Stand Together or Fall Apart: Professionals Working with Immigrant Families 9781552665251, 1552665259

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STAND TOGETHER Ok

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JUDITH K. BERNHARD

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

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STAND TOGETHER

OR FALL APART P/LofleMiosioA cl/foAki/ig, ivit/i Jmmupuwt Oami/m, JUDITH K. BERNHARD

Fernwood Publishing Halifax Ac Winnipeg

Copyright © 2012 Judith K . Bernhard

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Editing: Sarah K. Michaelson Cover design: John van der Woude Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Book Printing

Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point , Nova Scotia , BOJ 1 BO and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba , R 3G 0X3

www.fernwoodpublishing.ca Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit , for our publishing program.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Bernhard , Judith Kutscher, 1955Stand together or fall apart : professionals working with immigrant families / Judith K. Bernhard. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978- 1-55266- 525- 1

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1 Immigrants Cultural assimilation - Western countries. 2. Immigrants - Social networks Western countries. 3. Western countries Emigration and immigration Social aspects.

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Contents Acknowledgments

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Foreword Dr. Jim Cummins.

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PART I BRAVE NEW WORLD: MODERN - DAY REALITIES OF INTERNATIONAL IMMIGRATION / 11

1.

Why This Book Matters

12

But I 'm Not an Immigrant! Facing the Growing Antipathy against Newcomer Populations Uninformed Consent: Am I Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution ? In Conclusion: How Will This Book Help Me?

2.

Meet the Neighbours: How New Migration Patterns Are Redefining Our Society

12 13 14 15

18

Who Will Pay Your Health Care? Why Western Countries Seek Immigrants 18 You're Not as Young as You Used to Be: Aging Populations in Western Countries 19 20 The Myth of the “ Huddled Masses” ' .21 Diversity Rising: Todays Real Immigrant Numbers .23 Changing Times, Changing Faces: Where Today’s Immigrants Come From . .25 When Western Countries Stand Up for Human Rights . 26 Money Talks. Money Walks: International Economic Changes . 27 Friends and Family Calling across Borders: History in Action . 29 In Conclusion: The New " Us"

3.

Uncomfortable Truths: How Our Social and Legal Systems Treat Newcomer Families

.30

The Myth of the “Illegal Immigrant”: Precarious Legal Status Invisible Lives, Invisible Fences: Living with Precarious Status A Place to Call Home: Lack of Family- Friendly Housing for Newcomers Disease Doesn’t Discriminate: Lack of Health Care for Adults and Children Closed Doors at School Mommy Far Away: Transnational Families In Conclusion: Ignorance Flurts Us

. 33 . 34 .35 . 36 .38 . 39

Voices That Have Been Silenced: Day- to- Day Struggles of Newcomers

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4.

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You're Just Not Cool: Cultural Capital and Social Status for Immigrant Teens 42 You Even Know English?" The Double- Edged Sword of Language .43 The House Cleaner with a PhD: Employment and Identity for Newcomers.... .46 Abuse Pressure : the and Spousal Child under Cracking .46 Parenting in a Vacuum: Lack of Friends, Community and Supportive Institutions....47 “ Don’t

Paved with Good Intentions: Professionals as Expressions of a Dominant Culture 49 50 Discrimination Is Ugly but Common . 51 Battle : Hill Up In Conclusion

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PART 11 RECLAIMING OUR FUTURE: EXPLORING NEW PARADIGMS OF COLLABORATION AND INCLUSION WITH IMMIGRANT CHILDREN AND I AMI LIES / 53 '

5. Thinking Outside of the Box: Theoretical Frameworks for Meaningful Dialogue and Intervention with Immigrant Children and Families Paulo Freire: Learning the World through the Word Pierre Bourdieu. The Power of Cultural Capital Luis Moll: Drawing upon Unique Funds of Knowledge Jim Cummins: Bilingualism Identity and Engagement In Conclusion: Looking through Different Eyes

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6.

How Schools Are Labelling Newcomer Children: What Is “ Normal” ? The Example of Latinos

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Finders Keepers: Social Dominance as the Basis for Academic Success Stigmatized in the Childcare Setting: Institutional Discourses and Standards for Truth The Russian Doll: Taking a Systemic View Like Branches of a Tree: Multiple Paths of “ Normal" Development In Conclusion: The Necessity to Broaden Our Assessment Models

54 54 .. 55 .. 57 . 58 . 59

60 . 61

64 66 .67 .

. 71

7. Shifting the Focus: Identifying Present

and Potential Strengths of Newcomer Children and Families

72

Moving beyond a Narrow Problem Focus Components and Contexts in Healthy Development: The Benson Assessment Framework What Kind of Support from Others Is This Child Receiving in Her Development ? External Asset Types What Individual, Internal Strengths Are Supporting This Child in Her Development ? Internal Asset Types In Conclusion: Identifying Assets in Order to Strengthen Them

.73 . 74

.76 . 81

. 83

PART III - BECOMING THE CHANGE WE SEEK / 85 8. Building Bridges: A Typology of Intervention Programs Involving Immigrant Families .. What Programs Help Newcomer Families? Funding and the Problems of Evidence Type I Interventions: Parents on the Side Kids out of Context: When Parents on the Side Doesn’t Work Going beyond 'I Talk, You Listen": Conclusions about Type I Interventions.

86 . 86

.89 .91 . 92

Type II Interventions: Treating Parents as Equals Ways of Connecting with and Motivating Parents Honouring and Building upon Unique Strengths: Overall Comments about Type II Interventions In Conclusion : Reaching Out Reaching Up

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9.

Newcomer Parents as Conscious, Active Participants in Their Childrens Education: Personal Initiatives with Newcomer Families The Early Authors Program Parenting Circles Learning from Experience: Application to New Contexts and Future Interventions In Conclusion: Valuing Newcomer Parents and Children .

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94

. 98

99 . 99

101 102 104 110 112

10. Empower Is a Verb: Putting These Ideas to Work

113

References

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The thoughts that are the basis of this book began in many conversations with immigrants to Canada, the U.S. and other countries. There is as well my own experience in settling in a new country. I want to thank the research participants who gave their stories in hopes of being heard by others and by policy makers. My appreciation extends to the colleagues with whom I collaborated and consulted, especially Marlinda Freire MD, Veronica PaciniKetchabaw, Mehrunissa Ahmad Ali, Rachel Berman , Aurelia Di Santo, Pat Corson, Rachel Langford and Angela Valeo. My thanks to the students whose questions and concerns helped me to speak with clarity about the challenges of migration and its impact on the family. A special debt of gratitude goes to Hal White, my long - time friend and literary advisor. Thanks to Alma Flor Ada, Isabel Campoy, Jim Cummins and Luis Moll for their encouragement and inspiration over the years. Without them, the book would not have happened. My friends and associates at York University, especially Luin Goldring, have greatly influenced my thinking. For their assistance in putting the book together, I am grateful to Vicki Mulligan , Braha Bender and Monica Valencia. For their kind help with excel data and graphics, I give great thanks to Daniel Bernhard and Jeffrey Simonetti. Finally, I want to express my appreciation for the staff at Fernwood Publishing, includ ing the anonymous reviewers, Jessica Antony, my wonderful editor, Sarah Michaelson for copyediting, Debbie Mathers and Bev Rach for production , and John Van Der Woude for cover design .

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8

FOREWORD Dr. Jim Cummins ( Professor and Canada Research Chair Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada )

Increasing cultural and linguistic diversity is a reality in countries around the world. This diversity has been resisted by policy makers and the general public in some countries while others (e.g., Australia, Canada ) have embraced multicultural policies and have pursued an active agenda of attracting highly qualified immigrants. However, as Judith Bernhard points out in this timely volume, the “celebration” of diversity in these latter countries is often superficial with little appreciation of the cultural capital that immigrant adults and children represent. Bernhard documents lucidly not only the social justice concerns associated with the marginalization of immigrant families and communities in Canada , Australia, the United States and Europe but also the economic and social costs that accrue when supports for integration are undermined or removed. In Canada, the increase in cultural, linguistic and religious diversity is being reinforced by continuing high rates of immigration ( c. 250,000 newcomers per year, with demographers calling for substantial increases to this figure). We risk squandering the cultural, linguistic and economic resources that these New Canadians represent as a result of our current complacency surrounding issues of diversity and, in some quarters, our smug attitude that newcomers should be “grateful” for the opportunity to immigrate to Canada and make no further demands on the social and economic system. There is good and bad news when we critically examine Canadas recent experience with immigration . The good news is that many immigrants succeed well within Canadian society and students from immigrant backgrounds, on average, do well in Canadian schools. Since the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Developments ( OECD ) implementation of the Programme for International Student Achievement ( PISA ) in 2000, Canadian schools look very good in comparison to most European countries with respect to the performance of first and second generation immigrant students. In Canada ( 2003 assessment ) and Australia ( 2006 assessment ) second generation students performed slightly better academically than na tive speakers of the school language. Some of these positive results in both countries can be attributed to selective immigration that favours immigrants with strong educational qualifications. Socioeconomic disparities are also less in Canada and Australia than in countries such as the United States and Germany, where there is a significant achievement gap between low and 9

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

higher socioeconomic status students. Additionally, Canada and Australia have encouraged immigration over the past forty years and have a coherent infrastructure designed to integrate immigrants into the society ( e.g., free adult language classes, language support services for students in schools, rapid qualification for full citizenship, etc.). Despite these positive realities, there are significant gaps in provision within Canadian education in relation to linguistically and culturally diverse students and communities. In the first place, the relatively strong performance of immigrant - background students in the Canadian context should not obscure the fact that certain groups of students (frequently those from refugee or low-socioeconomic backgrounds ) do experience academic difficulties (McAndrew 2009). There are also significant gaps in the extent to which coherent policies have been formulated at all levels of the education system to address the implications of linguistic diversity for instruction. Many educators who work with bilingual students ( in schools and early childhood centres) have had little preparation either in teacher education or through professional development to equip them to teach effectively in contexts where linguistic and cultural diversity is the norm. Similarly, there is little expectation or requirement that educators who assume positions of responsibility (e.g., school principals or vice - principals ) will be familiar with the knowledge base relating to effective instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students. Throughout the education system, students’ home languages are treated with benign neglect we no longer actively advise parents to switch to English (or French) in the home but we do very little to promote students’ bilingual and biliteracy skills, with the result that there is phenomenal language loss in the early years of schooling. The “resource implications” of this neglect are not only the squandering of linguistic knowledge in an increasingly in terdependent world, but the intangible loss that occurs when children can no longer communicate with their grandparents ( and sometimes even parents ). The data and critical analysis of immigration realities in countries around the world articulated by Judith Bernhard open the door for much - needed dialogue on these issues. Nothing less than the social and economic future of our societies is at stake, which makes the lack of dialogue on these issues up to this point so astounding.

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10

Part I BRAVE NEW WORLD Modern-Day Realities of International Immigration

11

Chapter One

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS But I’m Not an Immigrant!

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i

You may not be an immigrant but many of your neighbours are. Globally, over 200 million people are immigrants. This represents a doubling of the fig ures since the 1960s. Migration and its impacts on families are of great concern to health and social services practitioners and policy makers worldwide. This book is primarily for professionals who work with immigrant children and their families, including teachers, early childhood educators, social workers, health professionals, counsellors, settlement workers and family resource program personnel. As well, all of us as citizens who have various forms of direct and indirect contact with newcomers can benefit from more extensive knowledge of the strengths that new arrivals have to offer. The book will introduce readers to the work of leading thinkers and researchers into im migrant issues, including my own research and experiences with newcomers. The growing immigrant populations of Western countries are not charity cases. Rather, they bring net benefits to the host societies. Countries with shrinking populations are not in the position of charity givers responding to those who are not part of the old cultural mosaics. The opposite is true: host countries have benefited and stand to benefit further from these new arrivals. Indeed , there is no other way to explain the policies of host countries in the last fifty years without assuming that the countries are deliberately seeking immigration because of the benefits it brings. Large urban centres in immi grant - receiving countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia , and the United Kingdom are now home to diverse populations of newcomers. Why have these newcomers been invited to enter the receiving countries? Because in most receiving countries the fertility rates for their existing populations are below what is needed for replacement . In simple terms, their populations are shrinking. These trends affect non - migrants as well as migrants. Public policies encourage immigrants with a recognition that the immi grants’ rates of producing children will help keep the societies at their present levels or at least mitigate the problems of shrinkage. Another benefit of welcoming immigrants is that they swell the numbers of young adult workers. In order to maintain existing benefits to seniors and retired people and pay their medical expenses, countries require a large base of contributions from the younger working population. Whatever difficulties immigration creates, these are outweighed by the contributions made by newcomers.

12

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Some subsets of newcomers experience difficulties adjusting and securing housing and employment. However, the problems are usually transitional. The historical evidence is that most newcomers are able to sustain themselves, if not prosper. For newcomers, as well as the receiving societies, the widespread life success of the children is of most importance. After taking a wide- lens view of the various realities facing immigrants today, this book will focus on the crucial issues involved in sustaining the mutual links between immigrant parents and their children.

Facing the Growing Antipathy against Newcomer Populations Given that immigrants are a critical part of Western societies, where do derogatory stereotypes and beliefs about immigrants come from ? While pressures of globalization and political, environmental and economic turmoil have contributed to the displacement and fragmentation of family networks in many parts of the world, the attitudes of citizens of some host countries are becoming less welcoming. It is only a matter of time until public policies in those countries change to more closely reflect these sentiments. The media coverage of newcomers often portrays them negatively and elicits fear among the citizens of immigrant - receiving countries ( Bauder 2008a ). For example, newcomers are often characterized as criminals. As well, the media commonly portray the countries of origin as backward, ut terly brutal and very dissimilar, having such practices as honour killings of teenage girls and genital mutilation. In the United States, there are pressures for immigration authorities to improve border security and quickly identify and deport illegal immigrants. Concurrently, current legal and social systems frequently leave migrants vulnerable to unemployment and lacking access to benefits. This is detrimental to both the newcomers and the receiving countries.

This noticeable chill has often been accompanied by outright hostility toward some immigrants. Counter measures around the world have included attempts to ban the hijab from schools, universities and other public places, attempts to prevent construction of mosques and attempts to limit the rights of children born to immigrants. Changes to the law in Arizona enacted in 2011 allow police to check the documentation and lay criminal charges against those who lack proof of legal entry into the country. In Utah, a list of undocumented people was recently made public, causing fear and panic among people wondering if they should move. The picture in many countries is one of less welcoming attitudes toward newcomers, if not xenophobia, with immigrants receiving the message to either abandon their identity or leave. The impact of the chilly environment for immigrants is profound. This social climate forces some newcomer families to remain outside the main stream of the receiving society and, officially at least, have a kind of ghostly 13

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

existence. Examples from the U.S., while they appear extreme, are worth looking at. The constant fear of being accosted by police or immigration officials takes its toll on immigrants, especially those who are non - white, even if they are documented. In the recent crackdown on undocumented people in Arizona, the police are given the duty of determining suspected status. Even U.S. citizens of Mexican appearance have been detained if found without adequate documents. In Canada, the evidences of chill are often more subtle; there is more skepticism about refugee claims, and officials sometimes turn a blind eye to the consequences of deportation , which may include abuse or torture. At the same time, the Canadian and U.S. governments have made some compassionate efforts and are officially committed to welcoming im migrants. One wonders if a reason may well be that up the road , immigrants, their friends and families will all be voters. There are a number of social costs associated with present approaches to immigrants and their families. Both the host countries and the newcomers lose when social ills such as gangs and drug involvement arise. A society is hurt when its children are hurting. Hurt children become angry children , and many angry children grow up to behave in antisocial ways. Host societies are hurt when their members do not feel they belong or do not appreciate the stake they have in the social welfare of the community.

Uninformed Consent: Am I Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

i

This book does not focus on public policy or advocate for or against immi gration. It takes the position that enhancing the well - being of immigrants is important for the whole society. When we address the well - being of im migrants, both at the macro level by broad public policy and at the micro level by improved interactions between individual service providers and newcomer families, we all benefit. The primary intent of this book is to provide information and practical suggestions for professionals who work directly with newcomers. Although professionals who work with newcomer children and families usually wish to be of assistance to them and address their unique needs, many professionals feel the pressure caused by the pervasive chilly attitude toward newcomers. While the front-line workers tend to be supportive of families, they cannot help but absorb these attitudes of suspicion. Living and working in such a context is a challenge for professionals on the front line, who are pulled in several directions. Moreover, blanket ignorance regarding the unique challenges facing newcomer families and their children can be found even amongst the best intentioned of helping professionals. This “ uninformed consent” vis-i-vis the systemic conundrums facing immigrants can make itself felt even in seem 14

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

ingly pluralistic quarters. Communities sometimes superficially recognize diversity in practices such as food, dance and festivals. However, deeper issues often remain unaddressed. One sees, for example, the continued em phasis in Canadian schools on immigrants’ foods and festivals. This creates an impression that circumstances for newcomers are as favourable as ever and that there is a welcoming, multicultural nation , benevolently involved. It ignores the realities of the context of reception. It is beneficial for those who work with immigrant children and their families to understand the root causes of immigration and the variety of pressures families experience. By gaining an understanding of the problems experienced by newcomers, professionals will be better prepared to assist or work with immigrants and immigrant families. Some of the most common issues encountered by those on the front lines include the following: • •

communication difficulties; home language use and retention; and

•

academic underperformance.

