Immigrant Youth Mentoring

There are two different dimensions of our identities: ethnicity and race. Ethnicity refers to one’s belonging to a specific cultural, or racial group that makes up culture, race language, and/or place of origin. For example, one can be African-American but have different ethnicities, one African-American and the other African-Caribbean decent. Race is a social construct that can be changed over time. Historically, referring to its specific characteristics one possesses based on: ethnicity, religion, or language; today's its classified solely based upon the color of one’s skin. Nevertheless, ethnic and racial identities are important and instill a sense of belonging and identifying with that specific group through attitude, behaviors. Moreover,

Though it does not come up in everyday thought, cultural identity is an idea that all humans possess. Abridged, cultural identity can be simply explained as the sharing of a similar culture by people of various ethnicities. However, cultural identity is more complex than that, defined by an individual’s values, beliefs, and ideas of moral behavior influenced by their culture. Furthermore, cultural identity is ever changing from individual to individual. This means that although two individuals may be of the same ethnicity, differences in circumstances may cause variations between the individuals’ personal beliefs. As a result of interracial interactions, multiculturalism has grown during the twenty-first century.

People with healthy biracial identity acknowledges and integrates both parts of their racial heritage in forming identity, which process is influenced by family, community and context, as well as socio-economic status. Empirical articles reviewed in this paper demonstrate that family socialization, recognition of both ethnic and racial heritages and validation of racial identification from community members have beneficial effect in helping biracial individuals to form a healthy racial identity (Mass, 1992; Chong, 2012; Lou et al., 2011). Having higher socio-economic status will encourage biracial individuals to claim a biracial identity (Townsend et al., 2012). Context change might pose threat for psychological well-being for individuals who have not reached an integrated biracial identity (Collins, 2000;

According to acculturation theory (Berry et al., 1987), the psychological experience of adapting to a new culture becomes manifested as acculturative stress for children. Acculturation theory identifies how immigrant children’s mental development is hindered as a result of acculturation stress. Acculturation stress that directly results from the acculturative process can appear as mental health problems. Since culture may influence an immigrant child throughout his or her entire life, reducing acculturative stress is important for them to live in the new home country. Understanding the role of acculturation in the lives of immigrants is an essential component to understanding the overall mental health of Asian American immigrant children.

The journey of many immigrants is characterized by trauma prior to, during, and following migration. They may be escaping hunger, war, poverty, or torture in their native country. The decision to migrate to host country is not an easy one for most immigrants. People leave behind family members, and often risk their lives to cross borders in order to live a life of freedom and opportunity. Immigrants must endure intolerance and suspicion, while navigating the complexities of assimilating to a language and a culture foreign to their own. If the person enters the country without proper documents, they live in constant fear of being detained and deported. Undocumented immigrants may have to accept jobs far below their skill level, and endure blatant discrimination. If Mario is an immigrant, his volatile behavior may be a result of acculturative stress or immigration trauma

The changing environments throughout the ages have caused the movement of thousands of families out of their homelands. Whether forced to make such decisions or doing so by their own desires, all immigrants have had to survive the physical and psychological challenges encountered along the way. To speak about the experiences of all these different people using the same ideas and examples would be quite inaccurate. They all, however, had to live through similar situations and deal with similar problems. Many of them succeeded and found the better future they were looking for. Many others found only hardship and experienced the destruction of their hopes and dreams. All of them were transformed.

Part of my intervention plan will be devoted specifically to fostering resilience in these refugee children. To do so, integrated into their school days, classes will be held to teach the children appropriate conflict resolution strategies. At this point, the

There is a broad range of factors that might make the youth of any ethnicity to participate in antisocial behaviors. Notably, these factors include young people’s own feelings, family relationships and being brought up in communities with widespread alcohol and violence. In addition to this, young people engage in antisocial behaviors if they have been exposed to poor health, substance abuse, poor-quality housing as well as poor health. These risk factors place youths at risk of dropping out of schools, disengaging from employment and community (Ware, 2013). Further, indigenous youth faces challenges of dislocation arising from colonization coupled with the impacts of the stolen generations. The impact of the forced displacement of homeland and socioeconomic dispossession associated with the colonization period left a legacy of parents raised in abusive settings who are not abusing their own children. In addition, it left a legacy of dislocated kinship networks that reduced family support. Overall, the indigenous young people encounter extra challenges of cultural discontinuity, dispossession, and inter-generational trauma (Ware, 2013). This paper seeks to discuss some of the mentoring programs that can bar young people from engaging in anti-social behaviors that can greatly affect their future.

