This book offers an innovative look at the pre- and post-migration educational experiences of immigrant young adults with a particular focus on members of the Latino community. Combining quantitative data with original interviews, this book provides an engaging and nuanced look at a population that is both ubiquitous and overlooked, challenging existing assumptions about those categorized as ‘dropouts’ and closely examining the historical contexts for educational interruption in the chosen subgroup. The combination of accessible prose and compelling new statistical data appeals to a wide audience, particularly academic professionals, education practitioners and policy-makers.
This book offers an innovative look at the pre- and post-migration educational experiences of immigrant young adults with a particular focus on members of the Latino community. Combining quantitative data with original interviews, this book provides an engaging and nuanced look at a population that is both ubiquitous and overlooked, challenging existing assumptions about those categorized as ‘dropouts’ and closely examining the historical contexts for educational interruption in the chosen subgroup. The combination of accessible prose and compelling new statistical data appeals to a wide audience, particularly academic professionals, education practitioners and policy-makers.
Latino Immigrant Youth and Interrupted Schooling: Dropouts, Dreamers and Alternative Pathways to College
224
Latino Immigrant Youth and Interrupted Schooling: Dropouts, Dreamers and Alternative Pathways to College
224Hardcover
-
SHIP THIS ITEMTemporarily Out of Stock Online
-
PICK UP IN STORE
Your local store may have stock of this item.
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
This book offers an innovative look at the pre- and post-migration educational experiences of immigrant young adults with a particular focus on members of the Latino community. Combining quantitative data with original interviews, this book provides an engaging and nuanced look at a population that is both ubiquitous and overlooked, challenging existing assumptions about those categorized as ‘dropouts’ and closely examining the historical contexts for educational interruption in the chosen subgroup. The combination of accessible prose and compelling new statistical data appeals to a wide audience, particularly academic professionals, education practitioners and policy-makers.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783093434 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Multilingual Matters Ltd. |
| Publication date: | 02/17/2015 |
| Series: | Bilingual Education & Bilingualism Series , #100 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.21(w) x 9.56(h) x 0.74(d) |
About the Author
Marguerite Lukes is the Director of National Initiatives for the Internationals Network for Public Schools and Assistant Professor at City University of New York's LaGuardia Community College. She is also Co-Chair of the Adult Literacy and Adult Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association and an Executive Board Member for the New York State Association for Bilingual Education. With almost thirty years of experience in the field, the primary focus of her research is education policy, particularly concerning the experiences of immigrant language learners from high school level and beyond.
Read an Excerpt
Latino Immigrant Youth and Interrupted Schooling
Dropouts, Dreamers and Alternative Pathways to College
By Marguerite Lukes
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2015 Marguerite LukesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-345-8
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Who, What and Where
The line seemed endless. Starting at the top of the narrow stairs, it wound down the dimly lit hallway with its flickering lights, snaked out the door and onto the sidewalk. Every few moments, someone joined and the line kept growing. I paused to watch and heard the sounds of Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, Polish and Russian being spoken. What were all these people waiting for? I paused near two young men in paint-spattered jeans and baseball caps. '¿Qué se ofrece aquí?' (What's being offered here?), I asked. 'Clases de inglés. Pero para grandes' (English classes, but for grown-ups), they replied. Now it all made sense. This was not some retail giveaway or a visit from a world leader, but a quite typical class registration night at a neighborhood community center. Individuals in the growing line stood, crouched, leaned and balanced from foot to foot, waiting to be interviewed and tested, hoping to be among the lucky immigrants who would score a seat in a preparation class in English as a second language (ESL) or general education development (GED).
You may have a mental image of these aspiring immigrants, adults who left school in their youth, you assume, prematurely dropped out, succumbed to the many teenage temptations that can distract and derail a high school education. A closer look, however, reveals something surprising and perplexing. Among the middle-aged adults and grandparent types are young people. Not just a handful of young people, but young people out in force. Were you to ask them how old they are, they would tell you 23, 22, 21, 20, 19 years old; still others would tell you proudly that they have just turned 18 or are 17 and a handful would shuffle their feet, look both ways and sheepishly admit that they are 16, or even 15, too young to enroll in adult education classes but old enough to lie about their age because they are desperate to attend and complete their high school requirements so they can improve their job status and hopefully enroll in college.
