The Experience of Ethnic and Racial Group Membership Among Immigrant-Origin Adolescents

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Abstract
Immigrant-origin adolescents in the United States face a number of stressors across different social contexts (e.g., home, school), and yet, distress related to these stressors often goes unnoticed and access to resources is limited. This study examined how racial minority immigrant-origin adolescents in an urban setting construct and negotiate experiences of their ethnic and racial group membership, acculturative stress, and approaches to coping with acculturative stress. Guided by an integrative contextual framework of minority youth development, semistructured group interviews were conducted with 64 adolescents (35 girls and 29 boys) at an urban public high school located in the Northeastern part of the United States. Participants were either immigrants or children of immigrants from Afro-Caribbean (e.g., Haitian), Asian, Latino/a, and South Asian backgrounds. Analyses of the group interview data revealed four major domains related to experiences of ethnicity and race: (a) pride in and connection with heritage culture and language, (b) difficulties in cultural adjustment, (c) stereotypes and discrimination, and (d) coping and relational contexts, along with several themes within each of these domains. The implications of the findings are discussed with a consideration to adolescents’ desire to develop a bicultural identity, challenges to forming such an identity, and the importance of informal sources of support in coping with acculturative stress. Recommendations for future research and for clinical and community-based interventions with immigrant-origin adolescents are provided.

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