In most cases, professionals have good intentions and are committed to making serious efforts to promote a well - functioning multicultural society, welcoming immigrants and assisting children in their new environments. This book is intended to help practitioners and pre -service professionals understand and respond appropriately to the issues and challenges that arise when working with newcomers; it includes practical guidance along with examples of successful interventions.

In Conclusion: How Will This Book Help Me? This book is relevant to practitioners of all helping professions in immigrant receiving countries. Teachers, administrators, social workers, health care professionals and other helping professionals will find valuable, practical information that will prepare them to work with newcomers more effectively. It will also be of service to interested citizens as these issues are relevant to all members of a democratic society. In Canada, 20 percent of the population is foreign born . In the United States, the percentage in 2009 was 12.5 and growing. In all immigrant - receiving countries the numbers of foreign - born residents are significant. This book introduces readers to the challenges faced by immigrant fami lies and to meaningful, effective ways of assisting them. Working with young newcomer children and their families requires professionals to acquire and apply knowledge and skills beyond those traditionally taught in most preservice professional training programs because in order to find success and 15

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

derive satisfaction from working with newcomers, professionals need more than skills. The attitudes, dispositions, personal beliefs, values and ethics that individuals bring to their work are of equal importance. This book invites readers to examine their own attitudes and approaches and to become more self-aware. Professionals who work in ways that empower families and build strong communities are motivated by their commitment to fairness and equality. They see their roles as more encompassing than simply delivering health care, education or social services. The fact is that todays helping professional is part of a broader historical and social context. Beyond improving service and support for newcomers, the satisfaction help ing professionals may derive from their work is also commensurate with their greater sense of purpose. To that end, this book concentrates on principles. The reader will not find specific recipes or procedures for dealing with individual immigrants or distressed immigrant families. Rather, illustrations are meant to promote understanding of the principles. Within a general approach based on empowerment and sensitivity to cultural context, there is simply no way to prescribe specific steps for every situation. It is useful to look at specific cases, which is why this book includes detailed discussion of how the principles were applied in those cases. This book is intended to provide readers with a deeper understanding of immigrants and their issues and provide a platform from which professionals might choose appropriate responses to the cases they will encounter in their work. The theoretical foundations and research findings described in the fol lowing pages will encourage and prepare professionals to work collaboratively with immigrant families. Part I explores the realities of modern immigration, beginning with a focus on the migration patterns. Chapter Two introduces the legal and regulatory systems that impact newcomer families. Chapter Three provides an overview of the major institutional pressures encountered by immigrant parents. These pressures unexpectedly result in their authority being undermined and lead to the weakening of the family structure. Chapter Four discusses how these pressures impact immigrants’ daily lives. Part II introduces the theoretical and foundational tools needed by pro fessionals to become positive influences in the lives of newcomers. Chapter Five explores the theoretical underpinnings for understanding families and working in ways that empower them. These frameworks focus on families’ differential access to and possession of cultural capital. Chapter Six explores the implications, for the dominant developmental theories, of the data col lected from several studies with Latino families. Chapter Seven provides a broad, detailed framework to help professionals identify and focus on the strengths, supports and other protective factors that children need in order to thrive. That framework is used in the analysis of interventions. 16

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Part III is devoted to exemplary interventions that have been implement ed to empower immigrant families. Chapter Eight addresses the fundamental question of how to work with families whose cultures are very different than our own . It provides a typology of interventions that have been implemented to empower immigrant families. In many exemplary cases, the interveners made serious efforts to understand parental goals and worldviews and to em power parents and treat them as fully engaged equals. Chapter Nine presents the authors own attempts to help empower immigrant families. Chapter Ten summarizes and reiterates the main themes in the book with particular focus on the interventions targeted for the new waves of immigra tion. This last chapter examines how immigration laws intersect with family functioning. The closing chapter also proposes that this is a good time for interventions. The growing anti- immigration sentiment that is characteristic of the post - 9 - 11, post - market - crash context provides a good reason for find ing ways to highlight the cultural capital that immigrants bring with them . What follows is an exploration of the experiences of todays immigrants. This book introduces new ways of looking at todays problems and encourages readers to empower and collaborate with newcomers. It also helps readers develop essential tools to create a better future for immigrants and for all members of our communities, one family at a time.

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Chapter Two

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS How New Migration Patterns Are Redefining Our Society Building a healthy community requires an awareness of its constituents. Large numbers of immigrants are a reality for many Western countries today. This chapter introduces the numbers and percentages of immigrants around the world. The intent is to provide readers with an accurate understanding of how and why immigrant patterns have changed in recent years. This chapter also identifies some of the problems associated with changing immigrant patterns and discusses how immigrants cope with these problems in their daily lives. An accurate understanding of todays immigration realities is an essential foundation for professionals working in education , health care and social services.

Who Will Pay Your Health Care? Why Western Countries Seek Immigrants The economic health of countries that receive immigrants depends on the balance of productive workers and their younger and older dependents. Yet as figures 2-1 and 2-2 show, the situation in many developed countries is that women are having fewer and fewer children. After the 2006 census, Statistics Canada concluded that the country’s fertil ity remained at about 1.5 children per woman for the last ten years ( Statistics Canada 2010a ). Similarly, Australia has experienced a gradual fertility decline, from 1.91 in 1990 to 1.73 in 2001. In forty years, Australia’s fertility rate has halved, from 3.55 to 1.73 ( De Vaus 2002). Countries of Western Europe, which are experiencing acrimonious debates about immigration, show the same fertility patterns. Sandra Gruescu, a German academic, is quoted as saying: “I actually calculated once that, if Germany continued with its birth rate, Germans would be extinct within 300 years. Which is not a long time, I would think” ( Williams 2011). Figure 2 - 2 shows this downward trend in population. The impact of any politically feasible immigration policy cannot com pletely eliminate the problem of declining population . In order to reverse current trends, massive, constant immigration would have to occur. Immigration can help offset the social cost of shrinking populations and help mitigate the effects. However acrimonious the political debates are, the necessity and facts of immigration remain. 18

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS

-

Figure 2 1: Total Fertility Rate in Canada , 1926 -2005

Source: Statistics Canada 2006a.

Figure 2-2: Total Fertility Rate in Germany, 1952-2008 3.0

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1.5

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West Germany

0.5

East Germany

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£ & £ & £

Souce: Population Reference Bureau 2010.

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Many countries, in the absence of newcomers, are not replacing thenpresent populations. This means that the national populations could eventu ally decline, particularly the populations of major cities. The rate needed to maintain a society at a constant level, leaving aside the question of growth , is estimated to be about 2.1 births per woman.

You’re Not as Young as You Used to Be: Aging Populations in Western Countries To complicate matters, people are living longer and so will require a significant pool of young people in the workforce to pay the taxes that will sustain

health care costs and old age pensions. It is estimated that the proportion of the Canadian population aged 65 19

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

Figure 2 - 3: Aging Population in Canada 30% 25% 20%

15%

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10%

5% 0%

2011

1976

- 65 + '

65- 79

.

2036

2061

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Source: Statistics Canada 2008.

and over will triple from 1976 to 2061. The proportion of those aged 80 and over is growing particularly fast (Statistics Canada 2008). As well, in the United Kingdom the proportion of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase 23 percent by 2033 (Office for National Statistics 2009 ) . It is to be noted that patterns of employment among persons over age 65 are also un dergoing changes; in some cases, continued participation in the workforce is a necessity and for some people it is a choice. More people 60 and over are working now than in previous times. Nonetheless, the basic problem of paying for health care for an aging population remains critical.

The Myth of the “Huddled Masses” Immigrants have always been sought by countries such as Canada , the United States and Australia as a way of increasing their populations. These countries unlike those of Western Europe had large areas of land that could be developed as farmlands. All of them avidly sought immigrants. The earlier reasons for encouraging immigrants still hold, since growth of population is welcomed, but declining fertility rates and aging populations provide ad ditional reasons for these countries to maintain or increase the numbers of immigrants received each year. This slow rate of growth of the population that is of working age is alarm ing because if no intervention occurs, there would soon not be enough people to work and contribute to paying for retirement and health care costs of the citizens. Countries like Canada, the United States and Australia have been addressing this problem of balance by soliciting hundreds of thousands of

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MEET THE NEIGHBOURS

immigrants each year with the aim of enlarging their productive workforces. In 1976, the population increase ( births minus deaths ) represented over 80 percent of population growth in Canada. By 2001, immigration represented close to 70 percent of the population growth. This means that in the last thirty years, there has been a constant increase in the proportion of foreign born residents for the benefit of the country. Of course, all projections are dependent on policies, economic and political environments and changes in the demographics of immigrant -source countries. Due to the uncertainty of projections, low and high variants are also presented to allow for a broader range of possible outcomes ( Congressional Budget Office United States 2006). Although the exact numbers are not known , there is widespread agreement that by 2030 immigrants will be the main source of population growth in most developed countries, including Canada and the United States. The crucial point here is that immigrants are needed by the receiving countries and those countries have in fact benefited from them. In many advanced countries, jobs that are low paying or have low prestige are mainly filled by immigrants. In addition to this well - known pattern, there is increas ing demand in advanced countries for well -educated, highly skilled immi grants. There is competition , in particular, for those with advanced degrees in engineering and computing. In short, the motives underlying immigration policies are not humanitarian. The receiving countries are not showing compassion for the “ huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Present day policies are primarily reflections of the interests of the receiving countries. Various countries have had massive programs to import workers to meet their economic needs.

Diversity Rising: Todays Real Immigrant Numbers Policies that encourage immigration have obvious consequences with respect to the percentage of foreign - born people in a country. Besides the objective issue of percent of foreign - born residents, it is important to know that citizens of immigrant - receiving countries have subjective views of the newcomers and opinions concerning whether there are too many or too few. In a number of immigrant - receiving countries there are political movements or parties whose primary platform is the restriction of immigration , and in some cases, the deportation of some of the foreign - born residents. In 2006, the proportion of foreign - born residents was 20 percent in Canada ( figure 2 - 4) and 12.5 percent in the United States ( figure 2-5). In some cases, these figures are adjusted officially to take some account of those with precarious legal status. Full accounting of the number of foreign - born residents is not possible at this time; a major of reason for this is that the numbers of undocumented persons are not known. This topic is addressed in the following chapter. 21

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

Figure 2 - 4: Number and Share of the Foreign - Born Population in Canada , 1901 - 2006 percentage

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Figure 2-5: Percentage of Foreign - Born in the U.S ., 1850 - 2010

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Percentage foreign born

Number of foreign born (in millions)

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Number of foreign born Foreign born as a percentage of the total US population

Source: Migration Policy Institute Data Hub 2007.

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22

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS

Immigrant children already represent the majority in many metropolitan, multicultural centres such as Toronto and Vancouver ( OECD 2008 ). Half of the children in Toronto come from families who speak languages other than English at home. What is hard to believe at first is that the diversity of children in Canada has been almost entirely neglected in official Canadian reports on implementing early learning ( McCain and Mustard 1999; McCain , Mustard and McCuaig 2011; McCain , Mustard and Shanker 2007; Pascal 2009 ). One can raise the question of what is behind such omissions: Is it possible that such omissions reflect the same blind spot that has been seen in the fields of child development and psychology with respect to diversity and culture? (See Chapter Six for a fuller discussion.) In the United States, Fortuny and colleagues ( 2009 ) estimated that one fifth of all children have at least one foreign - born parent. In California alone, 4.4 million children ( ages 0 - 17 ) are either immigrants themselves or at least one of their parents is an immigrant ( Pourat , Lessard, Lulejian , Becerra and Chakraborty 2003). Almost half of the children in California (48.1 percent ) are immigrants themselves or born to at least one immigrant parent. Of that percentage, many have documented immigrant parents ( 33.4 percent ), but 7.1 percent have at least one undocumented parent (see also Pourat et al. 2003). Declining birth rates mean many countries need immigrants. Immigrants will play a vital and pre- eminent role in determining how these societies develop as time goes on.

Changing Times, Changing Faces: Where Todays Immigrants Come From The characteristics of todays newcomers differ greatly from the newcomers of the past. In the past, the most numerous immigrants arriving in Canada were from Europe. They looked like locals and it was not long until they dressed and spoke like locals as well. Europeans generally blended in. Today, Europeans have been replaced by East Asians, South Asians, people from the Middle East , Africans and Latin Americans. The change in immigrant -source countries means that one out of every six children under age 14 is a member of a visible minority group (Statistics Canada 2010b), “visible” being a key word. Societies relate differently to newcomers who look foreign . The higher birth rates among more recent arrivals continues to reshape the patterns of diversity in Canada and the United States. For example, in the United States the proportion of Hispanics is projected to increase from 16 percent in 2010 to 30 percent in 2050 ( U.S. Census Bureau 2008). In Canada, the proportion of Hispanics is projected to increase from 1 percent in 2006 to 1.7 percent in 2031 (Statistics Canada 2010b). As shown in figures 2-6 and 2 - 7, the proportion of immigrants who are Caribbean is also increasing. 23

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

In 2001, the largest foreign - born group in Canada originated in Europe and over one- third of immigrants came from Asian countries such as China, India and the Philippines. In the same year, most of the immigrants living in the United States were from the Americas and over one - fourth of all im migrants were born in Asia. Similar to Canada , also in 2001, the majority of immigrants living in Australia were from Europe, followed by immigrants who originated in Asia ( Migration Policy Institute Data Hub 2011). Another visible difference in twenty-first -century newcomers relates to changes in the degree of religious diversity. In Canada , for example, looking at changes in source countries one can see that predominantly Muslim coun tries have been in the top ten sources of immigrants for the last fifteen years (Citizenship and Immigration Canada 1999; Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2010). In 2006, 35 percent of the non -Christian population in Canada was Muslim. That number is expected to grow to 48 percent by 2031, meaning that within the non -Christian population one person in two could be Muslim. Among all the religious groups, Muslims are more likely to experience the greatest increase, with their numbers tripling between the years 2006 and 2031 (Statistics Canada 2010b). Muslims now represent the fastest growing religious group in Canada. This pattern seems consistent worldwide. In 2010, 0.8 percent of the Figure 2-6: Region of Birth of Recent Immigrants to Canada , 1971 -2006

Oceania Asia (including the Middle East )

Africa Europe Cental, South America, the Caribbean and Bermuda United States

l

Sources: Statistics Canada 2011 . 24

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS

United States population was Muslim, and it is projected to grow to 1.7 percent by 2030. That same year in Germany, 5 percent of the population was Muslim and that figure is expected to grow to 7.1 percent by 2030. In France, while the right wing is seeking to arouse fears about Islamization , the Muslim population for 2010 was estimated at 4.7 million , or 7.5 percent. The projections for 2030 are of a Muslim population of 6.8 million, or about 10 percent ( Pew Research Center 2011 ). Given that a number of Muslims are not practising, the fears of French society being made Islamic are vastly exag gerated . Further, there is no reason to suspect that the majority of practising Muslims would not subscribe to French values.

When Western Countries Stand Up for Human Rights There have been changes in the source countries of migrants in recent times. One reason for welcoming more men, women and children from non - Euro pean homelands has been an increasing commitment in immigrant - receiving countries to providing asylum to people whose human rights are denied at home. Countries that recognize human rights violations are increasing the intake of refugees. In 2011, South Africa and the United States received the highest number of asylum applications, followed by European countries, then Canada , Australia and New Zealand. The source countries for the worlds major refugee populations in 2011 were Afghanistan , China and Iraq ( UNCHR 2011). Smaller countries also have a significant number of asylum seekers. For example, although Colombian citizens have been granted asylum in

Figure 2-7: Region of Birth for the Foreign - Born Population of the United

States, 2000

Europe

Americas 54%

Source: Migration Policy Institute Data Hub 2011 .

25

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

more than forty countries, eight out of ten Colombians sought protection in Ecuador ( UNHCR 2010). These are among several encouraging signs that the world community is facing up to the refugee issue.

Money Talks, Money Walks: International Economic Changes International economic restructuring has impacted migration patterns. While many in the Global South used to make a living exporting sugar, coffee and manufactured goods, their standards of living declined at the same time as their consumption patterns changed to emulate those of the Global North . Families have experienced unprecedented levels of poverty as their traditional ways of earning a living have all but disappeared. Many people “voluntarily” emigrate in search of improved living conditions and employment opportunities. Once established in the receiving countries, immigrant families frequently send money to those left in the home country or save it in order to sponsor relatives who hope to join them. Employers benefit from immigrant workers undertaking such financial obligations; this is especially evident where the employer is a family. Their nanny will try her utmost to be reli able and keep her income steady. She is also vulnerable to exploitation , in view of these family commitments. There are good reasons for the receiving country to ensure proper pay and working conditions. Healthy workers are more productive. Further, the remittances sent represent a kind of unofficial foreign aid and are likely a stabilizing force in the home country. Table 2- 1: Family Remittances to Latin America in ( U. S .$ Millions ) Country

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Colombia

4493

4769

4145

4024

4168

Dominican Republic

3033

3148

3034

2994

3131

Ecuador

3088

2897

2495

2324

2673

El Salvador

3695

3831

3465

3540

3650

Guatemala

4128

4459

3912

4127

4377

Honduras

2561

2785

2401

2529

2862

Jamaica

1964

2093

1792

1914

2025

23,979

23,621

21,181

21,271

22,731

740

830

771

823

1053

Sum of nine countries above

47681

48432

43196

43545

48,670

Latin America

68,600

69,200

62,000

63,860

69,291

Mexico Nicaragua

Source: Orozco, 2011.

