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We introduce our comparative study on minority and majority youth in four European countries by presenting the problem, basic concepts, theoretical starting points and our strategy of analysis. We address differences in integration across (i) immigrant generations (exposure), (ii) immigrant origin groups and (iii) receiving countries, for several indicators of structural, cultural and social integration. We find few and unsystematic differences in integration across receiving countries. Integration is quite remote for some aspects of social and cultural integration and slowest for those originating in poorer regions at greater cultural and socioeconomic distances, such as the Middle East and Africa. Exposure to the host country leads to decreasing differences in language proficiency and host country identification, but not in liberal attitudes and tolerance, religion and religiosity, or inter-ethnic friendships. We conclude that lingering differences should partly be understood against a backdrop of deeply entrenched structural phenomena such as socialisation, stratification and segregation.

The introduction provides an overview of the immigrant rights movement and the emergence of a prominent contingent of undocumented immigrant youth at its forefront. These youth have strategically and purposefully leveraged the use of an intersectional movement identity to in turn facilitate coalition building with members of similarly situated groups. The introduction lays out the book’s theoretical intervention in the scholarly literature on undocumented immigration and social movement activism and its methodological approach. It also includes a road map of the later ethnographic and interview-based chapters.

This chapter deals with Hadassah's projects for immigrant youth in particular. Hadassah's work in caring for children and teenagers in Israel's early years laid a particular emphasis on the care of young immigrants, who in the early 1950s constituted some 71 per cent of all children and teenagers within the Jewish population of Israel. Tens of thousands of youngsters arrived in these years, and the education they had received, if any, in the countries from which they came differed from that of their contemporaries in the Yishuv. As a result of the mass immigration, new social classes developed. The widespread social and economic hardship in these groups presented a serious challenge to the young nation, and a large number of the children and teenagers among them would years later be recognized as ‘underprivileged’. At the same time, there was a ‘frightening lack of professional workers [for children and youngsters] of all types’: teachers, educational counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers.

This chapter examines how the undocumented immigrant youth movement has evoked “coming out as undocumented and unafraid” to mobilize fearful constituents. It discusses the local and state-level legislative changes for which the movement as advocated, including the federal DREAM Act. It argues that while the DREAM Act never passed, the undocumented immigrant youth movement arguably led President Obama to sign the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive order in June 2012, which deferred deportation for “Dreamers” who meet certain criteria on a two-year renewable basis. It further argues that the undocumented immigrant youth movement has successfully challenged cultural understandings by offering an alternative image to that of “illegal immigrants” sneaking across the border—that of educated and talented “DREAMers.”

This chapter examines the impact of school structures, policies, and practices on immigrant youth in Spain and the United States. Drawing on field research conducted in six high schools, three in Catalonia and three in California, the chapter looks at the contradictions between discourse and practice, on the one hand, and immigrant students' actual experiences in school, on the other. It explores how schools through their structures, policies, and practices influence the social and academic integration of immigrant youth and how immigrant youth perceive and negotiate their integration. It also considers the ways in which the politicalization of borders affects immigrant-origin students' access to resources in school, their sense of membership within the school community, the nature of their participation in school activities, and ultimately their school persistence and academic achievement.

During the 1990s and into the 2000s, three basic barriers prevented undocumented youth from achieving major milestones of independence—acquiring a driver’s license, submitting college applications, and working legally. The circumstances repeated again and again in the accounts of undocumented youth. Elioenai Santos recalled, “Living like that is a real problem. It’s a real blow to your self-esteem, because you always feel like you are somehow less. It’s awful to always feel like you’re inferior. You see your friends driving around, traveling to other countries, while I don’t have money to go to school.” Nor could they keep their families together, as everyone felt constantly threatened by separation. The result since the early 2000s has been a growing, powerful movement among undocumented youth to redefine “who belongs” as a citizen in the United States. This chapter explores how the Immigrant Youth Justice League, Freedom University, Cristina Jimenez and United We Dream, and other undocumented and undocuqueer youth immigrant activists have fought for DACA and the DREAM Act and against deportation and the border wall. They have fundamentally challenged all US citizens to reimagine who belongs within the circle of belonging.

This chapter argues that juvenile justice systems have defining choices on how they work with immigrant youth. They can either place their core mission of working positively with youth ahead of collateral efforts to enforce federal immigration law, or choose affirmative efforts to involve immigration enforcement authorities in the lives of youth. The former choice leverages the equitable flexibility of juvenile systems to improve the lives and well-being of immigrant youth, while the latter disregards the foreseeable immigration consequences, subverting the juvenile justice system's mission of providing an alternative to adult courts and punishments for youth. Hence, these starkly different choices create two systems of juvenile justice.

This chapter examines whether schools that are successful with immigrant-origin children employ practices that have the promise of being useful elsewhere. Focusing on two high schools in the United States and two in Sweden, it considers overt curricula and programs that prepare children of immigrants to be active and empowered actors in the multicultural, global contexts of their receiving nations. Using a case study methodological strategy, the chapter explores school-based practices that are implemented in innovative, “promising” school settings to ease the transition and integration of immigrant-origin youth as well as foster and enhance their academic performance. As part of their preparation agenda, the schools in both Sweden and the United States make accommodations for newcomer immigrant-origin students and second-language learners, allowing them to catch up with their native-born peers.