language. Some positive outcomes of cultural brokering on immigrant families are increased self-esteem, better knowledge of English language, and feeling like one matters to their family. Some negative outcomes of cultural brokering on immigrant families are stress and depressive moods, embarrassment of parents, conflicts within the family, and parentification of the child. All of these outcomes of cultural brokering are products of the acculturation theory. Lastly, some strengths of the acculturation theory include the focus on immigrant experience, the fact that it emphasizes the strengths that immigrants bring, and that it provides understanding of immigrant experiences for individuals who might communicate or be in the workplace with immigrant

These services enable newcomer youth socialize with their Canadian peers, make new friends, and understand Canadian traditions. A number of studies found social isolation as one of the reasons many immigrant youth get discouraged at school and often decide to drop out. Moreover, especially for refugee youth who may have experienced traumatic events during their pre-settlement, sports and arts programs tend to be effective in addressing some of their post-migration

In the United States, immigrants come from varying countries in search of the American Dream. This dream entails the belief that their lives can be improved because of the various amounts of opportunities in United States. Due to this, thousands of migrant youth move from Central and South America to Texas in search for a better life. By crossing the Rio Grande border, the migrant youth are escaping the corruption and violence in their native country. Although the migrant youth are in search of a better life in America, the United States has a policy against undocumented immigrants. As a result of this, two perspectives of the migrant youth (that want a better life for themselves by coming illegally) and United States (that have to deport those immigrants who come illegally) arise. In order to analyze migrant youth better, some anthropological methods used are participant observation and interviews. All in all, the spread of migrant youth reveals the idea of the immigration crisis in the United States.

Perreria et al.’s (2006) study, in which 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Latino immigrants on there migration process and acculturation experience, found that this loss of extended family connections and support were among the most significant aspects of the immigrant parent’s migration experience. The loss of a previously established support system for Latino immigrants can also mean the loss of self-identity, as there is a cultural emphasis placed on collectivism and community rather than individualism, thus for many immigrants it results in anxiety and isolation (Caplan, 2007). A recurrent theme expressed during the focus groups conducted by Ayon (2014), was the creation of immigrant communities coming together to uphold cultural and traditional festivities in order to help create a greater sense of mutual support among the community members. Loss of social support can result in anxiety and isolation which combined with other social stressors can heighten parental stress and therefore increases the risk for chid maltreatment.

Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou introduced the concept of segmented assimilation, which stressed a three-part path: assimilation for those with advantages in human capital, an ethnic disadvantage for some because of poverty and racialization, and the selective retention of ethnicity for yet others. Assessing present levels of assimilation among today's immigrant groups requires considering the possibility that the process itself may be changing. To ascertain this, we must first understand three major theories of immigrant and ethnic-group integration. The theories are the classic and new assimilation models, the racial/ethnic disadvantage model, and the segmented assimilation model. One of the general, classic assimilation theory sees immigrant/ethnic

While many models exist to describe the phenomenon of ethnic identity, the model in question is the Ethnic Identity Development model proposed by Phinney and Ong in 1992. Their theory contains underpinnings of both Erikson and Marcia and is divided into three stages: Unexamined Ethnic Identity, Moratorium, and Ethnic Identity Achievement. Phinney’s theory rests on the proposal that “individuals begin in a state of indifference, confusion, or minimal awareness about their ethnicity, and move toward more complex, flexible, and informed ways

There were four acculturation strategies that was proposed for minority migrants, depending on their level of cultural awareness: (a) assimilation occurs when individuals abandon their cultural identity in favour of adopting the new culture, (b) marginality occurs when individuals abandon their cultural identity and yet have little interest in adopting the new culture, (c) integration occurs when individuals maintain their cultural identity as well as adopting some characteristics of the new culture, and (d) separation occurs when individuals maintain their original cultural identity and do not adopt the new culture (Heggins & Jackson,