26

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS

In the case of Latin Americans, remittances form part of an important dynamic between immigrants and their countries of origin. A report by the World Bank indicates that the remittances immigrants send are so significant that they add up to be more than the entire GDP of many countries of the Global South. Orozco’s research indicates that remittances are increasingly significant to the economies of immigrant -sending countries including Nicaragua, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic ( Orozco 2002, 2011). Remittances not only provide funds for education , health care and capital to fund small busi nesses but also, in many cases, take the place of official aid and development efforts. Between 2003 and 2008 remittances more than doubled, reaching about $330 billion in 2008. In that same year, the World Bank reported that $52 billion in remittances were sent to India ( Ratha 2009 ). Table 2-1 shows how the trend for Latin Americans living abroad to send money to their families has remained stable over the years in spite of severe economic slowdowns. Remittances are big business not only for those in the home countries but also for those involved in the mobile money transfer business. For example, the International Centre for Business Information ( 2011 ) now hosts an Annual Mobile Money and Migrant Remittances Conference.

Friends and Family Calling across Borders: History in Action In the past, push and pull factors have been cited as determinants of immigra tion. Pull factors are circumstances in receiving countries that are believed to attract immigrants. Lee ( 1966), for example, showed linkages of immigration with the employment situation in the host country. On the push side, Lee cited factors such as poverty as a cause of migration. While there may be some truth to these theories, more careful analysis is required to understand the very complex factors impacting immigration patterns. For example, some of the poorest countries of the world and the poorest nearby countries have sent relatively few migrants. Poverty alone is not a sufficient push factor. Once many migrants have arrived in a host country they become a receptive community, which can draw others from the native country. The inadequacies of the push - pull explanation for migration have been documented by Portes and Baratz (1989) and others. The push - pull explanation cannot account for why Turkish migrants continue to settle in Germany rather than Belgium , where there are more economic opportunities and less overt discrimination. It cannot account for the fact that Algerian migrants are less likely to choose Spain than France as their destination. Part of the explanation lies in the history of immigration . Portes and Baratz ( 1989) have pointed out gaps in the widely accepted theories of migration . Among the various contextual factors identified by these authors, three are especially relevant. 27

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

The first factor is the context in which people emigrate. A shortcoming of the push - pull theory is its lack of attention to the history of interactions between the host and source nations. In particular, features of the colonial past and colonial relationship are ignored. The result of this omission is that the choice of the particular sending and receiving country is not explained. For example, one reason emigrating Algerians have chosen France over most other countries has to do with Algeria being formerly a French colony. If one ignores history, in particular colonial history, immigrants’ choices of particular receiving countries are not explained. Portes and Baratz ( 1989 ) looked at immigration patterns from the poorest countries. The push - pull theory would predict that these people would be strongly pushed to leave. However, this is not the case. Within a given sending country, the push - pull theory would predict that those at the bot tom would be most likely to emigrate. But in fact it is the more advantaged sectors of society that have been the ones to migrate. For example, more advantaged people, not the poorest, move from Latin America to the United States and Canada. At a broad level of determination , the onset of migrant labour flows is not explained by comparison of the relative advantage that the migrant stands to gain. Taking a broader view of migration history, continued labour flows appear to be a direct result of prior contact between sending and receiving societies. An absolute wage advantage in economically expanding areas is not a sufficient pull to bring migrants from less prosperous regions. When their labour has been required, more than just higher wages and employment opportunities are required to attract migrants. The emergence of regular labour outflows of both stable size and known destination first requires institutions of the immigrant - receiving countries to penetrate the immigrant -sending countries.

L

This helps to explain the continued flow of migrants in the face of lessening opportunities. Reduced employment opportunities during periods of recession in the immigrant - receiving countries represent a lessening of pull. However, numbers of migrants do not diminish when job opportuni ties shrink. Portes and Baratz ( 1989) also analyzed the choice of reception countries, another factor that is largely unexplained by the push - pull theory. Once again , they explained, while in appearance migration arises out of a series of “rational” economic decisions by individuals to escape their immediate situations, in reality, its fundamental origin lies in the history of past economic and political contact and power asymmetries between sending and receiving nations. The crucial factor in earlier studies of immigration patterns has been recognition of the importance of network building. As Portes and Baratz 28

MEET THE NEIGHBOURS ( 1989 ) summed it up, migration is best understood as a process of progres sive network building. This perspective on migration enables professionals who work with newcomers to better understand immigrants decisions. Encouraging and supporting progressive network building is one of the practical ways in which helping professionals can assist newcomer families. Portes and Baratz’s ( 1989) third vital insight focused on the mix of local -level opportunities and constraints found in places of settlement. Cities vary in their immigration traditions, their welcoming of immigrants and the presence or absence of co- nationals and co-ethnics. The circumstances in places of settlement influence the extent to which newcomers are ghettoized or integrated. To better understand immigrant students, patients, citizens and clients, awareness of the wide variances of settlement phenomena is helpful. Insularity increases in settings characterized by intolerance toward newcomers and strict immigration law enforcement.

In Conclusion: The New “ Us” The trends described in this chapter have brought about much more diverse societies in the countries receiving the most immigrants: Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Cities once populated almost entirely by families of European descent are now home to growing numbers of “visible minority” families. Canada , Australia and West European countries have all solicited and welcomed large numbers of these newcomers. The receiving countries need immigrants in order to sustain their workforces and pay the taxes required to allow them to continue high levels of public expenditures. In spite of the adjustments and adaptations required by countries receiving immigrants, immigration has produced incalculable benefits for the host countries. Most immigrants arrive in their new countries hoping and expecting to improve themselves economically and access opportunities unavailable in their countries of origin. Also, large numbers of newcomers have more pressing reasons for leaving their home countries. They have left their homes seeking refuge from human rights violations, persecution , crime and wars. It is obvious that millions of people undergo the upheaval of immigra tion in order to seek out a better future for themselves and their children. These people are idealists and go-getters. Given this fact, it is surprising that immigrants are often found near the bottom of their host society’s social and financial totem pole. Many immigrants have difficulties achieving and main taining comfortable standards of living. Helping professionals in immigrant receiving countries are seeking more effective strategies for working with newcomers. The chapters ahead discuss ways in which service providers can build on the strengths of newcomer families to help them reach their goals. 29

Chapter Three

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS How Our Social and Legal Systems Treat Newcomer Families Canada accepts an average of 250,000 immigrants a year ( Citizenship and Immigration Canada 2011), and this represents approximately 0.8 percent of the population. This includes over 40,000 Convention refugees. 1 These high numbers and the country’s multiculturalism policy have contributed to Canadas humanitarian reputation. While Canadians can feel proud of this, there are inconsistencies between the positive reputation and the realities of the lives of most newcomers. This chapter elaborates on the specifics of the situation. Until relatively recently, immigrants to Canada could reasonably expect to find employment and become established relatively quickly. Today, in sharp contrast, stories of immigrant slums, health care problems and unemployment are rampant. What has changed for the immigrants heading to Canada ? The last twenty years have seen a growing gap between the economic status of recent immigrants and the economic status of native- born individuals and long-established immigrants. This chapter contrasts the diversity- friendly reputation with the lived experience of newcomers to Canada .

The Myth of the “ Illegal Immigrant”: Precarious Legal Status

l

Thousands of families enter Canada under temporary work programs. For example, 2007 saw enough temporary workers to staff 1,800 farms. An ad ditional 4,000 women came into the country under the Live- in Caregivers program. Between 2006 and 2009, Canada admitted more newcomers as temporary workers than as permanent residents. The fall 2009 report from the Auditor General of Canada (Office of the Auditor General of Canada 2009) indicates that the influx of temporary workers is displacing immigrant track citizenship. People on this parallel track of temporary workers have few rights, and many work in conditions that would not be considered possible in a prosperous democratic country. For example, in Canada, domestic workers are not allowed to sponsor their children until they have been working in the country for two years. If there is a breakdown in sponsorship with the original employer, then the domestic worker has to start the two -year count 30

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

down again. The predictable result of this policy is widespread severe abuse and exploitation of thousands of domestic workers. If an employer revokes a domestic workers sponsorship and the worker remains in the country to seek alternate employment, the worker will be unsure of her legal status. If a child is born into a household with one legal parent and one parent whose legal status is unclear, the family will be unsure of the status of the child. Apart from occasional sensational news reports of school and workplace deportation raids, there is very little scholarly documentation of the everyday lived experiences of families and children who are living with precarious status. Recent work by migration studies researchers has elaborated upon the concept of legal status, showing it to be a complicated, multi-layered and multi -actor process that does not exist in a straightforward legal- illegal or documented - undocumented binary ( Bernhard, Goldring, Young, Berinstein and Wilson 2008; de Genova 2002; Goldring, Berinstein and Bernhard 2009; Menjivar 2006). Legal status tends to move along a continuum with individ uals shifting from one legal status to another, sometimes over a period of years or decades. As with temporary workers coping with threatened sponsorship as described above, many migrants arrive through formal channels but subsequently lose all or part of their status in any number of ways. The increased reliance on temporary workers has been quietly ushered in without much public dialogue. In 2008, Canada changed its migration policy so that now almost half of immigrants are admitted as temporary workers. Furthermore, despite the “temporary” label that is ascribed to them during the immigration process, many of these individuals remain in the country longterm ; even where their status has lapsed, they may remain in the country or return year after year. At this point, they fall into the undocumented category. Others enter immigrant - receiving countries through different programs. Under new immigration policies, many migrants who are unable to meet the selection criteria of language proficiency, level of education and occupational classification enter on student visas, tourist visas or as refugee claimants. Later, determined to settle in the new host country, these new arrivals may overstay their visas, go underground after failed refugee claims or fail to show up at deportation hearings. In the United States, the situation of undocumented residents is complex and the numbers are staggering (see figures 3- 1 and 3- 2). There are estimates of twelve million undocumented individuals. Each year, approximately 500,000 undocumented migrants arrive in the United States ( Van Hook, Bean and Passel 2005), although this number has dropped recently due to increased deportations and a slowdown in the American economy. In 2004, 1.6 million children in the United States were undocumented and were in families in which one of the parents was undocumented as well 31

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

Figure 3- 1 : Unauthorized Migrants in the U.S . by Source Region and Country Europe

Central and South America

Source: Van Hook, Bean and Passel 2005.

Figure 3 -2: Estimates of the U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Population , 2000-2010 i4

IH

12

-

12

f -

tel-

i

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 Source: Passel and Cohn 2011.

L

32

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

( Passel 2005a ). In the United Kingdom , an estimated 120,000 children are living without legal status and are at risk of abuse, deportation and destitution (Sigona and Hughes 2012 ). Over 65,000 of these children were actually born in the U.K . but still live in constant fear of being found out and deported. Thousands of children find themselves in situations of precarious legal status as well. For instance, children in Canada who have status protections

while they are crown wards of Childrens Aid Societies have that status and those protections revoked when they reach the age of maturity ( Hare 2007).

Invisible Lives, Invisible Fences: Living with Precarious Status The most disturbing element of the precarious-status picture is that many migrants with precarious status are known to authorities. This does not contribute to the resolution of their marginalized position. On the contrary, turning a blind eye to people who can provide cheap labour is common in most immigrant - receiving countries. Although there are no accurate figures available to indicate how many people are living with precarious status, estimates for Canada range from 40,000 to 600,000 ( Jimenez 2003; Khandor, McDonald , Nyers and Wright 2004; Robertson 2005; Wright 2003). In the United States, it is estimated that 3.4 million children live in households headed by an undocumented adult ( Passel 2005b ). For immigrant - receiving countries around the world , the number of precarious-status immigrants continues to grow. Yet , as may be obvious, precarious status is a passport to poverty, ill health and many other hardships for newcomers. Some segments of society benefit from the poverty of immigrants, especially those who are undocumented. The hotel and agricultural industries are examples. On one hand , the public at large has benefited in the form of cheaper goods and services. On the other hand, the harmful effects on the whole society need to be considered. Where there is poverty, lack of education and ill health , the whole society is harmed. The whole society would benefit if the standard of living of disadvantaged groups improved. Addressing the problems of undocumented newcomers is not simply a matter of showing compassion . It is in the interest of the immigrant - receiving countries to do so, as any society defines itself by its concern for social justice. Consequently, Canadas neglect and complicity in the exploitation of vulnerable migrants reflects very poorly on its own identity. Among Latin American, African, Caribbean, Arab and West Asian people living in Canada, the poverty rates are as much as three times higher than the rates for Europeans and Canadian - born groups. Van Hook, Bean and Passel ( 2005) reported that 44 percent of Black children in the United States compared to 19 percent of non - Black children live in low- income families. Among newcomers to Canada and the United States, those identi-

—

—

33

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

fied as visible minority (African, Asian, Latin American origin ) face more intensified versions of these same problems. Finding secure employment is not easy for newcomers. Many will find themselves unemployed or underemployed. The situation is worse for un documented or precarious-status newcomers. It is not easy to establish a good standard of living in host countries whose laws allow newcomers to be taken advantage of by employers who benefit from cheap labour. In addition to financial poverty, many newcomer families also cope with the stresses of a fundamentally unstable day- to-day existence. For those with precarious status in particular, living in constant fear of being deported has real -life consequences. Precarious legal status means avoiding social and health services, education and other entitlements that traditional immigrant groups enjoy. The role of fear in limiting the lives and choices of newcomers with precarious status has begun to be noted in the academic literature ( Berinstein , Nyers, Wright and Zerehi 2006; Berk and Schur 2001; Lessard and Ku 2003; Schwenken 2003; Yau 1995). Limited legal status prevents individuals from obtaining social insurance numbers needed to work legally, denies them access to publicly funded health care and excludes them from affordably accessing public childcare and post -secondary education. The social safety net that other residents rely on is unavailable to them. They fear child protection agencies will try to apprehend their children , and they hesitate to call the police or the fire department in emergencies. Women in situations of family violence are reluctant to access shelters. Immigrants with precarious status face a number of difficulties related to their circumstances.

A Place to Call Home:

Lack of Family- Friendly Housing for Newcomers Newcomer immigrants typically face a number of housing difficulties, many of them due to low income. A report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities showed that in Canada about 48 percent of newcomers pay more than 30 percent of their income on shelter, whereas only 38 percent of Canadian - born renters spend that much on housing ( FCM 2011). It is difficult to find exact figures for those with precarious status, but it is quite evident that their housing difficulties will be even worse than new comer immigrants, reflecting such phenomena as sub -standard housing, doubling up of families in apartments and living in cars and garages. The Access Alliance Multicultural Community Health Centre ( AAMCHC ) found that many of the undocumented families were in sub-standard housing, often with crowding problems.

34

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

Disease Doesn’t Discriminate: Lack of Health Care for Adults and Children Several studies have found that people living with precarious legal status are hesitant to seek out medical attention except in emergencies or acute situa tions. As a result , these residents do not benefit from preventative health care ( Access Alliance Multicultural Community Health Centre 2005; Bannerman, Hoa and Male 2003; Committee for Accessible AIDS Treatment 2001). Yet the spread of disease does not remain limited to this unacknowledged sector of society; it affects the entire society. The whole community is harmed when any group avoids medical services, and conversely, the whole community stands to benefit if everyone has access to essential health care. In California , approximately one- fifth of children with undocumented parents have fair or poor health (see figure 3- 3). One in four undocumented children of undocumented parents and one in ten U.S.- born children of un documented parents lack regular access to health care. In comparison with children of U.S.- born parents, only half as many undocumented children of undocumented parents visit hospital emergency rooms. Furthermore, the health of undocumented migrants is typically poor or critical due to their experiences before and during their migration. The work -

Figure 3 -3: Health Status and Utilization of Children by Their and Their Parents’ Immigration Status, California, 2001 30% 25% 20%

15%

5%

J

_

0%

I

L-

10% -

kJ tm

Fair/ Poor Physician Health diagnosed Status asthma

Has no usual source of

care

Visited Has never visited a emergency seen a dentist room in medical doctor in (ages 2-17) past 12 months past 12 Has not

Had a hospital stay last year

months (ages 0-11 )

U.S.-born children of both U.S.-born parents H U.S.- born children of at least one undocumented immigrant parent Undocumented immigrant children

Source: Pourat et al . 2003. Reprinted with permission of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. 35

f

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

ing conditions of these migrants worsen their health (Chauvin et al. 2009 ). Unfortunately, in immigrant -receiving countries, undocumented migrants have little or no access to health care and illness prevention services. Legal barriers, lack of information , systematic barriers and discrimination impede these people from receiving proper and necessary health care. In a study of eleven European countries Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain , Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom it was identified that 72 percent ofhealth problems within the undocumented population are poorly treated or untreated ( Chauvin et al. 2009 ). As figure 3-4 illustrates, 41 percent of undocumented migrants in the aforementioned countries have stopped seeking health care services all together. The total number of undocumented migrants living in Canada is un known. Although this group continues to grow, only guesstimates exist, ranging from 20,000 to half a million ( Carrasco et al. 2010 ). The lack of knowledge on this population makes it challenging to identify and address their health needs. The whole society stands to benefit if newcomers have accessSw to education and health care.

