Second Handbook of English Language Teaching by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030028992
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Institutional and Societal Contexts of Identity Formation

Sociologically and anthropologically oriented scholarship shares an interest in how immigrant youth identities are shaped by broader sociocultural, historical, economic, political, and institutional contexts and hypothesizes significant shifts in immigrant self-identification during adolescence. Work in the anthropology of education is typically characterized by ethnographic and case study methodologies featuring unstructured, in-depth interviews and participant observation of informants in social settings, while research in the sociology of education relies more on multivariate analysis of large-scale surveys and databases. Influential large-scale mixed methods studies of adolescents include the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation Study (Suárez-Orozco et al. 2008) and the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Socioculturally oriented work on adolescent immigrant identity has grown dramatically over the past two decades.

Researchers in this area suggest that adolescent ELs enter societies in which popular culture images of immigrants are often unfavorable (Suárez-Orozco 2004). Latinx youth in the USA, for example, face pan-ethnic stereotypes in popular media as illegal immigrants, poverty-stricken, criminals, and uneducated laborers who are reluctant or unable to learn English (Carter 2014; Louie 2012), while Asian Americans may be portrayed as unassimilable foreigners (Suárez-Orozco 2004). In Great Britain, Rampton (2017) identifies a prevalent racist “babu” stereotype of ESL/Indian English speakers as “deferential, polite, uncomprehending, and incompetent in English” (p. 52). These externally imposed identities, manifested through stereotypes and negative social mirroring, hinder the ability of immigrant youth to form identities as worthwhile and competent members of the host society (Suárez-Orozco and Qin 2006). Adolescents define their identities by self-identifying and developing affective and psychological bonds with some ethnic and social groups while simultaneously contrasting oneself with groups or categories considered “other” (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Immigrant youth awareness of ethnic differences and inequalities tends to heighten with age and personal experiences with discrimination (Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Youth from minoritized ethnic, racial, or linguistic backgrounds are more likely to perceive discrimination and exclusion in society that can result in the formation of oppositional (Ogbu 1991) or reactive ethnic identities in immigrants (Portes and Rumbaut 2001).

In recent decades, once prevalent models of comparative group cultural identity development (e.g., Ogbu 1991) have given way to more multiplicitous, nuanced perspectives. For one thing, research increasingly finds that adolescent immigrant identity intersects with multiple other aspects of identity, yielding intragroup differences (Block 2007). For example, the process of racialization is central to identity formation in adolescent immigrants to English-dominant societies. In the USA, where Whiteness and monolingualism are hegemonic, immigrant ELs may view White monolingual English speakers as the only authentic Americans (e.g., Flores et al. 2015; Lee 2005; Louie 2012). Therefore, one aspect of youth assimilation is adopting the racial and pan-ethnic categories prevalent in the host society (Louie 2012). Immigrants of color are especially prone to face discrimination (Suárez-Orozco 2004), leading some to adopt a pan-minority identification (Louie 2012). Latinx or Asian immigrants may be perceived as less assimilable “perpetual foreigners” (e.g., Endo 2016) due to phenotypic features (Suárez-Orozco 2004; Yoon et al. 2017). Immigrant

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