Why would young people show up en masse to enroll in adult education classes, classes designed for working adult immigrants seeking to learn English or develop their job skills? Why adult education and why not high school? There is Victor, who came to the US from Honduras alone at age 15, traveling north with a neighbor, then alone on trains and walking. Now 19, tall and fashionably dressed, he is hoping to enroll in GED class. Farther down the line, sandwiched between older adults, is Elena. She is 16, she tells me, looking at her feet, not really old enough to enroll in this adult education class. Why is she not in high school? 'High School no era para mi', she says – high school was not for her – and please, don't tell them her age so she can get a chance at a seat. Ramón is 22 and he is waiting to see if he can enroll in a class to learn English, worried that there is a test that will disqualify him. He came to the US as a teen to work and more than 50 hours of his week are spent at a neighborhood restaurant, washing dishes and preparing food, so that he can send money home to his mother and younger siblings in Mexico. He has never attended a school in the US and now, at age 22, the idea of being in a classroom with other students is nerve-wracking. In Mexico he left school after the second grade and never went back. Altagracia is near the front of the line. She is all of 19, poised and dressed like a professional. College is her goal and she is intent on getting there no matter what it takes.
This scene, and the young people involved, plays itself out again and again in adult education programs across the US – at neighborhood social service agencies, at public schools, churches, libraries and community colleges. My experiences over the course of more than two decades with the Latino immigrant students described in this scene – in my role as a teacher, program developer, researcher and evaluator – are what planted the seeds for this book. Again and again I read research on Latinos and education: the high dropout rates, the failure to enroll in or complete college, the lack of educational aspirations. Coming from my graduate classes and still carrying books from the library, I would visit programs and talk to students like Victor, Elena, Ramón and Altagracia, and come away frustrated by the disconnect between what the research said about the glaring gap between dropout rates of US-born and foreign-born Latinos – 11% versus 34%. I was in the library reading about Latino dropouts and low educational aspirations and in the field seeing young adults of high school age out en masse filling the seats of adult education classes and striving to move up in the world. Nowhere in any scholarly work or in public policy literature could I find a discussion of immigrants who had dropped out of school and then dropped back in, nor the nuances of their experiences or the implications for public policy.
Significance and Originality
This brief volume seeks to shed light on a growing population of immigrant young adults who are overlooked, fall through the cracks and risk wasting their potential on the path to becoming permanent members of US society. In this book I examine the lives and experiences of Latino dropouts in a sociopolitical context and provide some food for thought regarding future directions for research, policy and practice. The sections that follow discuss the aims of this book, its importance in addressing gaps in existing research and scholarly literature, its originality, and the research methods used to gather the data that are the foundation of this volume. In addition, I provide a brief overview of current statistics on immigrant Latinos in the US, and in New York City in particular, how research has viewed this population to date, and what gaps must be addressed in research and practice to change the fate of this growing group.
First, a few words about immigrants and public policy. In the advent of globalization, every industrialized country in the world is host to growing numbers of immigrants (Callahan & Gándara, 2014). The US, with only 5% of the world's population, receives 20% of the world's immigrants (Nwosu et al., 2014). Without question, the education of immigrants and their children and their integration into the mainstream continue to be central policy concerns not only in the US, but around the world.
This volume focuses on young adult immigrant new arrivals who have not completed high school. Between 1990 and 2000, some 3.1 million individuals (24% of immigrants) who arrived in the US were between the ages of 15 and 24, compared with 1.1 million (14%) of the foreign-born population who entered in the decade between 1980 and 1989 (US Census Bureau, 2010). Immigrants and children of immigrants account for more than 20% of the young adult population in the US, a figure expected to reach more than 30% by the year 2030, with Latinos by far outnumbering other subgroups (Fry, 2010; Mather, 2009; Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008).
The numbers of immigrants have grown steadily since the mid-1960s and Latinos continue to be the largest share of the overall immigrant population in the US. Between 1990 and 2008, nearly 17 million new immigrants entered the US, and more than half arrived from Latin America (Migration Policy Institute, 2008). Figures from the 2012 American Community Survey (ACS) revealed that nearly half of the 40 million foreign-born residents of the US (46% or 18.9 million individuals) are Latino (Nwosu et al., 2014). Table 1.1 illustrates how two-fifths of all foreign-born come from just seven countries in Latin America (Pew Hispanic Center, 2013).