—

—

Closed Doors at School It is suspected that many immigrant children are not attending school because of parents’ deportation fears (Sidhu 2008 ). Although schools are not supposed to inquire about immigration status, this information is regularly asked for, if not demanded. Immigrant parents are often nervous when they arrive at school to register their children, and there are many school procedures that

Figure 3-4: Proportion of People Having Given up on Seeking Health Care, by Country 80% 68.0%

Note: Country abbreviations: SE=Sweden , BE = Belgium , UK = United Kingdon , IT= Italy, NL= Netherlands, FR = France, ES =Spain , EL= Greece Source: Chauvin , Parizot and Simonott 2009. 36

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

make them and their children feel anxious and uncomfortable. For example, contrary to stated policies of ministries of education , many school secretaries ask parents for legal papers or require them to show documentation regard ing their legal status (Sidhu 2008; Young 2013 forthcoming). Students are often asked probing questions about their parents that the families consider private family matters. Wanting to stay under the radar, many families tend not to respond to school - based parental involvement initiatives. Educators need information about home languages, family goals, lines of family authority and emergency contacts. It is important that the enrolment process be carried out respect fully, giving a message of welcome. The proposed Development , Relief and Education of Alien Minors Act ( DREAM Act ) aims to help undocumented youth ( under 30 years of age ) who arrived to the United States as children ( younger than 16) ( Palacios 2010 ). The DREAM Act would allow youth to stay permanently in the United States without being penalized as long as they attend college or join the military ( Galassi 2003; Olivas 2010 ). Each year 65,000 undocumented students graduate high school, but only between 5 and 10 percent go on to college ( Miranda 2011 ). Advocates for the Act argue that these youth consider the United States to be their home and should not be sent to a country that is unknown to them (Trumka and Pacheco 2010 ). Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina prohibit undocumented students from enrolling in post -secondary education , while Texas, New Mexico and California are among the states that offer in -state tuition to undocumented youth ( Miranda 2011). Although it is estimated that more than two million DREAM Act candidates live in the United States, Congress has failed to pass the Act for nearly ten years ( Miranda 2011; Trumka and Pacheco 2010 ). Opponents argue that illegal behaviour should not be rewarded ( Perez-Stable 2011). Problems of parent documentation affect children in a number of ways. For example, Young ( 2013 forthcoming) finds that often parents do not tell their children about their limited status until they begin considering higher education . Learning that they are illegal and do not qualify for financial aid for higher education is understandably shocking and upsetting to students. Absorbing the negative messages that comprise public opinion, their sense of identity is deeply affected. Denying undocumented students full participation in society inhibits the development of many talented people. These people could be significant contributors to the advancement of the host society. Apart from humanitarian considerations, the possible benefits to the larger society are wide- ranging. If barriers were removed , undocumented individuals would be more likely to find employment in better jobs and become healthier, more productive citizens. 37

STAND TOGETHER OR FALL APART

Mommy Far Away: Transnational Families Family separation is another frequent result of current policies in immigrant receiving countries. There is a growing phenomenon , noted in the research literature, of families whose members are spread geographically over sev eral nation states and whose lives cross national boundaries. These families are known in the social science literature respectively as “ multi -local” and “transnational ” families ( Bernhard, Landolt and Goldring 2009; Erel 2002; Hondagneu -Sotelo and Avila 1997; Levitt 2001; Wayland 2006 ) . The Harvard Immigration Project reported that 85 percent of immigrant children have been separated from one or both parents (Suarez - Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 2001). Studies with a transnational focus are now emerging in North America and although the difficulties are similar to those documented in the Harvard study, no other prevalence estimates are available. In North America, there are two main patterns that lead to family separation. Many immigrant parents become pessimistic about the lack of accessible, affordable childcare and early learning programs in North America and “elect” to temporarily send their children back to their home country, where they can be cared for by family members. The second pat tern is characterized by parents in the face of multiple pressures to migrate, temporarily leaving their children behind. Both patterns involve tremendous human cost to the families. Family separation creates many problems. Interviews conducted oneon -one by first language Spanish speakers with forty Latin American moth ers living in Canada found that the challenges during the separation from their children and after the reunification were completely unexpected by the mothers (Bernhard, Landolt and Goldring 2009 ). The emotional and financial costs hit them hard. One of the primary challenges faced by multi-local and transnational families involves extended family separations. While separated , grandparents or other relatives remaining in the home countries made decisions about the children. In some cases, the effect on the children was such that the children no longer considered the mothers as authority figures. In other cases, the mothers felt pressured to relinquish their rights as primary caregivers and were reluctant to voice discomfort during times of disagreement. During reunification , there were many signs of childrens emotional distress including health problems, problems at school, sadness, anger and bedwetting. Findings indicated that there was no consistent use of available social services. Mothers with less than full status did not have access to programs or services such as childcare, and they feared being deported if they attempted to access services. Health and social service providers would be better able to assist transnational and multi-local families if they were aware 38

UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTHS

of and sensitive to the issues and concerns of this population. For many of the mothers, seeking help from professionals was considered shameful as they saw asking for help as a sign of personal failure. Parent -child relationships were permanently affected by children who felt anger and a sense of abandonment at having been left behind or sent back to the families’ countries of origin. Nonetheless, transnational and multi -local families are increasingly common and will continue to be a feature of immigrant - receiving countries. Despite the tremendous human costs to families, particularly mothers and children , the policy frameworks that have produced this situation are largely entrenched , unquestioned and unlikely to change in the near future. Since the process of reunification takes between one and three years in most cases and sometimes up to five years parents need support in developing short - term and mid - term plans for themselves and their families to help them cope with the long wait. Reunification is an extremely challeng ing process requiring further support. Part II provides strategies for helping professionals, especially teachers and school administrators, to provide transnational families with this necessary additional support.

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In Conclusion: Ignorance Hurts Us Transnational theorists question the idea of interpreting migrants’ lives within the context of nation states. Raising children across geographic nation states implies rethinking the idea of national boundaries, which are often taken for granted in migration scholarship ( Bernhard, Landolt and Goldring 2009; Landolt and Da 2005; Levitt and Schiller 2004; Parenas 2001, 2006; Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1995). Levitt and Schiller ( 2004: 1003) state that analytical tools “must necessarily broaden and deepen because newcomers are often embedded in multi-layered, multi-sited transnational social fields, encompassing those who move and those who stay behind.” Social workers whose clients include newcomers cannot assume that their advice will be accepted as reasonable and acted upon. For example, a mother living with intimate partner violence might be encouraged by social workers to call the police and take her children and her belongings to a shelter. The woman’s rejection of such a plan could be seriously misinterpreted and her real reasons for staying would not be evident to the worker. The battered woman might fear deportation. She might fear disrupting her children’s schooling or their access to health care. For any number of reasons, an individual newcomer with complex legal status might be disinclined to access social services. The following chapter describes the consequences for families living in unstable, fearful situations.

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Note 1

Canada is a signatory of the United Nations’ 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The definition of Convention Refugee, as presented in the Geneva Convention , is incorporated into Canadas Immigration Act. Refugees and persons needing protection are people in or outside Canada who fear returning to their country of nationality or habitual residence.

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Chapter Four

VOICES THAT HAVE BEEN SILENCED Day - to Day Struggles of Newcomers -

In creating, structuring and running a family, parents play a number of critical roles. Heath ( 2006 ) , following a long line of sociologists, has distinguished roles such as love and nurturance from other roles, including guidance and long- term planning and provision of a moral and spiritual example. Children need parents to be their safe haven of warmth and reassurance in a large, cold world. Parents also are needed to provide and model a bedrock of strong identity and structure in a world of anonymity and confusion. The confidence parents need in order to provide these functions for their children and for the family as a whole flow from an acknowledgment and support of their authority. However, the social position of newcomer families has a number of effects on family structure and functioning. A body of research evidence indicates that the disempowerment and undermining of self - efficacy in immigrants contribute to the breakdown of family structure ( Ali 2008 ). Children thrive when their parents provide them with nurturance and a sense of security. It is essential that linkages between parents and children be preserved. While children adapt to the ways of the new society, they need to maintain their connections with their parents and their grandparents. Children benefit from a sense of pride in their family history, efficacy and hope for the future. Yet today s migration processes subvert the maintenance of crucial parental roles. This chapter discusses the environmental factors that have the greatest impact on family functioning, including various problems that migrants encounter. Employment challenges, discrimination , anti- immigrant attitudes, racism and majority language and culture challenges all impact newcomer families. Issues of civic engagement or lack of it sculpt families as well. Challenges such as family violence, child protection issues, lack of support networks and planning for childrens futures are particularly difficult for families adjusting to life in an unfamiliar country. In order to better understand our newcomer students, patients, clients and neighbours, some of the challenges they experience are highlighted as a foundation for the intervention strategies that are explored in Part II.

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You’re Just Not Cool : Cultural Capital and Social Status for Immigrant Teens Most adults remember how hard it was to make it through high school. Cliques, fads, peer pressure, verbal and even physical abuse come with the territory. Many of us even recall with shame having bought into the culture of hurtful messages and the acceptance of pressure to change how we looked, spoke and behaved in order to fit in, regardless of our true feelings and values. Immigrant children experience significant divergence between the val ues and child - rearing practices found in their homes and those prevalent in schools in immigrant - receiving countries. The ethnic and religious identities of the children of newcomers are often changed or seriously undermined by their school experiences due to the profound devaluing of their cultural capital. What is cultural capital? The lens of cultural capital provides a unique and valuable perspective on newcomer challenges. This is explored in greater detail in Chapter Five. In short summary, cultural capital is the set of dispositions, values, attitudes and capabilities used by the dominant stratum of a society to maintain its position. Cultural capital includes knowledge and know- how, work habits, clothing, vocabulary and pronunciation . Some elements of cultural capital have direct practical importance, whereas others are merely accepted status symbols.

The cultural capital of migrant groups has a range of factors, including religion, traditions, home language, style of parent - child relationships and clothing. When families are able to affirm their cultural capital, the children generally attain a positive identity or a view of themselves as worthwhile members of their community. However, immigrant - receiving societies often ignore the cultural capital of newcomers or regard it as being of no use in the new context. Despite the fact that newcomers bring with them strengths and knowl edge, implicit and explicit which have been termed “funds of knowledge” by Luis Moll and his colleagues some features of newcomers’ cultural capital may be labelled as hindrances. For example, the use of home lan guages or styles of traditional dress may be looked down upon . The poor fit between families’ funds of knowledge and the cultural capital valued in the host societies produces family distress and disempowerment . These nega tive outcomes give rise to further negative outcomes in the form of despair, self-hatred, apathy or criminality. Ideally, the family is a site of transmission of attitudes and values from one generation to the next. The various forms of capital a group possesses cultural, social and otherwise are transferred to the children largely through the family. However, parental authority is undermined among im migrant families when the institutions of immigrant - receiving countries,

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particularly schools, represent values that conflict with the values taught at home. In the eyes of the children , the lifestyles and values of exemplars in the new society are fresh and appealing; problems arise when children come to see their parents as out of touch and hopelessly old - fashioned. The rejection of ones cultural capital creates a dangerous vacuum. The well - being of children is affected by their ability to deal with their traditional background as well as their new social context, but constructing new identity based on maintaining the traditional expectations of their home and adding the norms and social practices of the new culture requires a measure of sophistication and strength of identity that most children cannot maintain. Parents struggling with similar issues in the labour market can end up contributing to a deepening sense of insecurity and confusion. This sort of identity dilemma is often expressed in day- to-day conflict. Another monkey wrench thrown into the jumble of confused immigrant identity is the influence of consumerism . Children absorb messages about what to buy and what to wear. These items come to be considered obligatory and essential for survival and status among peers. This is far from surprising. Corporations spend billions of dollars to convince children as young as preschoolers that they need particular styles and brands of clothing. Tensions arise between children and their parents due to concerns about both cost and appropriateness of clothing. Furthermore, a part of youth-centred culture in immigrant - receiving countries involves staking out ones claims against competing claims by adults and family. Children may come to regard lying, stealing and deception as acceptable and even commendable ways to get what they want. Youthful exemplars on TV shows frequently accomplish their goals despite parents’ objections. These antisocial influences are another strong destabilizing factor for newcomer families. The best outcomes occur when immigrants become equally functional and at home in both the culture of their country of origin and the culture of the receiving society. Ideally, a broader, new bicultural identity is constructed. Helping professionals, particularly teachers, can make a big difference in either facilitating this process or undermining it.

Don’t You Even Know English?” The Double - Edged Sword of Language “

One of the major challenges faced by immigrant children is learning a new language while maintaining fluency in their home language. Many immigrant children have limited proficiency in the language of instruction in the schools they attend. These children require between two and five years of explicit English instruction to develop basic communication skills and between five and seven years to develop academic language proficiency ( Cummins 1996). 43

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According to People for Education ( 2010), 26 percent of elementary schools in Ontario with ten or more ESL students have no ESL teacher. The provision of support for preschool and kindergarten children learning English would be beneficial but it is rarely available. In the present context, with immigrant groups increasingly maintaining their home language and customs, the concept of additive bilingualism is particularly useful. In the best circumstances, the second language acqui sition does not interfere with competency in the first language. In other words, in North America, an ideal outcome would be that the addition of English or French does not supplant the native language of the immigrant. Cummins and others have investigated these phenomena in detail and set out the factors that make for additive as opposed to subtractive outcomes ( Genesee 1987; Harley, Hart and Lapkin 1986; Ianco- Worrall 1972; Lambert and Tucker 1972). Why? The home language serves as important basis for the development of cognitive skills in the second language. The challenges of acquiring a second language while maintaining the ability to have meaningful conversations with family members can also have a profound effect on attachment , or a child’s sense of security and their identity. More than a means of conveying one dimensional messages, language is a rich emotional and ideological carrier embodied with a particular view of the world . Wong - Fillmore’s ( 1991 ) classic study of one thousand families living in the United States outlined how loss of home language negatively affects communication between children and their families. For many immigrant families this is a significant issue ( Bernhard and Pacini - Ketchabaw 2010). Unfortunately, a number of minority language communities are, within a single generation , likely to have no young adult speakers of their language. An early study incorporating various immigrant communities ( Bernhard , Lefebvre, Murphy Kilbride, Chud and Lange 1998) examined the language so cialization of children , highlighting ways in which the education system tends to encourage assimilation, contributing to the eventual loss of children’s home language. In this pan -Canadian study of childcare centres, it was found that, in some cases, 80 percent of the children in a particular language group were in centres where there was not even one staff member who shared their language. Studies conducted with Latin American parents ( Bernhard , Freire, Torres and Nirdosh 1998; Pacini- Ketchabaw, Bernhard and Freire 2001 ) found that elementary school -age children tend to lose their mother tongue during the “normal processes” of institutional functioning of Canadian schools. Although parents saw Spanish maintenance as a way to foster family unity, Latino identity and professional advancement, the strong assimilative messages received from the schools resulted in parents doubting the desirability of openly speaking Spanish at home. 44

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Many parents became convinced that in order to get ahead, children needed to become quickly immersed in English . They did not realize, however, that acting on this belief often meant that the first language could be lost in a very short time. Numerous studies have shown the alarming rate of home language loss in the first years of schooling, particularly when children do not have a chance to practise their home language. Not only do children lose the valuable social and cognitive benefits associated with bilingualism , they also face the disastrous consequences of not being able to talk to their parents and grandparents, or to receive necessary feedback and guidance from them on aspects ranging from sexual activity to academic decisions and other normative behaviour ( Chumak - Horbatsch 2008; Pacini - Ketchabaw, Bernhard and Freire 2001; Park and Sarkar 2007 ). Because of these concerns, preservation of their home language has become a priority for some families. One reason for this is the connection between home language and communication , particularly emotional con versations between parents and children. Ways in which professionals can support home language retention are discussed in Part II . However, the issue of language is a double - edged sword. The requirements of the host society dictate the languages that are crucial to functioning in that society; in this regard , parents are often at a disadvantage relative to their own children . Generational problems can develop because children usually learn the working language of their new community faster than their parents. The children may operate not only as intermediaries but also as gatekeepers with schools, doctors or creditors calling the home. As parents come to rely on their children to be linguistic and cultural brokers, unusual and sometimes dangerous role reversals and shifts in parental authority may occur (Tyyska 2007). Some professionals argue that asking children to provide interpretation for their parents is inappropriate because it may result in the parents’ feelings of loss of control. Similarly, when they become their fami lies’ cultural brokers, children are given the tasks of mediating when issues present conflicts between the values of home and those of the host culture. One danger here is that these conflicting forces affect the child’s sense of belonging to either or both of the cultures. In fact, the phenomenon is complex. A number of researchers have found positive correlations between language brokering and psychosocial outcomes as well as academic performance and self - efficacy. Dorner, Orellana and Li - Grining ( 2007 ) proposed that the issue of the effects of brokering is a function of several variables, including the culture, the relation of the parents to the culture, ages, the gender of the child and the level of skills.

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The House Cleaner with a PhD: Employment and Identity for Newcomers In Canada and other immigrant - receiving countries, medical doctors trained abroad struggle to receive residency placements; academics and tradespersons with foreign credentials work as janitors; and other highly trained newcom ers work in entry-level positions unrelated to their education and expertise. Adult family members in immigrant families may become discouraged and depressed when they realize that they cannot find work that matches their education levels and experience. Host -country employers may not recognize foreign credentials and work experience. After depleting their savings trying to have these credentials recognized , many immigrants seek jobs in the service sector. It is often newcomer women who find work first as nannies, helping with the elderly, cleaning and comparable jobs. This professional and marital rolereversal begins a downward spiral for many couples. Disproportionately, many immigrants are in the lowest paying jobs regardless of their education level, and a good many are unemployed. For university- trained newcomers, the unemployment rate is 8.6 percent whereas it is 3.5 percent among Canadian born university graduates. Additionally, recent immigrants that are university graduates earn half the income of Canadian - born colleagues ( FCM 2011). Parents without jobs may have trouble exercising authority. Marital troubles that many immigrants experience limit their ability to support their children’s adjustment to the new country. Parents who are unemployed tend to doubt themselves, and their ability to provide guidance and resources for their children is compromised.

