinez 2019). Researchers have examined how education and language learning can be reimagined to account for the maintenance of transnational life among undocumented newcomer youth and long-settled young adults, including those unaccompanied by a parent (Canizales and O’Connor forthcoming), noting the importance of maintaining native-language proficiency and promoting “translanguaging” (Bajaj and Bartlett 2017).…”

Unauthorized: Portraits of Latino Immigrants

“…Hence, it is also a misconception that all undocumented Latinx students are college-bound. Alongside youth who leave school early and enter the workforce are undocumented youth who migrate to the United States in search of work, whose experiences are similar to the adults included in Chapter Three (Canizales 2019).…”

Immigrants and wealth attainment: migration, inequality, and integration

“…Menjívar and Abrego 2012; Golash-Boza and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2013; Golash-Boza 2015;Waters and Kasinitz 2015;Canizales 2018). Latino immigrants and their descendants also experience discrimination in educational institutions, the labour market, and financial markets(Telles and Ortiz 2008;Agius Vallejo 2009Jiménez 2005;Valdez 2011;Vasquez 2011;Ochoa 2013; Canizales 2016, 2019;Rugh 2015).…”