Erin Sibley

The influence of immigrant parent legal status on U.S.-born children's academic abilities: The moderating effects of social service use

ABSTRACT The present study investigated the relationship between immigrant parent legal status and academic performance among U.S.-born children, ages 7–10. Building on previous research and a social ecological framework, the study further explored how social service use moderates the relationship between parent legal status and academic performance. Participants included 178 low-income, urban parent/child dyads; all parents were immigrants from Mexico, Central America, or the Dominican Republic and all children were U.S.-born citizens. Using a standardized academic assessment as the outcome, parent legal vulnerability was a significant negative predictor of childrens academic performance on reading, spelling, and math subtests. Additionally, parent use of social services significantly and positively moderated the relationship between parent legal vulnerability and childrens word reading and spelling skills, indicating that social service use can serve as a protective buffer against the negative associations between parental unauthorized status and child achievement.

Exploring meaning-making with adolescents ‘left behind’ by migration

This paper focuses on a population that has received little attention in migration and in youth-related research: those ‘left behind’ when parents migrate to the United States in search of a better life for their families. Findings presented here are drawn from two sets of workshops with Mayan youth participants in the Southern Quiché region of Guatemala who have been directly (one or both parents have migrated) or indirectly (friends, relatives or neighbors have migrated) affected by migration. Through participatory action research processes, we have found that youth report parents’ departures in search of a better life for the family while also describing their yearning for them to return. Most viewed the United States as a discriminatory place where life is treacherous, including for their own family members. Despite this, they reported deep desires to migrate there. We discuss these findings in light of the direct and indirect messages that youth receive from their teachers who often discourage their dreams to journey north, and ourselves, participatory action researchers who work with their families in the United States and travel regularly to spend time with them in Guatemala. The strengths and challenges of participatory action research with this population are addressed.

Ethical Ambiguities in Participatory Action Research With Unauthorized Migrants

There is increased recognition of the importance of well-designed scholarship on how immigration status and policies impact migrants in the United States, including those who are unauthorized. Some researchers have looked to community-based and participatory methods to develop trust, place migrants’ voices at the forefront, and engage collaboratively in using research as a tool for social change. This article reviews three ethical ambiguities that emerged in the process of a series of participatory action research (PAR) projects with migrants in the United States, many of whom were unauthorized. Specifically, three themes are discussed: (a) the tension between the human desire to respond to injustices, and the challenges of doing so in ways that recognize one’s privilege and power as an outsider and supports the migrants’ agency and autonomy; (b) the complex definition, explanation, and dimensions of “risk”; and (c) the complexity of using a methodology (PAR) that prioritizes participants’ collective identity and community in the context of regulations that are designed primarily to protect individuals.

Authorized and Unauthorized Immigrant Parents The Impact of Legal Vulnerability on Family Contexts

This study explores the social-ecological contexts of unauthorized immigrant families and their U.S.-born children, through examining how otherwise similarly low-income, urban, Latino immigrant families differ on the basis of the parents’ legal status and interactions with the immigration system. Drawing on social-ecological theory, variations based on parents’ legal vulnerability among exosystem-level experiences (e.g., parents’ occupational stress, discrimination experiences) and microsystem-level experiences (e.g., parents’ mental health, parenting stress) were explored. Structured interviews were conducted with 178 families with an immigrant parent from Mexico, Central America, and Dominican Republic, and a child (aged 7-10 years) born in the United States. Unauthorized parents reported statistically higher occupational stress, ethnicity-based discrimination, challenges learning English, immigration challenges, and legal status challenges, and lower use of social services, when compared with authorized parents. The groups did not differ on microsystem factors (e.g., parent mental health, and parenting, marital, and family stress).

Achievement Mediators of Family Engagement in Children’s Education: A Family–School–Community Systems Model

In this chapter, we propose a systems model of the primary means by which family–school–community engagement in children’s learning can promote achievement. In doing so, we integrate and extend existing theories of how family engagement in learning affects children’s achievement, highlighting the mediating roles of social capital, achievement-related attributions and motivation, and learning skills and strategies. Our aim in the chapter is twofold: (1) to help focus family–school–community engagement interventions on mediating mechanisms for which the field has, to date, generated robust empirical evidence and (2) to help focus further empirical work on testable hypotheses that clarify how, when, and why partnerships between families, schools, and communities have positive consequences for children’s achievement. In addressing these two aims, we pay special attention to the increasing diversity of families and learners in the United States, and the ways in which culture, language, and sociohistorical background are relevant for understanding how engagement in education affects children.