Cracking under the Pressure: Spousal and Child Abuse Chronic unemployment and underemployment can result in depression , alcoholism and substance abuse. The consequence is often family dysfunction, with a blurring of traditional roles, breakdown of boundaries, domestic violence and failure to fill nurturance roles. While spousal abuse is not uncommon with immigrant families just as with other families under stress there are particular legal ramifications for newcomer families. For example, the abuser may threaten to destroy the status of his abused partner if the abuse is reported and outside help is requested. Professionals who work with immigrant families need to be aware of gender issues, which may be at variance with the host community’s values. Many immigrant parents fear child protection agencies. They see their authority being undermined by the methods the host society uses to insure the welfare of children. Child welfare laws are unknown to most immigrant

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parents. For example, local definitions of child abuse and neglect and the powers of social welfare authorities are usually not understood. Many immigrant parents run into trouble when trying to discipline their children using methods that were acceptable in their countries of origin. They are shocked to hear that the schools tell their children to call 911 if they feel they are being abused or treated badly. Some children take advantage of this. In some cases, parents are arrested and the children are removed from their homes. The child welfare system , despite good intentions, often undermines the position and efficacy of the parents, and there is arguably no compensating benefit to the children. We argue that the parents’ view of the best interest of the child should always be listened to; a professionals outside view is sometimes off target. What is perhaps of paramount importance is the child’s rights as recognized in Canadian law and in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Professional interventions that are properly designed and ensure the rights and even lives of the children are necessary and deserve our entire support . Examples of young females and wives who have received death threats from male family members have been in the news, and such situations urgently require to be addressed within a framework of basic human rights. With immigrant families fearful of child protection agencies and lacking basic information about which disciplinary strategies are legal and appropri ate, professionals sometimes unintentionally cause additional difficulties. In the interests of both children and their parents, it would be beneficial to ensure that newcomer families have access to parenting programs that explain the hows and whys of child welfare and introduce positive child guidance strategies ( Bernhard , Freire and Mulligan 2004).

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Parenting in a Vacuum: Lack of Friends , Community and Supportive Institutions Parental efficacy never exists in a void. To put it in simpler terms, good parents do not do it alone. Efficient parenting presupposes linkages with other parents, with the community and an immersion in the culturally approved norms of child rearing. Kids and parents need babysitters sometimes. They need good preschools in order for mothers to pursue employment. Fathers and mothers need a helping hand now and again. This is what makes up the substance of normal living. Parents need the support of a network of people of all ages to help with the difficult task of raising their children, but even those who do have relatives or close friends nearby are often reluctant and embarrassed to share information concerning the problems of their children. The lack of networks that link home, schools and the community increases the stressors experienced by immigrant families. Networks help in preserving the history of the family 47

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and community. Without this sense of history, the identities of those in the new generation are precarious. Immigrant parents face the same problem as other lower- and middle class parents with regard to childcare access. It is estimated that in Ontario, only 16 percent of eligible children have spaces in licensed centres ( Jenson and Mahon 2002 ). Immigrant parents solve the problem the same way as others by relying on neighbours and unregulated childcare, which may be dangerous or apathetic custodial care. For immigrant parents, irregular or night employment and language issues may compound the difficulties in finding appropriate, good -quality childcare. The vast majority of immigrant parents are extremely concerned with their childrens well - being, and they despair when they find out that there are so few affordable, well - designed early childhood education programs that they can access. Many parents know that early education programs can serve as a foundation for developing literacy, problem solving and enhancing social skills. Yet there is evidence from the United States that immigrant children are underrepresented in centre- based care and overrepresented in parental care ( Brandon 2004; Crosnoe 2007; Matthews and Ewan 2006; Matthews and Jang 2007). Unfortunately, since the Canadian National Child Care Study ( Lero, Pence, Shields, Brockman and Goelman 1992 ) , there have been no Canadian studies documenting the characteristics or backgrounds of children enrolled in childcare centres. Given the increased and continuing shortfalls in funding for childcare in Canada, there has been little improvement in immigrant childrens access to childcare (an exception may be the province of Quebec ). Canadas spend ing on childcare as a percentage of GDP is the lowest among OECD countries (OECD 2008). There is no information on the care and education arrangements of children who are not attending regulated childcare settings. Not only are parents likely to have difficulty finding culturally respectful care for their children , but they also face financial barriers. Childcare in Canada is not a public service. It is not an entitlement like the kindergarten -grade 12 school system. Because of the high cost of childcare, newcomers and other low-income families rely on informal, unregulated babysitting arrangements, which vary in quality. In addition to the lack of resources and inadequate support networks characterizing many early childhood education and care ( ECEC ) programs, there are often high turnover rates and shortages of qualified staff willing to work for the low wages paid to childcare personnel. As a result, even when parents are able to find spaces for their children in a childcare program , the quality of the care provided is often questionable. As discussed earlier, these frustrations can lead parents to send their children back to their country of origin for a period, a decision that often creates more problems than it solves. 48

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Immigrant parents generally have unrealistically rosy dreams about their childrens future in the new country. They work two jobs to ensure the childrens material needs are met. They have high hopes and expectations behind their efforts to support the children at school. In a chilly climate with reduced opportunities, parents lose hope and become demoralized, and families become destabilized. Recent years have seen restrictions being increasingly imposed on migrants’ access to colleges and universities, as well as eligibility for financial assistance. Perhaps unknowingly, applicants may lack proper papers required to gain admission or financial assistance to enter post -secondary programs. Dreams and aspirations are killed as doors slam in young immigrants’ faces. Hopes for the future twist into depression and desperation.

Paved with Good Intentions: Professionals as Expressions of a Dominant Culture Professionals dealing with newcomer families are products of the culture in which they live and work. In immigrant - receiving countries, the pre-service education of professional should require preparation to work with diverse populations. Similarly, the organizations that set standards of practice for professionals must encourage in -service training and provide professional development opportunities to ensure their members are able to work effectively with newcomers. Professionals strive to act in the child’s best interest. Professional analysis of what is in a child’s best interest may conflict with the views of parents. Immigrants, particularly those in precarious circumstances, may analyze a situation in terms of the interests of the family as a whole, which is not to say that the child’s interests are ignored. Rather, the view is that the child’s interests are advanced when the whole family thrives. The family is seen as the matrix in which the child develops and in which the child’s interests come to be defined. It is difficult for many immigrant families to comprehend the view of child protection professionals that a child’s interests are furthered by removal from the family. To the parents, it makes no sense and causes great fear, anxiety and self- blame. Psychological and social well - being are essential to positive family functioning. Disorders and shortcomings, formerly called mental illnesses, cannot be understood apart from an individual’s cultural context. The importance of cultural context is broached in DSM - IV, and it is now receiving some at tention from professionals. Cultural context is still controversial, and there is no consensus among professionals who assess psychological well - being. For example, the diagnosis of depression is not conceivable within some cultures. Although a professional using the DSM - IV may see obvious depression, the immigrant family may make much less of the symptoms and simply call 49

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them ataque de nervios, or a nervous reaction. Indeed, many cultures limit the concept of mental illness to the most clearly psychotic states and obvi ously bizarre behaviours. The North American interest in “ helping” families with problems and seeking counselling over minor issues such as anxieties is foreign to some newcomer cultures. Professionals who recommend interventions and treatment for psychological problems may find that newcomers are mistrustful and resistant to receiving support. Even in cases of serious trauma such as PTSD, professionals must tread lightly and be able to explain the process to their patients. Feeling shame over being in a bad state or needing help is typical. Gaining the family’s trust and working to overcome the shameful view of what has happened is critical in order avoid exacerbating problems. Particularly in cases involving immigrant families, the process of helping has to be welcomed and assisted by the client or patient. The individual and their family have to see it as being in their interest. Trusting relationships require good communication between professionals and families. In some cases, qualified interpreters are essential. The principle of family empowerment should be incorporated into assessment practices. The family itself, except in rare cases, must be the ultimate judge of whether they need help, how much and on what terms they will receive it. All helping professionals must take the family’s values into account.

Discrimination Is Ugly but Common

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Issues of minority rights and the elimination of discrimination have been prominent on the agendas of most immigrant - receiving countries for the last few decades. Nevertheless, there are still many people who resent immigrants. While overt and blatant discrimination is now illegal, more subtle forms of discrimination continue to make life difficult for newcomers. Although migrants experience chilly climates in immigrant - receiving countries and a lessening of sympathy for their difficulties, instances of overt discrimination are simply the tip of the iceberg. Immigrant families frequently come up against more subtle forms of discrimination . Although blatant discrimination still exists, the fight for social equality of minorities has taken on a new shape. The claim is to rights of equal rewards of the society and equal benefits under the law. Outcomes are under scrutiny. The new approach goes beyond that of equal opportunities and proposes that specific measures be taken to ameliorate the conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups. Although affirmative programs are in place in Canada and other immi grant- receiving countries, in the United States they have become controversial as the chill toward minorities deepens. Affirmative or diversity - oriented admissions policies of universities and professional schools have been called reverse racism, and “colour blind” approaches have replaced them . 50

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Disadvantaged groups still experience higher than average unemploy ment , subtle discrimination , difficulty accessing rental housing and high dropout rates ( Anisef, Brown , Phythian , Sweet and Walters 2008), even in the absence of overt discrimination. Prohibiting overt discrimination is not sufficient to create a just society or eliminate the conditions that yield poor outcomes for some newcomers. Because these subtle exclusionary pressures are hard to quantify, it is easy to say that the poor outcomes are the result of people not trying hard enough . This incorrect assumption is unfortunate because it has the effect of letting policy makers avoid assuming responsibility for systemic inequality and the continuing barriers to opportunities for prosperity.

In Conclusion: Up- Hill Battle At present , as parents struggle with learning a new language, poverty, un deremployment , less - than - full legal status and perceived discrimination, childrens health and well - being are negatively impacted. Immigrant children are profoundly affected by the challenges faced by their parents and in some cases, by their grandparents as well while they are adapting to their new environments. However, in spite of numerous challenges, it is important to keep in mind that with a little help most newcomer families eventually succeed. Although the process may require more than one generation, supportive educational and care environments can help children to mediate the repercussions of these common migration experiences. The following section provides theoretical perspectives and practical tools that helping professionals need to make a difference in the lives of newcomers, particularly children.

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Part II RECLAIMING OUR FUTURE Exploring New Paradigms of Collaboration and Inclusion with Immigrant Children and Families

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Chapter Five

THINKING OUTSIDE OFTHEBOX Theoretical Frameworks for Meaningful Dialogue and Intervention with Immigrant Children and Families Many studies have described interventions that produced “evidence of favourable outcomes” with newcomers. What has been missing has been a consistent overarching theoretical perspective and vision of excellence. This is not to suggest that obtaining specific improvements, as some have done, is without benefit. It is simply to call for a broader conceptual understanding of interventions with newcomers. Helping professionals enter relationships with their clients/ patients/ students assuming their basic capability to improve their lives. By making a commitment to empower newcomers, professionals can build on these rela tionships and provide assistance and support that will make lasting positive impacts in the lives of immigrants.

Paulo Freire: Learning the World through the Word The philosophical foundation for the empowerment of newcomers can be traced back to the work of radical educator Paulo Freire, who worked to empower oppressed communities in Brazil. Freire believed that the oppressed should not be “marginals” nor should they live “outside” society. His solution was not to integrate them but rather to transform the entire structure ( Freire 1999, 2004). Freire held that the interaction between teacher and student did not occur in a vacuum, but rather in an elaborate social context in which the pupils did not passively reproduce the information presented to them . He suggested that an educational program would only be successful when it began at the grassroots level and used a collaborative problem -solving model rather than a “ banking” model, wherein information is “deposited ” within students. By empowering students and using cultural references, he tapped into sources of strength and ideals. For example, when Freire worked with peasants to teach them to read, he found that in order to be effective, the learning opportunity needed to be experiential and emotionally engaging. Freire’s insight was to start with the position of the people themselves and their understanding of it. Further, he emphasized the importance of their coming 54

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to see that what were considered legitimate structures were not set in stone but could be challenged and altered. For Freire, the point of departure must always be with men and women in the “ here and now.” To do this authentically they must perceive their state not as fated and unalterable, but merely as limiting and therefore challenging. Whereas the banking model of education directly or indirecdy reinforces peoples fatalistic perception of their situation, the problem - posing method presents this very situation to them as a problem ( Freire 1999 ). Following Freire’s approach, learners take charge of their own lives and acquire a sense of agency. In this manner, they gain power in their situation and the ability to alter their circumstances. His teaching methods relied upon discussion and dialogue rather than repetition and memorization. He found that dialogue allows for the development of joint responsibility:

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Through dialogue, the teacher-of- the-students and the students-ofthe- teacher cease to exist and a new term emerges: teacher-student with students - teachers. The teacher is no longer merely the-onewho- teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow. ( Freire 1999: 61) The format and the content were both important. Freires lessons focused on helping the peasants become aware of their situation and the ways in which it could conceivably be improved. The topics of his lessons mattered deeply to the students and gave them the motivation to learn to read in order to understand how their individual problems were in fact part of systemic issues that led to their marginalization. The process of becoming conscious of their place in the system was labelled conscienticization, or conscientizagao ( Portuguese). Learning to read became relevant , desired and recognized as an integral part of a broader picture. Freires methods were outlined in The Pedagogy of Hope ( 2004), a book that has inspired educators worldwide to encourage their students to read the “world through the word.”

Pierre Bourdieu: The Power of Cultural Capital The concept of cultural capital has been borrowed from the French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu (1986). Bourdieu used the term to refer to dispositions ( habitus) and capabilities that establish a person of a particular background and social stratum in a set of social relations. This is how Bourdieu takes account of the strengths and resources of disempowered people. Bourdieu focused on the relationships that the individual creates and sustains. The social 55

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groups defined by their relationships have or do not have power. Those who have power define what cultural capital is and who, other than themselves, is entitled to have it.

Bourdieu has deepened our understanding of power and its modes of operation. He saw power as diffused in institutions and everyday practices of society ( Bourdieu 1986; Canella 2002; Corson 1998; Looker 1994 ). Without being aware of it, the individual is highly constrained by these practices and has lost any vision of alternatives available to them . Bauder ( 2008b) provides this example: a passport can function as a form of cultural capital. It is a signifies a mechanism that gives those who have it the capability to tap into employment opportunities, professional recognition and so on. Those without citizenship tend to be vulnerable or exploitable. Bauder goes on to explain the very subtle ways in which members of the elite group show their status: Bourdieu suggests that the members of an elite social group may signify their status through embodied cultural capital in the form of subtle “gestures or the apparently most insignificant techniques of the body ways of walking or blowing one’s nose, ways of eating or talking.” In this case, those who do not possess the code to read or interpret these cultural performances lack access to important symbols of power. Another process of distinction exists in the form of institutionalized cultural capital represented by educational di plomas, certificates or other types of institutional acknowledgment. ( Bauder 2008b: 318)

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In the same way that Bourdieu and Bauder discuss membership in elite groups, we can discuss ethnicity. Ethnicity is not as an inherent group characteristic, but primarily an ongoing ascription and construction by those constituting themselves as the dominant group( s) ( Darder, Torres and Gutierrez 1997; Dei 2001 ). The same applies to other terms for groups which may lack established status. For instance, the terms “ immigrant ,” “refugee” and “displaced persons” themselves can be viewed as constructions of official discourse. They are terms that communicate deficits. For example, many educators have reported feelings of frustration due to the lack of school involvement on the part of newcomer families. They say, with some justification , that the parents are not involved in school activities; they do not come to meetings; and they do not seem to have the motivation or interest to participate in their childrens schooling. What these teachers call immigrant parents’ lack of motivation and interest may be an expression of the dynamic of their devaluation. Teachers are often unaware of the traumas immigrant families and children are experiencing. Typically, teachers are not kept informed about the issues their students are dealing with at home. 56

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Without that information, teachers are unable to provide support or make referrals that could assist their students and their students families. It is clearly an advantage to children if their parents are able to skilfully advocate on their behalf , intervene, make inquiries and, if necessary, express dissatisfaction with school practices and policies. Well-established and economically secure parents are typically more confident and assertive with all authorities; they understand how to effectively interact with institutions and are able to have their concerns addressed. They are able to ensure their childrens best interests are protected . The cultural capital of families with these abilities enables them to facilitate their childrens success.