Historians, sociologists, educators, psychologists, linguistics, economists and a host of scholars in other fields have come to recognize that a monolithic look at 'Latinos' overshadows complexities and differences among Latinos, not the least important of which are between US-born and foreign-born. Among these new immigrants, children and young adults are on the rise. The number of immigrant children and young adults living in the US is larger than ever before: of the total foreign-born population of 41 million, nearly half (18 million) arrived between the ages of 18 and 34, and 40% (16.4 million) arrived as children under age 18 (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010), some with parents and siblings, some alone to join family in the US, and some as unaccompanied minors.
Today, more than a third (34%) of foreign-born Latinos between the ages of 16 and 24 have dropped out of high school. Latinos born outside the US are three times more likely to have an incomplete high school education than their US-born Latino peers, 11% of whom have not completed high school. They are nearly six times more likely than US-born Whites to have an incomplete high school education, and three times more likely than US-born Blacks (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008). The high rate of incomplete high school among foreign-born Latinos persists decade after decade, despite documented improvements in high school completion among US-born Latinos (Fry & López, 2012). This book seeks to interrogate these numbers and explore their relevance for education and social policy. Generations of permanent residents with incomplete high school have faced dire prospects for work, earnings and upward mobility, through a cycle of incomplete education in one generation being associated with poor educational performance on the part of their children.
Rates of school interruption differ by immigrant generation, age at arrival and ethnic group. Research reveals a glaring gap between the dropout rates of immigrants to the US who arrive as teens (15–17) and of those who arrive during their elementary school years (Fry, 2005). Immigrant young adults who arrive in the US as young children and complete all of their school years in the US have school non-completion rates that are relatively low, about 5% (Fry, 2005). The compounding factors of age at arrival, labor market pressures, English proficiency and skills, which will be discussed in depth in Chapter 5, all represent obstacles to school completion among adolescent and teen immigrants. Premigration factors, discussed in Chapter 3, as well as circumstances of arrival and post-migration educational options (explained inChapter 4), all make for a complex educational landscape for adolescent and young adult immigrants.
Latinos in New York City
More than half of the 19 million first- and second-generation immigrant young adults in the US come from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010). In New York City, more than half (56%) of all individuals aged 18–34 are immigrants or children of immigrants, highlighting the importance of the fates of both the immigrant first as well as the immigrant second generation (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010). Different from Whites and Blacks in the US, the majority of whom have parents born in the US, more than four-fifths of Latinos in the US are foreign-born or have immigrant parents. The same holds true among school-age students in New York City, where more than half of the adult population is foreign-born, with Latinos by far the largest immigrant subgroup (Rosen et al., 2005). According to data compiled by the Migration Policy Institute, about 28% of immigrant New Yorkers entered in the 1990s, and about one-third after 2000. In New York City, a total of 302,168 immigrant Latinos entered between 1990 and 1999 and an additional 389,000 between 2000 and 2010 (Bergad, 2011). The most numerous of the new arrivals are from Colombia, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Mexico (Table 1.2), with Puerto Ricans, who are US citizens, making up a still significant but decreasing proportion of the resident population (Bergad, 2011).
Viewed as a whole, Latinos have become an extremely linguistically and culturally diverse subgroup that has changed the fabric of US society and culture. Far from being a monolithic block, Latinos residing in the US represent the broadest spectrum possible in terms of economic status, linguistic background and educational attainment. Certainly Latinos in New York City have both the highest and lowest educational levels (Fiscal Policy Institute, 2010; Rosen et al., 2005). While among the Latino group as a whole there is a broad spectrum of both racial background and nationality (country of origin), the 'ethnic diversity of contemporary immigrants pales in comparison to their social class origins' (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010: 47). Moreover, their social class origins are closely tied to educational attainment, underscoring the importance of examining not simply a mythically generic 'immigrant experience', but gaining a deeper understanding of specific subgroups. Across the US, those with the lowest levels of educational attainment on average are Mexicans and those who have the highest poverty rate among all immigrant groups are Dominicans (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010); both groups feature largely in the present study. According to the Center for the Study of Brooklyn (2012) at the City University of New York, 41% of immigrants aged 16–24 in New York City are Latino (a total of 112,415). Of this group, nearly 27% (30,059) are official dropouts and not enrolled in school.
