Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Immigrant children and U.S.-born children of immigrants are the fastest-growing segment of the United States' child population. While abundant research has been conducted to understand immigrant children's acculturation and its relationship to emotional and educational adaptation to the host country, little attention has been given to the ways in which school and community environment impact these processes. The current paper will seek to fill this gap by assessing variation in acculturation and adaptation among immigrant children in different community contexts. Based on the ecological model which suggests that human beings strive to adapt to their environmental context and that adjustment itself may be defined as the achievement of fit between individuals and their contextual setting, it is hypothesized that there is a potential role of community differences in the acculturation and adaptation processes among immigrant youths who reside in different community contexts. For this study, survey data from individual adolescents is combined with census data and San Diego Unified School District administration data to create community profiles for children of immigrants that bring together the community's demographic characteristics, school environments, availability of community-based programs for immigrant adolescents, and adolescents' acculturation and adaptation.

This paper will report findings from a secondary analysis of the Children of Immigrant Longitudinal Study with 1,408 immigrant children who were recruited from nine high schools in the San Diego metropolitan area. The sample for this study is evenly divided between males (49%) and females (51%), with a mean age of 17.24 (SD= .87). Of these, the largest ethnic group is Filipino (43.0%), followed by Southeast Asians (33.1%) and Mexican (23.9%).

This paper seeks to understand how the social composition of communities influences the acculturation and adaptation of immigrant youths. Preliminary analysis of acculturation (measured by English proficiency) and adaptation (measured by self-esteem and school achievement) in different community contexts, school environments, and availability of community-based programs demonstrates that: 1) In a community where Mexican immigrant youths are the majority ethnic group, youths report stronger ethnic identity and poorer English proficiency, 2) Mexican adolescents with poor English proficiency reside in a community where poverty levels are high, school environments are poor (e.g., higher violence rate in school and higher drop-out rate) and few after-school programs for the immigrant youths are available, which indicates that immigrant youths who live in these areas appear to suffer negative adaptation consequences secondary to these negative neighborhood and school environments, and 3) For all immigrant youths, lower English proficiency is an adverse influence on school achievement (r=.13, p<.001) and self-esteem (r=.30, p<.001).

The preliminary results suggest that 1) Understanding community environment is important in conceptualization of acculturation and academic and psychological adaptation among immigrant youths and 2) Empowering immigrant families living in impoverished neighborhoods to navigate and overcome community-level constraints would be beneficial. Community profiling using community environments, school environments, and availability of community-based programs for the immigrants can greatly aid social service providers in identifying potential environmental risk exposure and in planning interventions (e.g. school-community based) in particular neighborhoods.