Luis Moll :

Drawing upon Unique Funds of Knowledge Luis Moll coined the phrase “funds of knowledge” to refer to knowledge and know - how that are “ historically accumulated ” and circulated within marginalized communities and come to act as resources that are “essential for household or individual functioning and well - being” ( Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti 2005). Funds of knowledge are components of a family’s cultural capital and can contribute to the success of children in the education system. Among immigrant children , the knowledge the family possesses may be viewed by teachers and by the families themselves as unhelpful or irrelevant in the new context. The tendency to ignore or devalue immigrant parents’ cultural capital is further exacerbated by educators’ pre-service training that emphasizes the age-stage theories of child development. These theories describe childhood as a fairly narrow range of ages and stages without considering background discrepancies. It is now increasingly recognized that childhood milestones and definitions of “optimal development” are diverse and culturally dependent ( Bernhard 2003; Bernhard, Gonzalez- Mena, Chang, O’Loughlin, EggersPierola, Roberts Fiati and Corson 1998; Garcia - Coll 1990; Hedegaard 2009; Lerner 1988, 1991; O’Loughlin 2009; Onchwari, Onchwari and Keengwe 2008; Rogoff 1990 ). Despite that recognition, immigrant children growing up with different sets of priorities than those of the education system are often construed as behind and needing to catch up with their age- mates. Socially dominant groups were used as the subjects when normative paths of child development were defined during the twentieth century. The developmental milestones used to define what is considered normal were derived from stud ies of the progress of advantaged children in elite university communities. Teachers who only apply ages and stages perspectives often focus on deficits or ways in which their students differ from the norms, and they miss the many ways children demonstrate strength and competence. Educators’ assessments of children’s development will be incomplete and skewed un 57

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less they turn to parents for information about their child - rearing goals, the families’ cultural capital and their unique funds of knowledge ( Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti 2005).

Jim Cummins: Bilingualism , Identity and Engagement The fourth theorist whose perspectives and research inform work with new comers is Jim Cummins. Cummins’ focus is on bilingualism and bicultural ism (see also Ada 2003; Corson 1998; New London Group 1996 ). His studies revealed the connections between developing a positive identity and increased academic achievement. Nurturing students’ identities involves recognizing the forms of prior knowledge ( including home languages ) they bring to the class and incorporating them into classroom learning ( Cummins 2001, 2004, 2008). Insight into students’ home environments and cultural contexts provides ways of understanding how children make sense of the world (Taylor, Bernhard, Garg and Cummins 2008; Westby and Atencio 2002). Cummins’ research suggests that educators should direct their efforts toward learning and understanding how children experience the world. It also suggests that when educators strive to become familiar with the complex context, includ ing culture and language, in which students, educators and families live and learn, they are better equipped to respond to students’ needs and concerns (see also Artiles and Klingner 2006; Klingner and Artiles 2003). Instruction in children’s first languages and inclusion of their prior knowledge and personal experiences promote academic success among immigrant students. Cummins emphasizes that language is one of the strongest elements in one’s self-definition as an individual and as a social being. Attending to and valuing a child’s home language in the school context shows respect for the child and their family, community and culture. Children benefit from retaining, developing and enriching their heritage languages while at the same time learning a national language. Retaining one’s first language while learning English is personally advantageous, providing students with a wider range of employment options (Cummins and Sayers 1995; Fishman 1989; Krashen 1999). Besides providing children the social grounding they need and allowing them to access the cultural wealth of their heritage language, studies have linked bilingualism with superior cognitive development . Areas of cognitive development that have been positively linked to balanced bilingualism include metalinguistic awareness, concept formation and analogical reasoning. Metalinguistic awareness involves the ability to objectify language, focusing on the form rather than the meaning of sentences. Research has shown metalinguistic awareness to be an important element in intellectual devel opment ( Hakuta 1986) and school participation ( Lindfors 1991). Bilingual 58

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children outperform monolingual children on awareness of language features such as component sounds, word - meaning correspondence, rules of gram mar, semantics and ambiguity ( Lee 1996 ). Cummins’ latest approach posits the centrality of identity negotiation and identity investment in any conception of teaching for deep understand ing. Teacher-student interactions and other interactions within the learning community create an interpersonal space within which knowledge is generated and identities are negotiated. Learning will be optimized when these interactions maximize both cognitive engagement and identity investment (Cummins 2001).

In Conclusion:

Looking through Different Eyes Freire, Bourdieu , Cummins and other theorists have elaborated on concepts such as empowerment and agency, oppression in mainstream institutions,

marginalization, cultural capital, linguistic dominance and personal identity as negotiated by disadvantaged groups. All of them stress the potential people have to make changes and overcome problems. Part III of the book discusses some practical means by which helping professionals can be of assistance to newcomers. We will now look at specific issues for newcomer children in school and childcare settings.

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HOW SCHOOLS ARE LABELLING NEWCOMER CHILDREN What Is “Normal”? The Example of Latinos My own research over the last fifteen years has looked at the experiences of Latin American migrants, particularly as they interact with mainstream Canadian education institutions. My work has been ethnographic, action based and interdisciplinary. I have interviewed over one hundred Latin American families who immigrated to Canada. I have participated in the chil drens classrooms, inspected their school records and conducted interviews with teachers, principals and children . In the childrens homes, my colleagues and I interviewed the families and went over school correspondence with them. We also documented the discussions of groups of mothers as they participated in monthly meetings regarding the education of their children (Bernhard , Freire, Pacini-Ketchabaw and Villanueva 1998; Bernhard , Freire, Torres and Nirdosh 1998; Bernhard, Gonzalez- Mena, Chang, O’Loughlin , Eggers- Pierola, Roberts Fiati and Corson 1998; Pacini - Ketchabaw, Bernhard and Freire 2001; Bernhard 1999, 2003; Bernhard, Evans, Cosentino and Marmoleja 2009). I have concluded that what is needed is rethinking of the assumptions about childhood and the body of knowledge relied on to guide our under standing of children. It is crucial to note that this is not an abstract academic debate, but one whose outcome affects our practices with children and fami lies. These principles build on the work of many investigators and theorists. They have labelled themselves as contextual, socio- historical and systems based (e.g., Bronfrenbrenner 1979; Cole 1996; Kagitcibasi 1996; Lerner 1991 ). The previous chapter looked at some of the assumptions about child hood, particularly those in the field of education . This chapter elaborates on the theories and discusses how they deal with the crucial issues of child development. The problems and perceived problems of immigrant children and families are a function of enduring acceptance of mistaken assumptions regarding what is “normal” in child development ( Apple 1992; Garcia Coll et al. 1996; Greenfield and Cocking 1994; Kagitcibasi 1996; Lubeck 1994; O’Loughlin 1992; Super and Harkness 1986 ). In particular, the validity of universalistic assumptions about childhood is questioned. The dominant perspectives on childhood have informed research and interventions with immigrant families. These families have tended to be labelled as different, if

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not defective or deviant. The view presented here is that cultural differences penetrate to the core and are fundamental ( Geertz 1973). These differences

should be honoured rather than remedied or ignored. For instance, one cannot understand manual dexterity a biologically shaped ability apart from the use of tools, which are cultural artifacts. Anthropologist Clifford Geertz ( 1973) eloquently made the argument for the centrality of culture in development:

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We are, in sum , incomplete or unfinished animals who complete or finish ourselves through culture and not through culture in gen eral but through highly particular forms of it: Dobuan and Javanese, Hopi and Italian , upper-class and lower-class. ( 49)

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This chapter illuminates family spaces and the broader contexts of cultural and institutional spaces. I have been seeking to document and interpret the voices of children and families as a way of discovering how their identities are affected by national and corporate structures. A tremendous shift has been taking place in the last thirty years with respect to growing appreciation of the cultural variation of childhood. One of the roots of this shift can be found in the writings of noted anthropologist Franz Boas, who, as early as 1920, concluded there is no cross culturally valid standard of development ( cited in Stocking 1968). Beginning in 1979, there is evidence that developmentalists and psychologists were taking seriously the question of the influence of culture on child hood ; a number of developmentalists had begun a critique of universalistic approaches to childhood and its allegedly universal characteristics and stages (e.g., Cole, Gay, Glick and Sharpe 1971; Harkness 1980; Misra and Gergen 1993; Spindler 1987; Walkerdine 1984 ). These investigators made a number of crucial points that inform the framework of this chapter. It is essential to think of development and culture together. Culture defines what constitutes development , what behaviour is appropriate and the forms of life within it ( Vygotsky 1962 ). Milestones or periods of life are culturally defined .

Finders, Keepers: Social Dominance as the Basis for Academic Success In any given society and historical period, there are always struggles between modes of representing the world. The upshot of this is that knowledge, includ ing knowledge of human development, is socially situated and its production reflects social dominance. The results of a power struggle determine the dominant representations that are accepted as “truth.” This position has been defended by a number of theorists including Foucault ( 1972 ) and others. Moreover, Bourdieu and Passeron ( 1977) pointed out that educational 61

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institutions are charged with enforcing this “truth.” Included in this process is the assessment of children according to more or less arbitrary cultural standards. These views of power relations are discussed in the classic La reproduction (1977). Education systems direct people to their “proper” level in society alongside suggestions that these destinies are entirely merit - based. However, the arbitrary nature of the tasks used as indices of merit show this merit system to be deeply flawed. For example, when Monica was two years old, her family emigrated from Nicaragua. Neither parent speaks English; their factory jobs require only its marginal use. Monicas family prizes its Nicaraguan heritage, which is partly Aboriginal. They see themselves as sojourners in Canada and talk about the eventual return to their native country. Her parents pride themselves on having brought up an obedient and respectful child who speaks good Spanish for her age. Monicas family plans to return to their native country when she turns ten years of age so that she will grow up having respect for her family. Her mother explains:

For me [ knowing how to speak Spanish ] is important . .. at home she always remembers, we too, we always speak it, we always remind her that it is beautiful there too . . . we always remind her so when we will go back, she will know. [ In this country] the children , one loses them, there is no love and tenderness toward the parents .. . I don’t want this to happen to my daughter. That’s why we decided we are going back to Nicaragua as soon as she turns ten. At this time, Monica is eight years old and in grade 3. In the last year or so, it has become evident that Monica has difficulty in school. Her parents are very supportive of her education and want to help in any way possible. The main concern the parents have is the lack of match between Monica’s efforts at school and her marks.

I would like to know how . .. what it is that Monica needs? Why in the report cards the teacher says she needs more math , more read ing and at home, although we do not speak much English, we are always helping her in everything. She always does her homework and knows everything we ask her, but the report card always arrives as if she is failing.

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In discussing the situation with Monica’s parents, they suggest that being in a split -grade class has resulted in unrealistic expectations being placed on their daughter. The teacher shares the puzzlement over her performance. He agrees that in spite of putting tremendous effort into her schoolwork, she is not doing well. 62

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Monica is having difficulties . . . academically . .. she’s reading about a year below grade level ... she’s a dedicated worker, tries really hard but has just had a bit of difficulty learning the process of reading, learning to recognize words. My sense of the family is that they are very supportive ... they work with her on a regular basis and they have reward systems so she’s always really keen to do her spelling.

The teacher theorizes about the source of Monica’s difficulties.

They [ Monica’s parents] are concerned and want to do what they can to work with her at home but are in that difficult situation of wanting to help the child in a language which they don’t know and are not really quite sure what to do .... I think they feel a bit at a loss as to how to help her. She [ Monica ] has difficulty with vowels in English as opposed to vowels in Spanish , and so being able to learn both the sounds in English and Spanish and to sound out words is difficult. And I think her home is almost entirely Spanish spoken .. . I’m not sure direcdy what sort of impact that has but I think that may well make it more difficult for her to be picking up reading English. In spite of strong motivation and parents who take time each day to support her with her schoolwork, it appears that, without intervention, Monica is not headed for academic success. She will likely lack high - school level proficiency in any language and will continue to underachieve, and she and her parents will become increasingly marginalized. Monica has already lowered her expectations for herself. Does Monica herself actually have a deficiency? I do not dispute that her performance does not look as good as that of her classmates, according to the standards enforced. But arguably she is enrolled in an education system where children are categorized according to their performance on relatively arbitrary tasks ( the basis for such labels as “gifted,” “adequate” or “deficient”). Because the system is geared to the needs and expectations of dominant groups, Monica will show up poorly in a mainstream assessment. Monica’s teacher suggests that Monica and her family are, in fact, seen as deficient:

You see Monica is a very diligent worker but she still is on the low average. I tried to explain to him [her father] that he didn’t need to worry. Sometimes parents think that their kid is the worst in the class. She is not. Certainly there are other children who are at Monicas level. She’s reading at grade 1 intermediate level. That’s a year behind.

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Monicas problems, our unique position of hearing multiple perspectives enables us to propose the following approaches for consideration . Monicas health seems excellent . Her temperament is good - natured if somewhat docile. She avoids conflicts and disagreements with others. Monicas cooperativeness and non -assertiveness have a cultural basis, yet the overlap of gender and class factors must also be considered . This explanation is corroborated by one of the teaching staff at the school: She [ Monica ] is Hispanic and is too good . The parents have taught her that she has to obey the teacher, that she has to behave well in class, not to interrupt so if she does not understand something, she will not put her hand up to ask. In this [ Canadian ] system , if the children are not aggressive they stay behind. Many times she [Monica ] misses an opportunity because she is too slow compared to the others. She has great interest and tremendous motivation . It is clear that Monicas lack of promoting herself is not simply an inborn trait; one must look at the context in which the alleged individual characteristic emerges and how it could be dealt with to her advantage. The parents’ efforts to train her in obedience are part of their overall commitment to maintaining her cultural identity. It has been shown how Monica and her family are, in effect, struggling against the dominant discourse of child development . Because there is a lack of accord , she is labelled deficient and slow in progress. The problems of motivation appear to be the results, not basic causes, of her and her family’s difficulties in the education system . It should be clear from the above data how strongly and crushingly dominance is asserted; Monica and her family, without understanding why, are plainly losing out in their prospects.

Stigmatized in the Childcare Setting: Institutional Discourses and Standards for Truth

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Knowledge is produced, recognized and legitimated within dominant institutions and according to the criteria and constraints they impose ( Foucault 1972). The institutions act as gatekeepers for “truth.” Discourses representing legitimate knowledge flourish in mainstream journals. Researchers whose work is published in these journals, many funded by governments, produce legitimate discourse, truth. Worldviews of subordinated groups tend to become de-legitimized . Subordinated groups may share characteristics such as class, gender, sexual orientation , ethnicity, place of birth , ancestry or citizenship. Liliana’s story illustrates a de-legitimized worldview. Liliana is an immigrant from El Salvador. Her mother was of African heritage. Her four-year-old son, Ricardo, has attended a childcare centre in a large Canadian 64

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city for six months. Liliana speaks about their situation:

When I bring Ricardo to the centre every day it is the same. I give him kisses and hugs, and then the teacher takes hold of Ricardos hand and tells me it is best to leave quickly. As I am walking toward the door, Ricardo breaks free of the teacher and runs to me so I stop to reassure him once again before finally leaving. Then I find out that Ricardo has stayed crying for over one hour after which he withdrew to a corner of the room until he fell asleep. I came to visit at lunchtime. I am feeding him and telling him stories about his grandmother, about when he was a little baby, things like that . Of course I speak quietly in Spanish so I won’t bother anyone. Ricardo is listening to me and we both feel good. I notice the looks the teachers are giving me. I know they think I am spoiling him and not helping him to adjust to the childcare centre.

Researchers and educators encounter such situations repeatedly; their likely response would be shaped by the discourse that defines standards of “developmental appropriateness” ( e.g., Bredekamp 1987 ): Ricardo is not exhibiting signs of sufficient independence and so the teacher needs to work with him and his mother toward this goal. In fact, Ricardos teachers made statements such as “ He is immature,” “ The mother is not letting him learn independence,” and “ He will likely suffer in the long term and be unable to get along when the mother is not there.” The teachers’ assessment of Ricardo, using the dominant perspective, applies such concepts as “secure attachment ” and “autonomy,” developed by Ainsworth ( 1973) and colleagues. These investigators followed research procedures agreed upon by their profession, which are believed to yield “scientific truth” about human development. ( There is abundant literature questioning the cross-cultural usefulness of attachment theory and its generalizability to specific cultures. See for instance, Harwood, Miller and Irizzary 1995.) A culturally fair assessment approach would seek to determine whether Ricardo and his mother are on track within their own cultural context. It is simply a mistake to apply the host country’s standards and say that Ricardo’s behaviour when his mother leaves is evidence of insecure attachment or more specifically, anxious resistance. Further, it is noted that if he were not to cry, some other common label of pathology would likely be applied to him (e.g., anxious-avoidant, following Ainsworth 1973). In Ricardo’s culture, what is prized is the child’s demonstration of affection and ties to the parents. However, such worldviews are likely to be ignored; Ricardo is likely to be labelled immature and his mother over- protective. In institutions, all interpretations are not equal ( Bernhard 1995).

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The Russian Doll: Taking a Systemic View Human development occurs in hierarchically structured and intersecting contexts. Applying systems theory, one looks at how smaller systems are nested within larger ones. In fact, this third principle is an essential pillar of systems theory. A social and contextual analysis demands consideration of a number of dimensions and intersecting discourses. In mainstream theory and assessment, Monicas “deficit” is attributed to her as an individual. Knowledge, when conceived in this manner, is somethat the individual thing retrievable like money in a bank account possesses in larger or smaller quantities. This has been the view of many mainstream developmentalists. In contrast, Monica can be seen relationally within a hierarchy of family, community and culture. Her individual IQ score, constructed as her individual characteristic, can be disputed. Instead , her IQ score is just a reflection of her functioning on an English test in an Anglo environment. In another discourse, Monica is a child, a disadvantaged Latina im migrant. Within another discourse, she has a gender disadvantage. As well, one needs to consider her socioeconomic class and her ethnicity. Because of these intersecting positions of subordination , her development, for rea sons we have detailed, will likely be far from optimal. Monica expressed her discouragement:

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First I thought I was going to be a ballerina; then I thought I was going to be a singer; then I thought I was going to be a painter; then I thought I was going to be a doctor for people; then I thought I was going to be a doctor for pets; then I thought I was going to be nothing.