The two largest and fastest-growing immigrant Latino subgroups in New York City – excluding Puerto Ricans, who are US nationals – are Mexicans and Dominicans (Limonic, 2007). Adults in both groups demonstrate above average levels of poverty, with more than a third of each group below the poverty line, and relatively poor educational attainment (Table 1.3). Nearly 65% of adult Mexican and more than 50% of adult Dominican New Yorkers report not having completed high school (Cortina & Gendreau, 2003; Limonic, 2007; New York City Department of City Planning, 2004). Among Mexicans in New York City, older arrivals have non-enrollment rates over 40%, yet Mexicans who arrive at younger ages are enrolled in school at rates nearly comparable to those of US-born youth, revealing a link between age at arrival and educational attainment. Among foreign-born Mexicans residing in New York City, 40% have completed six or fewer years of education, with 25% having completed some or all of high school, and 5% have college degrees (Rosen et al., 2005).
As can be seen from Table 1.3, foreign-born Dominicans and Mexicans have the lowest levels of educational attainment among Latino immigrant subgroups in New York City. For Mexicans, the data are presented graphically in Figure 1.1 and for Dominicans in Figure 1.2. Among Dominicans aged 25 and over in New York City, 29% have completed elementary school or less and another 25% have completed high school or less (Figure 1.2). Only 9% have college degrees (Rosen et al., 2005).
Among first-generation immigrants, young adults are also numerous: immigrants aged 17–24 were nearly 25% of total entrants in the 2000 Census, up from 13% in 1990 (US Census Bureau, 2010). Nearly 20% of New York State's immigrants are between the ages of 17 and 24 years, and constitute nearly 40% of workers among the youngest age group, 16–24 (New York City Department of City Planning, 2004). With employment that ranges from part time to full time (and beyond, with more than one job), school and work compete with each other for these young people's energy and attention.
Latinos as a Permanent Sector of the US Population
Due to the recent global economic downturn and stagnant wages, many Latino immigrants' dreams of returning home have been put on hold temporarily for financial reasons; this has been compounded by increasingly stringent border control policies, as re-entry is seen as risky enterprise (Massey et al, 2002; Smith, 2006, 2013). The result is less circular migration and more permanent residency among this group, which includes especially high numbers of undocumented minors who arrive alone without parents or adult guardians (Smith, 2006), primarily from Mexico and Central America (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2005, 2014; United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2014). In 2013, tens of thousands of unaccompanied young people arrived in the US with no adult, 40,000 alone from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and crossing the border from Mexico (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2014). These young adults, the focus of this volume, are of working age; some are even parents of young children, while some migrated alone. They serve as a significant source of financial support for their families in their country of origin. Despite the differences in the circumstances of their migration, they have striking similarities in high school completion and graduation rates.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Latino Immigrant Youth and Interrupted Schooling by Marguerite Lukes. Copyright © 2015 Marguerite Lukes. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: IntroductionChapter 2: Understanding Dropouts: Math and HistoryChapter 3: Pre-Migration Educational “Choices:” Interrupted Education in ContextChapter 4: Immigrant Young Adults Entering the U.S.Chapter 5: Pushouts, Shutouts and Holdouts: Entering, Exiting and Evading High School in the U.S.Chapter 6: Hard and Soft Skills: Academic Skills, English and Social Capital Among Migrant Young AdultsChapter 7: The Road Ahead for Young Adult Migrants: Institutional Dilemmas, Nagging Questions and Open DoorsAppendixReferences Index
What People are Saying About This
Wise and compassionate, Lukes provides unique insights into the dreams, aspirations, and resiliency of young adult Latinos who attempt to persevere through the US educational system despite all odds. A stellar contribution to the field!
Lukes offers compelling evidence that the barriers that Latino immigrant youth face in the United States have nothing to do with cultural deficiencies and everything to do with institutional neglect. She then offers a comprehensive blueprint for addressing this institutional neglect that is a must-read for anybody who is serious about improving the educational outcomes of Latino immigrant youth.
In this important new book Marguerite Lukes focuses on the educational needs and challenges faced by a population that is nearly invisible to the American mainstream: disenfranchised immigrant youth. Through her detailed analysis Lukes helps her readers to see beyond the one dimensional characterizations that typically appear in the media so that they can appreciate the grit and agency that many of them rely upon to survive. She also makes it clear why it is so important to their future and ours to address their educational needs.