Immigrant Children

This edited book focuses on immigrant and refugee children around the world and will provide readers with a richer and more comprehensive approach of how researchers, practitioners, and social policymakers can examine immigrant children and youth among ethnic minority families. Also, the chapters will focus on the various methodological advances used to explicitly investigate immigrant children and youth.

Over the past several decades, the demographic populations of many countries such as Canada as well as the United States have greatly transformed. Most striking is the influx of recent immigrant families into North America. As children lead the way for a 'new' North America, this group of children and youth is not a singular homogenous group but rather, a mosaic and diverse ethnic, racial, and cultural group. Thus, our current understanding of 'normative development' (covering social, psychological, cognitive, language, academic, and behavioral development), which has been generally based on middle-class Euro-American children, may not necessarily be 'optimal' development for all children. Researchers are widely recognizing that the theoretical frameworks and models of child development lack the sociocultural and ethnic sensitivities to the ways in which developmental processes operate in an ecological context. As researchers progress and develop promising forms of methodological innovation to further our understanding of immigrant children, little effort has been placed to collectively organize a group of scholarly work in a coherent manner. Some researchers who examine ethnic minority children tended to have ethnocentric notions of normative development. Thus, some ethnic minority groups are understood within a 'deficit model' with a limited scope of topics of interest. Moreover, few researchers have specifically investigated the acculturation process for children and the implications for cultural socialization of children by ethnic group. This book represents a group of leading scholars' cutting-edge research which will not only move our understanding forward but also to open up new possibilities for research, providing innovative methodologies in examining this complex and dynamic group. Immigrant Children: Change, Adaptation, and Cultural Transformation will also take the research lead in guiding our current knowledge of how development is influenced by a variety of sociocultural factors, placing future research in a better position to probe inherent principles of child development. In sum, this book will provide readers with a richer and more comprehensive approach of how researchers, social service providers, and social policymakers can examine children and immigration.

Chapter 1: Changing Lives: Theoretical and Methodological Advances on Immigrant Children and Youth
Part 2 Part I: Overview of Immigration and Settlement Perspectives
Chapter 3 Chapter 2: Immigrant Children: Making a New Life
Chapter 4 Chapter 3: A Resilience Framework to Examine Immigrant and Refugee Children and Youth in Canada
Part 5 Part II: Immigration Challenges and Adaptation
Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Social Functioning and Peer Experiences in Immigrant Chinese, Canadian-Born Chinese and European Canadian Children
Chapter 7 Chapter 5: The Achievement/Adjustment Paradox: Understanding the Psychological Struggles of Asian American Children and Adolescents
Chapter 8 Chapter 6: Youth Risk Behaviors among Mexican Origin Adolescents: Cross Generational Differences
Chapter 9 Chapter 7: The Acculturation and Adaptation of Second Generation Immigrant Youth in Toronto and Montreal
Chapter 10 Chapter 8: Service Providers' Perspectives on the Pathways of Adjustment for Newcomer Children and Youth in Canada
Part 11 Part III: Family Acculturation and Relationships
Chapter 12 Chapter 9: The Social Relational Perspective on Family Acculturation
Chapter 13 Chapter 10: Psychological Aspects of Immigration among Youth Living in Portugal
Chapter 14 Chapter 11: School Readiness in Latino Immigrant Children in the U.S.
Chapter 15 Chapter 12: Challenges Facing Immigrant Parents and their Involvement in their Children's Schooling
Chapter 16 Chapter 13: Acculturation-Related Conflict across Generations in Immigrant Families
Part 17 Part IV: Conclusions
Chapter 18 Chapter 14: New Arrivals: Past Advances and Future Directions in Research and Policy