Her almost certain disappointment clearly extends beyond her migrant status and her gender. For differing reasons, it is extremely unlikely that she will be either a ballerina or a veterinarian / doctor. In the latter case, her al leged academic deficiencies and lack of remedial science programs for girls will likely prevent her from accessing university studies in science that are required for all doctors. It is known that intersecting subordinations have a multiplicative effect, and this point is underscored by her final expression of complete discouragement. A more adequate basis for understanding these situations is found in the theories of Vygotsky and Rogoff. They propose that learning is a social process, occurring among and between individuals in the conditions that bring people together. Barbara Rogoff s ( 1990; Rogoff et al. 1993) observations of Mayan toddlers and their mothers have provided a fine example of this approach. The work of John Ogbu and his colleagues (Gibson and Ogbu 1997; 66

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Ogbu 1991 ) also deserves to be mentioned as exploring the ways in which ethnicity and caste are important in hierarchies of dominance. Systems approaches have provided useful frameworks for considering the issue of hierarchical structures. Lerner ( 1991 ) provides a good example of such theories. His theoretical approach can be imaged in terms of concentric circles in which a child and her family are situated (see also Bronfenbrenner 1979). Such a diagram is intended to indicate the impossibility of separating individual and social factors. For instance, intelligence is not simply an individual characteristic like eye colour. Penn ( 1999: 9 ) has noted how in many cultures (e.g., Japanese) the notion of intelligence cannot be separated from that of helpfulness: “An unhelpful child may have a superficial cleverness but is essentially a stupid child.” To say a child is stupid, then, is to bring in the moral standards of his community, characteristics of the larger circles. The society makes the judgment “stupid,” which brings together not only the individual functioning but also how it fits or does not fit with the family and community norms of proper behaviour. All levels or circles are involved. Systems theories deny simple causal explanations and use, instead, circular or network accounts of how phenomena are linked. From a systems perspective, one does not primarily consider a direct arrow from mother to child. Rather, there are networks of interactions that include all levels in a complex way. For example, a young child pretended he was going to touch the plug in order to get his mother to stop talking on the phone and to focus on him. From a systems perspective, if the mother says, “ Don’t touch that plug,” and the child complies, it is not a simple causal event initiated by the mother leading to the child changing his behaviour. In the larger network of causes, the child’s pretended approach to the plug gave rise to the mother’s intervention , and so the child is regulating himself and the system is regulat ing itself. The system , in one respect, is self - maintaining, and if it is living, it reproduces itself. The principle of hierarchy and intersecting context may sound entirely abstract. But it offers a richness of understanding when it is used to analyze behaviour.

Like Branches of a Tree: Multiple Paths of “ Normal” Development Within a given culture, very different paths or routes may reach similar out comes. Between cultures, the goals may also be different, and the pathways cannot be assumed to have common milestones. Nor can difference in the length of pathway ( complexity) indicate that one culture leads to a more “advanced” position. If one culture has one pattern and a different culture another, one cannot reasonably call the former more advanced. Each pathway shows its own progression, evidences its own degree of adaptiveness and arrives at an outcome as complex as the so-called “normal,” preferred or usual 67

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one. It is further assumed that the constraints and micro- influences at certain points make prediction of a particular pathway impossible. Many mainstream researchers have been calling for a degree of flexibility in judging according to universal milestones in considering what is “ within normal range.” Fischer and Bidell ( 1998) have called this usual framework a “ladder model” of development, since each person is ideally on the same path, and the only distinguishable feature is the step or level. Some investi gators at the forefront of change have deemed universal milestones entirely questionable. Monicas teachers will likely construe her as lagging behind and needing to catch up. Yet her future choices are not just deviations from the path but have different potential. If her teachers continue to construe her as lagging behind and needing to catch up with the “next milestone,” her struggles will take on the character of further academic and social difficulties. If Monica is viewed in terms of what is expected developmentally, she and her family will be made to feel inadequate and ultimately will give up. In Monicas case, the concept of multiple paths might seem to be merely a way of understanding why many newcomer and minority students fall short according to mainstream standards. However, the concept itself is much broader and can embrace variation in positive outcomes, a fact that is not well explained in universalist theories. Consider the case of Isabel, a child who is succeeding in school. Isabel is a thirteen - year-old student who was born in El Salvador and arrived in Canada at six years of age. She and her three siblings live with their parents and their paternal grandmother, who is of Spanish and Aboriginal descent. The father speaks English at a very basic level, the mother only Spanish . Father works night shifts in a factory; the mother and grandmother stay home with the children. The family speaks only Spanish at home and Isabels proficiency in Spanish is solid. When discussing their values and familial practices, Isabel’s parents referred to the family closeness as an important part of the child’s upbringing. These parents believed it was key for the parents to be on top of their children’s activities and to know where they were at all times and what issues the children were dealing with . The parents’ values generated conflicts with those of Isabel’s teachers regarding the desirability of children’s rights of privacy. Isabel’s teacher de scribes her as a strong student who is centred and excelling in all subjects. The father is perceived as unwilling to cooperate with the school’s efforts and viewed by the teacher as being too authoritarian: I think she [ Isabel ] is very afraid of the consequences at home . . . which may make her behave . . . so I am very cautious about what I tell the father. He [ Isabel’s father ] is always in the school, I see him all

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the time, he picks them up for lunch, I think there is so much control. Mr. I. has this attitude, you know, like he is the one that rules everything. Just the other day I heard that Isabel had written something in her journal about a boy who had asked to kiss her. Apparently the father read this and wanted to discipline her. Although it was not her fault . . . also her diary is something confidential, he shouldn’t be reading this . ... I think now he wants to know the name of the boy.

The parents are suspicious of efforts to “ help” immigrants and have spoken about negative experiences with their older child in terms of standardized testing and the special education system. Isabel is articulate in stating her own views:

I am Salvadoreha , and because my brothers were born here, I am partly Canadian . When people ask me where I am from, I say I am from El Salvador but a Canadian resident. We are Hispanos and we are proud of where we come from and that we speak Spanish. One never knows if when you grow up you will need it for work so it is always good to have one more language. I also like it because I can talk to my family. In analyzing Isabel’s case, the following points stand out. First, Isabel is developing her identity in such a way as to be bilingual and bicultural within English -speaking Canadian society and is poised to take a part in that diverse situation. She is benefiting from this additive process and can be expected to be successful in school. It is noted that such additivity is occurring in conjunction with strong maintenance of Spanish as the language of the home. As a young Canadian adult, she will have access to many working and social opportunities given her bilingual proficiency and bicultural identity. Isabel’s future exemplifies the virtues of a bicultural approach. Her life course seems to be running rather well, but on a different pathway from that prescribed by the mainstream norms. Second , the father’s behaviour is consistent with the family’s cultural identity. He is attempting to maintain control to ensure his children do not assimilate too much . In North America, and in this particular case, the so- called authoritarian parenting style is seen in a negative light. The teacher quoted above describes the father’s style as being uncooperative. Although Isabel’s father is a frequent visitor to the school, his relationships with teachers are tense and there is a lack of trust on both sides. Due to the limited English ability of the parents, a translator must be used for all com munication. The teachers perception of Isabel’s father is that he is overly strict and unreasonable with his daughter. Without attempting to judge the finer points of the father’s behaviour, his general pattern is consistent with 69

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a particular father role that is normal in his cultural context. Further, it can be argued that the family’s very uncooperativeness is the source of family strength in maintaining cultural identity. This style has likely allowed him to maintain harmony at home and to promote the family’s self - identification as Latin Americans. Third, Isabel’s family prizes interdependence among its members; independence is not a primary goal. They have little concern about her privacy and continue being involved in every aspect of her life. The fam ily’s close involvement in each other’s affairs is cast , according to dominant North American standards, as intrusive ( e.g., regarding her diary). Their socialization practices are designed to create closeness and interdependence within the family. It is important to stress that Isabel’s submission to her father is apparently not extended to the school’s teachers, although she re mains respectful. In the school’s view, she is relatively independent. Isabels parents think that children can become too stubborn and independent. They are concerned that their daughter will become too independent and wish her to maintain interrelationships over the entire life span ; this desire is culturally based. Family closeness and connections are priorities, rather than eventual self-sufficiency, which they believe comes naturally without need for training. It is clear from the foregoing analysis that using a multiple path analysis, Monica and Isabel are not “ behind.” They are not on the same path nor will they arrive at the same “destination” as their Anglophone classmates. Fischer and Ayoub’s (1996) study of teenage girls reached a similar conclusion . They studied girls who had been sexually abused as children and examined their self-descriptions. The researchers found negativity about oneself to be an important characteristic, but stressed the importance of not labelling the phenomenon as developmental immaturity. The girls in the study who showed the negativity bias evidenced no developmental delay or fixation , but instead normally complex developmental levels for self -description . If we envision a tree with interwoven branches representing different developmental pathways, a whole range of paths can be considered normal. The branchings of the tree are not predictable in terms of individual psy chology. There are so many possible contextual factors that we cannot know how a person will end up. At moments of branching, the subtlest contextual factors may play a key role. As with the branches of a tree, at each moment , decisions or events take young people on different pathways. Early events place constraints on the choices available later. Although there is less and less variability as one moves up the branches, the final destination of a particular branch is not definitively predictable. Someone can begin in branch B and still end up in the area of branch D. The tree image has the further advantage of indicating

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a range or a circumference of possibilities. We do not say that the top- most central branches represent the one ideal of growth nor do we say that the branchings in different directions represent falling away or deviation from it.

In Conclusion: The Necessity to Broaden Our Assessment Models This chapter began by describing culture as being diverse and based on ways of life. It explained how developmental concepts are rooted in culture concepts such as babyhood or adulthood. It included a brief review of attempts to take account of cultural diversity without modifications, the approach seen in most human development textbooks. The chapter introduced four principles that could inform a transformed developmental psychology. The proposed principles were illustrated with examples from my research. This rich material from several ethnographic studies has corroborated the principles. Of course, these principles are not the only possible foundation for practice but they do confirm the need for more nuanced approaches to working with diverse populations. There are serious problems with current assessment models and universalistic approaches that rest on the acceptance of “developmentally appropriate practice.” This analysis is, in fact , a critique of most of the training programs that exist for professionals working with children and families. Reform of practice has become a necessity in view of the disservice and harm being done to minority communities including Aboriginal, African , Caribbean, Latino and other immigrant groups. Developmental psychology theories need to be revised to take full account of diversity. It is time for theorizing within the helping professions to undergo radical change to encourage full development of human beings from all cultural, linguistic and class backgrounds.

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Chapter Seven

SHIFTING THE FOCUS Identifying Present and Potential Strengths of Newcomer Children and Families As we have demonstrated , the way we look at newcomers affects how we relate to them and this in turn affects their capacities in society. This chapter explores the social and educational assessment tools that can form the foundation of effective, meaningful relationships and interventions with newcomer children and their families. The chapter primarily focuses on assessing newcomers in the context of their strengths, but first, any meaningful assessment begins with certain basic information. However, research has shown that professionals who work with immigrant families have insufficient knowledge of the families’ situations. In fact, most citizens in immigrant - receiving countries, including policy makers, have very limited understanding of the situation of immigrants. For example, one study found that childcare providers were unaware of basic facts of the home situations and the traumas experienced by the families attending their programs ( Bernhard and Freire 1996 ) . Without that information , these professionals could not accurately interpret the childrens behaviour. Behaviours were labelled and responded to as spoiled and clingy when they were actually normal post - traumatic stress reactions. Professionals who work with children and families would be better prepared if their pre-service training included immigration history and awareness of such basic information as recent wars in the countries of origin of immigrants and the world events that have produced refugees. Children with traumatic pasts often have existing or previous separations from their main caregivers. A helping professional may be unaware that the adult who appears to be a child’s parent is actually the child’s aunt and that the primary caregiver was killed. Ignorance of such basic information is clearly an enormous disadvantage to the teacher. While there are understandable reasons for families’ failure to disclose some key information , awareness of details such as exposure to violence, loss of close family members and other traumatic experiences can enable helping professionals to tailor their support to the needs of individual children and families. Wishing to respect families’ privacy and working with the best inten tions, some professionals may decline to inquire about the family’s structure, situation or background. However, an ignorance of the basic background and context of a student’s behaviour can ultimately prove far more damaging. 72

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Further, while eliciting essential information is an important beginning, making a real difference for those in need means shifting the focus from family shortcomings to family strengths.

Moving beyond a Narrow Problem Focus It is easy to focus on newcomers’ problems. The existing list of psychological disorders may be appealing, but a narrow view focused primarily around pat diagnoses can prove disempowering and unproductive. With undocumented persons, for example, DSM - IV categories of psychological problems are often inadequate. A refugee who starts taking Valium to relieve anxiety is not really dealing with the more fundamental issues that demand attention. For exam ple, some of their issues may include the many complex challenges discussed earlier in this book. In light of these phenomena , Valium may speak to little. A strategy often more helpful, and certainly concurrently helpful to medication, is to apply the principle of empowerment and focus on newcomers’ strengths. This approach is not new. On the contrary, empowerment and contextual approaches have a history spanning several decades. In 1996, developmentalists Pianta and Walsh advocated moving away from the cultural deficit model. They faulted the practice of locating problems in the child, the family or the school.

A conceptual model is required that locates the problem not in the child, the home, or the school, but in the relationships between child and family, and schooling, and the other individuals and institutions involved in schooling. Problems cannot be placed in some static loca tion. Rather, they are distributed across and among ever-changing contexts. ( Pianta and Walsh 1996: 54 )

These authors criticize the unhelpful focus on what is wrong in these three places (child, family, school ) as an evil to be counteracted. They propose a model of development framed by culture and history. Building on Pianta and Walsh’s work, a more detailed framework is proposed here. Assuming that everyone has strengths that can be used to manoeuver within complex and dynamic contexts is encouraging. Even though some families face more hardships or life hazards than others, resiliency is a powerful force that enables them to carry on and do their best. What is advocated here is a wide- ranging focus on individual, family and community strengths. When these are recognized and enhanced, they can be activated and brought to bear on the problems. Professional service providers need a practical framework for looking at the development and well - being of families, planning interventions and assessing outcomes. After considering numerous models, including Eccles 73

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and Gootman ( 2002), Land, Lamb and Mustillo ( 2001), Moore and Theokas ( 2009), Unicef Innocenti Research Centre ( 2007) and others, Benson , Leffert, Scales and Blyths ( 2012) model is recommended. Bensons group drew on extensive research findings on positive influences on the lives of young people. They identified core elements to be promoted in children , as well as the nature of family and community engagement needed to ensure childrens optimal development. It is appropriate here to link these variables in optimal development to the wider social context and the structural advantages and disadvantages of various groups. The term for the assets prized by society is cultural capital. Many of the external assets such as neighbourhoods are, in fact, aspects of cultural capital. Well-established families have cultural capital that newcomer families typically lack. The situations of newcomer families require that they attend to a multitude of issues if their strengths and resources are to positively influence their childrens outcomes.

Components and Contexts in Healthy Development: The Benson Assessment Framework The Benson group put forward a list of factors (“assets” ) necessary for healthy development, including a social focus on areas of family, school and com munity life. These developmental assets can be used to guide interventions. Since the framework is a general developmental one, it has sufficient coverage of main issues connected with migrant children and families. The issues faced by newcomers are not unique but merely different in emphasis from many, though not all, native- born families. The framework identifies forty developmental assets that children need in order to prosper. These protective factors fall into eight areas, four external and four internal. These might be considered both input variables related to desired outcomes, and also outcome variables resulting from interventions. For example, the amount of talk and connection between the parent and child has status as a predictor variable, but it is also an outcome variable in that a successful intervention can affect the amount and quality of communication between child and parents. The Benson et al. ( 2012 ) framework (see table 7-1) lists specific indicators for contextual influences on development ( external factors) as well as teachable qualities and skills that children need to develop, such as disposition to learning and a sense of identity and belonging ( internal factors). Although Benson and his colleagues have much to say about individual processes, they have an exemplary understanding of community contexts. In fact, the upper half of their table deals with actions undertaken by adults, and they make specific reference to community mobilization.

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Table 7-1 Developmental Assets Asset Type

Asset and Description

External Support

1. Family support

2. Positive family communication 3. Other adult relationships 4. Caring neighbourhoods

5 . Caring school climate 6. Parent involvement in schooling

Empowerment

7. Community values youth 8. Youth as resources 9. Service to others

Boundaries and Expectations

10. Safety 11. Family boundaries

12. School boundaries 13 . Neighborhood boundaries 14. Adult role models 15. Positive peer influence

16. High expectations

Constructive Use of Time

17. Creative activities

18. Youth programs 19. Religious community

20. Time at home

Internal

Commitment to Learning

21. Achievement motivation 22. School engagement

23. Homework 24. Bonding to school

25 . Reading for pleasure

Positive Values

26. Caring

27. Equality and justice 28. Integrity

29. Honesty

30. Responsibility 31. Restraint

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Asset and Description

Social Competencies

32. Planning and decision making 33. Interpersonal competence 34. Cultural competence

35. Resistance skills

36. Peaceful conflict resolution

Positive Identity

37. Personal power 38. Self- esteem

39. Sense of purpose

40. Positive view of personal future

Source: Benson, Leffert, Scales and Blyth 2012: Table 1 , p. 9.