This chapter examines school participation rates among immigrants in the Northern and Southern regions of Italy. Northern Italy is one of the most developed regions in the EU, while Southern Italy is among the less developed areas. Comparing native Italians, first-generation immigrants, and second-generation immigrants, researchers documented distinct differences in school participation rates, type of school attended (pre-university or vocational), and labor market opportunities of the groups—differences that can be traced back to individual, familial, and community characteristics including, among other factors, the social and economic structures of the region where the family lives. The chapter demonstrates the importance of educational opportunities, and of policies supporting such opportunities, for successful integration of immigrant youth into the larger society.

Many societies embrace the ideals that their children will have equal access to school and advance through their merit. However, worldwide, as children move through primary and secondary school towards college, the number of immigrant, ethnic minority, and low–income youth who continue through school shrinks disproportionately, and troubling gender gaps also appear. This academic pipeline problem for the United States is the attrition of students in five ethnic groupings between high school and attaining graduate degrees. This global dilemma is intensifying as immigrant, refugee, and ethnic minority youth make up growing segments of primary school students in many nations. This book presents recent advances in research, practice, and policies by social scientists, educators, and policymakers that address the academic pipeline problem. It invites readers to compare viewpoints and ask their own questions about the roots of and remedies for the pipeline problem. This chapter introduces the academic pipeline problem, defines culture from perspectives across the social sciences, compares social capital, alienation, and challenge models used to address the pipeline problem, introduces its five core questions, and gives an overview of the book.

This chapter details how immigrant youth in the juvenile justice system are frequently reported to the immigration system, thus compounding their problems. Involvement in the immigration system may complicate and exacerbate immigrant youth's disposition in the juvenile justice system, and they fail to get counseling and advocacy to deal with the issues they face in the immigration system. The chapter calls for a juvenile justice system that sees immigration status as another issue that needs services and support in order to achieve the best possible outcome for youth, including their independent right to legal status based on their dependency. Consistent with the goal of less incarceration, this would reduce or eliminate the incarceration of these youth in both systems.

This chapter examines the role of labor markets in the problems of inner-city schooling. Given the long history of racial discrimination, African-American youth might reasonably have been skeptical about the economic value of education. Stanley Lieberson and others have identified the 1930s as a time when racial disadvantage in the labor market may have increased. Direct evidence regarding perceptions of the labor market is very limited. The chapter tracks the labor market experiences of black and immigrant workers over time. Perceptions of the labor market are likely to have been grounded in the experiences of family, friends, and neighbors. Thus, the chapter gains some indirect insight into how black and immigrant youth saw the economic value of schooling by observing the labor market opportunities and employment patterns of black and immigrant Chicagoans over time. It begins with a discussion of opportunity and discrimination in white-collar employment.

This chapter presents an ethnographic mapping of the youngsters' journeys within and beyond the confines of the Brooklyn Children's Museum (BCM), placing West Indian immigrant youth within the racial and gender-based obstacles Black teens must traverse as they navigate New York City. Outings to a Barnes and Noble bookstore, a McDonald's restaurant, and a movie theater, along with the teens' uses of cellular phones, emerge as conflict-ridden sites. The chapter addresses the prominent role of consumer culture in shaping the lives of these urban dwellers and interprets the youths' extracurricular activities in and around BCM as spatializing forces that help to construct transnational racial and gender identities.

This chapter analyses various occupational outcomes of labour-market measures among young unemployed people in Finland, Sweden, France, and Germany. It explains that these countries vary considerably in their reliance on active labour-market policy, Sweden having the longest experience in this respect. The chapter shows that participation in a scheme did not improve the chances of becoming employed. With the exception of Sweden, those who participated in a scheme had higher risks of becoming unemployed compared with those young people who did not participate. The chapter notes that the results for immigrant youth and youth without any work experience were somewhat better, showing that labour-market schemes do in fact have some effect for more vulnerable groups. It concludes that outcomes of scheme participation can be positive, but they seem more effective in a country such as Sweden with a long history of activation policies.

This chapter argues that coming out has become what sociologists call a “master frame,” a way of understanding the world that is sufficiently elastic and inclusive that a wide range of social movements can use it in their own campaigns. It introduces five movements that are the focus of the book—(1) the American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus (LGBTQ+) rights movement; (2) the fat acceptance movement; (3) the undocumented immigrant youth movement; (4) the plural-marriage family movement among Mormon fundamentalist polygamists; and (5) the #MeToo movement. It reviews the data and methods that form the basis of the book—participant observation, textual analysis, and 146 in-depth interviews. It argues that disparate groups use coming out to challenge negative stereotypes and overcome oppression, and that the close association of coming out with gay people informs the meaning of the term in other contexts. It previews the subsequent chapters.