The developmental assets identified by Benson et al. provide educators and other professionals with a good starting point for planning the delivery of supports that benefit immigrant families. A central challenge for people who work with immigrant parents is to figure out how children can succeed against their unique challenging backdrops. The one-size - fits-all perfect intervention does not exist. There is no single recipe that will work for all children and in all contexts. Rather, success often hinges on intangibles such as the relationships between adults and children or the interpersonal chemistry created by particular groups. Professionals will want to look through the list of asset types as a sort of menu from which to choose, starting from where there are the most strengths and finding ways to build on those.

What Kind of Support from Others Is This Child Receiving in Her Development? External Asset Types The first external asset type listed by Benson et al. ( 2012 ) is the component of support, which encompasses family, neighbourhood and school support. In order to thrive, children need positive communication with other family members who are caring and involved. There are specific measures that have attempted to operationalize the factor of external support provided to children. For example, a major UNICEF study of child well- being in rich countries ( UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre 2007) chose to measure the number of meals taken with parents in various OECD nations as an indicator of the strength of family relations. Significant differences were found across countries. However, even in the lowest scoring OECD countries ( Finland, New Zealand , United States, United Kingdom , Austria, Australia, Greece and Canada ), almost two- thirds of the children still regularly eat their main meals with their families. The point is that regardless 76

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of the variety of lifestyles and challenges, families still find the way to provide this important support for children. Although socialization takes place mainly in families, these do not exist in isolation . Communities and neighbourhoods can also offer important sources of support. Both children and parents have friends and acquaintances that offer a sense of belonging. The research literature has shown the importance of networks of all sorts. In a thirty-year study comparing resilient and non - resilient children living on a Hawaiian pineapple plantation , Werner and Smith (1992 ) found that the most resilient adults were those who had the largest networks of supports during childhood. Not only were family members important, but having access to teachers, neighbours and clergy members was also important. The cumulative influences of all the adult role models can make a significant difference in preventing children from falling through the cracks. While immigrants tend to group themselves in neighbourhoods, in many instances, the lack of supportive infrastructure will mean that the actual support that is generated may be minimal. For instance, the shortage of suitable affordable childcare and after-school programs often leaves working parents on their own. Since the immigration of families tends to occur in steps, it causes the parents to delay bringing children and in some cases leaves the parent to consider returning children to their country of origin either temporarily or long term . The second external asset type in the framework developed by Benson and colleagues refers to empowerment, the opportunities for children and youth to become significantly engaged in worthwhile activities in the larger community. While the primary focus of schools has been on academics, children benefit from becoming involved in other non -academic pursuits that enrich their lives. The quality of their community involvement will affect their sense of engagement with the school and their preparedness for learning. Service learning is a promising approach to empowerment of children and youth . Students take action for social justice causes, such as going to developing countries to experience directly the social and educational spaces of those living there. Although there is substantial literature on the positive effects of service learning on adolescents ( e.g., Scales, Blyth, Berkas and Kielsmeier 2000 ) , travel costs and limited student resources for associated expenses prevent wide-scale implementation of these initiatives. Some educa tors have sought to bring these experiences to their students by undertaking their own service learning experiences and bringing these experiences back to their classrooms, so that they can function in some manner for students as a substitute for direct , on -site, service learning ( Bernhard, Evans, Cosentino and Marmoleja 2009). The provision of closer- to-home service-learning 77

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experiences has the potential to empower children and youth without the prohibitive costs associated with international programs. Another arena for empowerment of children and youth is provided by religious institutions. A number of authors have focused on the way religion acts as a protective factor for immigrants ( Bramadat and Koenig 2009; Levitt 2009). For many, religion provides help in steering children away from ob stacles that the popular culture eventually presents, such as drugs, alcohol and inappropriate early sexual activity. While public education systems insist on the separation of state and religion , educators in secular public school systems can pay attention to the extent of childrens religious foundations. If families are already committed to particular religious values and practices, this can be supported as a component of their funds of knowledge. Further understanding of how empowerment works as a protective factor for immigrants is found in a 1993 study by Portes and Min Zhou. They proposed the concept of segmented assimilation , a process that demonstrates how empowerment can be facilitated. The recognition of the severity of structural barriers to succeeding in the mainstream leads many immigrants to conclude that the obstacles are almost impossible to overcome. Finding these pathways blocked, they focus on finding a place in their own community and making contributions there. Segmented assimilation can be quite positive in that it enables youth to feel empowered and contribute to their community. Boundaries and expectations are the third external asset type identified by Benson et al. Parents and other authority figures supply the framework in which children and youth develop. Boundaries are set in their family, neighbourhood and school. For migrant families, the issue of parental values, boundaries and expectations is a crucial one for being able to withstand or balance the negative effects of poor or violent neighbourhoods. Children in a new country may resist such boundaries and be inclined to discount parental and other traditional input in favour of what they hear from the media and from peers. Maintaining engagement with other family members, wherever they may be, allows newcomers to develop a hybrid identity with clear boundaries. The continuing attachment to the new place where they live, along with the people in their home community, helps families to maintain clear boundaries and high expectations for their children . Clear boundaries are not a burden on children and youth. Rather, they are essential for their growth and future well - being. The issue of parental authority is intertwined with the issue of language used in the home. When children lose their home language and start addressing their parents in the new language, the authoritative position of the parents can be undermined. For example, the parents will have trouble understanding the childrens accounts of any problems, and the children will tend to believe that parental standards of advice are as irrelevant as their language. Using 78

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current research methods, this issue tends to be seen as intangible. Indicators such as percentage use of English or home language are extremely crude. It is impossible to draw conclusions about the quality of interactions between parents and children on the basis of how much or how little conversation is in their home language. Any of these factors can be taken to an extreme and the flip side of parental boundaries is that children can feel they have no privacy. Children today are under almost constant surveillance. In their country of origin, many children were able to go off and be with their peers unobserved by adults. However, this can be seen as dangerous in the new country. For many parents, the schools expectations are a mystery, and this affects their ability to monitor their childrens progress in school. Here they face a number of barriers including report cards that simply describe positive kinds of behaviour in pre- set phrases. This reporting style reflects educa tors’ concern for protecting childrens self - esteem. Concern for childrens self -esteem also affects the sharing of information with parents about their childrens progress at school. In order to eliminate the sense of competition among children and to protect the esteem of the child and of the parent, report cards have become a cut and paste of pre -set descriptors. For example:

With assistance the child can demonstrate knowledge of most letters of the alphabet in different contexts. He rarely applies the creative process to produce a variety of two- and three-dimensional art works, using elements principles, and techniques of visual arts to communicate feelings, ideas and understandings. Even a parent who speaks perfect English would have trouble making sense of this jargon . The term “ with assistance can demonstrate knowledge” really means the child does not quite have an adequate grasp of the skill. Many parents cannot determine how well their children are meeting the schools expectations for their age and grade. Indeed , schools have shifted their expectations. They are reluctant to label any children as failing. The concern for not stigmatizing the slower children has resulted in descriptive report cards as well as the well - known practice of social promotion (everyone passes to the next grade with their peers even if they are missing a key skill like reading ). If the parents do not focus on the key term in the report card quoted above, with assistance, they might not understand that the child is not able to independently identify letters. Unless they are familiar with the prescribed provincial curriculum , they would not know that this means the child is seen by the school as “ behind” or “delayed” and as having “lower than average performance” compared with other children in the same grade. Constructive use of time is the last of the external asset types. Benson and his colleagues operationalize this asset type as the number of hours a young 79

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person spends on creative activities, at youth programs, with the religious community and at home rather than out with friends “with nothing special to do.” Children need adults to help them set challenging and meaningful goals for the future and to develop a variety of skills and interests. There is evidence that when a community organizes and provides a variety of constructive opportunities for young people, this influences their health and well - being (Clark 1983, 1988; Marshal et al. 1997; YMCA 2001 ). Well - established and success-oriented families create structure in their childrens lives. They real ize that their children are always acquiring valuable knowledge and skills. They limit their childrens screen time, recognizing that it has negative con sequences for childrens health and that it takes up time that could be used more beneficially. Research literature confirms significant differences in the home lives of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. A study of eight thousand eighth graders in San Diego and Los Angeles found that children left home alone are more likely to drink alcohol and take drugs than children who are supervised by caring adults. The greater the number of hours left by themselves, the greater the risk ( Richardson et al. 1989 ). Because society is increasingly becoming age-segregated, childrens con structive use of time is often limited to school hours. Additionally, factors including childcare costs and limited funding for good programs result in children being left alone or in front of the television or computer. Because religious institutions organize many after- school programs, they provide one of the key mechanisms by which children can be in intergenerational settings that encourage constructive use of time. The external factors are all intimately intertwined . For example, con structive use of time is related to parental values and involvement. The caring neighbourhood is a way of realizing expectations of the children. Opportunities to play sports or participate in recreation programs leads to fewer unsupervised children aimlessly hanging out and making choices that will ultimately hurt them. When external developmental assets are in place, children have the opportunity to become responsible, pro-social and value their identity. These are characteristics that most people want to see in their children . In planning interventions, helping professionals need to know both specific details and how the concepts are fleshed out by the parents, who, based on their culture and personal histories, may have specific goals within these broad categories. Integrity, to some families, might mean acknowledging sins and gaining pardon. Responsibility, to some families, might mean looking after parents when they are old. There are cultural differences regarding what childrens self-esteem looks like in practice. The parents might wish the children to be filially responsible as sons and daughters or to become devout practising Christians, Muslims or Jews. Helping professionals need to talk to the families 80

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to learn the details and understand the parents’ goals for their children . The internal assets described below are useful in analyzing needs and planning intervention programs.

What Individual , Internal Strengths Are Supporting This Child in Her Development? Internal Asset Types Hie internal asset types listed by Benson et al. are the commitments, values and competencies of the individual child that will be conducive to their future well - being. The adults in childrens lives can provide guidance, frameworks and stimulus for the development of the necessary skills and competencies. In a practical sense, parents, educators and others who care about children and want them to be successful will look for concrete ways of fostering or supporting the development of the skills that comprise this asset type. The first of the identified factors is commitment to learning. This is operationalized as having achievement motivation , reading for pleasure, caring about school and putting a high value on social justice and equality. Immigrant children benefit greatly when the adults who care for them articulate a shared vision about the importance of schools, education and achievement. Commitment to learning is also affected by the school’s approach to pedagogy. The research literature on how people learn ( Bransford, Brown and Cocking 2000 ) found that the optimal conditions to foster deep learning include building on pre- existing knowledge and promoting active learning. Cummins ( 2004: 88-89 ) elaborated on why this is particularly important for

immigrant students: Prior knowledge, skills, beliefs, and concepts significantly influ ence what learners notice about their environment and how they organize and interpret it. This principle implies that in classrooms with students from linguistically diverse backgrounds, instruction must explicitly activate students’ prior knowledge and build relevant background knowledge as necessary. The implied acknowledgment and affirmation of students’ language and cultural background is not socio - politically neutral. Rather it explicitly challenges the omission and subordination of students’ culture and language within typical transmission -oriented classrooms.. .. Learners should be supported in taking control of, and selfregulating, their own learning. When students take ownership of the learning process and invest their identities in the outcomes of learning, the resulting understanding will be deeper than when learning is passive.

One of the implications of this principle is that pedagogical approaches 81

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that focus on memorization and teaching to the test will not produce a true commitment to learning. Rather, it is important to acknowledge that learning is more than a cognitive process. It takes place in a social context. Cummins again explains: Learning is not simply a cognitive process that takes place inside the heads of individual students; it also involves socialization into particular communities of practice. Within these learning communities, or what Gee ( 2001 ) terms affinity groups , novices are enabled to participate in the practices of the community from the very beginning of their involvement. Lave and Wenger ( 1991 ) describe this process as legitimate peripheral participation . The learning com munity can include the classroom , the school, the family and broader community, and virtual communities enabled through electronic communication. ( Cummins 2004: 5-6 )

This important information on what motivates commitment to learning flies in the face of transmission practices deeply entrenched in education systems focused on improving students’ test scores. Helping immigrant families to motivate their childrens commitment to learning is essential to ensuring academic success. The second internal asset identified by Benson et al. is the acquisition of positive values. Caring, equality and social justice, integrity, honesty, responsibility and restraint “reflect a significant public consensus on values, with some evidence that they approximate a universal core of values within advanced technological societies” ( Benson et al. 2012: 10 ) . The social competencies assets include skills needed to deal with choices, challenges and opportunities. In order to function adaptively, children need to develop skills for planning and decision making, interpersonal competence, cultural competence, resistance skills and peaceful conflict resolution . In the case of immigrants, we assume that people bring social competencies with them to the new country. Professionals ought to acknowledge these assets and help to strengthen them. The final asset type that can act as a protective factor is positive identity, which encompasses personal power, self-esteem, sense of purpose and a posi tive view of personal future. According to Erikson ( 1968 ) , identity formation is a critical task of adolescence. Immigrant children might feel they do not fit in, be ashamed of their identity or see their parents as an embarrassment and devalue what they have. Having legal papers can enhance a persons sense of identity and belonging. To build on this asset, professionals focus on strength ening childrens identity their estimate of themselves and their family. Individualistic values and materialism promoted by the media get in the way of retaining family ties and may undercut spiritual or religious

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commitments. Teachers and social workers whose beliefs differ from those of the families with whom they work do well to pay attention to families’ faith - based values and religious practices because although intangible and hard to measure, they are assets and a source of support , helping people to find meaning in their lives. Part of a positive identity is viewing one’s future as important . What you see for yourself and what you think is possible are important. In my own work with Latin American newcomers to Canada, I often ask the children what they want to be when they grow up. Although it may seem like a very simple question, it is a very concrete indicator of well - being. If you are telling the family story, you are implicitly speculating on how the story might continue and that it does continue.

In Conclusion : Identifying Assets in Order to Strengthen Them The chapter began with a discussion of the necessity of involving the com munity in efforts to assist families. Families’ problems range from medical to legal and from economic to personal intra - familial matters. Various professionals need to be involved with newcomer families. Educators are called upon to intervene in increasingly complex situations. Educators are most effective with newcomers when they learn about the children’s background and circumstances, and recognize and build upon the family’s strengths. Problems, of course, have to be canvassed and addressed, but it does newcom ers no favour if helping professionals see them merely as defective or define them as multi - problem families. Assets identified by Benson et al. ( 2012 ) are proposed as a framework for planning interventions. All newcomers have assets that can be supported and made stronger. Professionals will select the protective factors to focus on with specific chil dren and families. Exemplary professional practice is not a matter of identifying deficiencies, defects and shortcomings and then offering charitable aid. Rather, it involves looking for and working from the assets, strengths and social competencies that are already there. Helping professionals have a responsibility to facilitate the expansion of these assets and work with families to produce positive outcomes and enhance their well - being.

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Part III

BECOMING THE CHANGE WE SEEK

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Chapter Eight

BUILDING BRIDGES A Typology of Intervention Programs

Involving Immigrant Families Get ready to pull your sleeves up and get hands -on! While Part I laid out the historical background, legal ambiguities and social complexities that meet newcomers with various challenges and Part II presented the new ways of thinking that will allow us to begin digging ourselves out of those messes, Part III builds on the theoretical foundations for practice introduced in Part II to introduce real -time solutions to the problems experienced by newcomers. All of the proposed solutions begin with one basic assumption: immigrants have strengths. Immigrants have unique knowledge and skills to contribute to a rich , healthy society. The question for helping professionals is how to tap into the cultural capital immigrant families are bringing into immigrant receiving countries, both for their own well - being and for the well - being and benefit of the entire community.

What Programs Help Newcomer Families? Funding and the Problems of Evidence Happily, there are ways in which family agendas are currently gaining momentum. Support for parenting is becoming recognized as an important item on the public policy agenda. Governments have established programs to deliver supports to families in three major ways: financial, educational and social. There are, of course, differences internationally regarding the amount and type of government support for parenting programs (Shulruf, O’Loughlin and Tolley 2009). However, some things remain common. Broadly speaking, a primary goal of parental support is ensuring the welfare of the children. The welfare of children includes a number of components, such as maintenance of health, receiving quality care and education, and protection from abuse and neglect. Another primary goal is the empowerment of parents (see Benson et al. 2012; Bourdieu 1986; Cummins 2001), for clearly the childrens welfare depends first of all on the parents; the quality of parental decision making is crucial. Governments have focused on families considered to be disadvantaged socioeconomically, especially low- income families. For a number of immi grant groups, this aspect of relative disadvantage is no different from that of native- born groups who are living in difficult circumstances. Earlier we 86

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discussed the common difficulties encountered by immigrants, and it is worth repeating the main items for purposes of the present chapter. Difficulties include poor housing, unemployment and lack of access to health care and quality childcare. At the same time, there are special characteristics of im migrant families even those who, in objective terms, are living in poverty. The background education levels of the parents may differ from that seen in native- born groups of disadvantaged persons. Further, the immigrant parents have had different experiences before arriving in the immigrant receiving country and they bring different expectations. Often they have high expectations and optimism about prospects for their childrens educational opportunities and their future lives. These differences between newcomers and other disadvantaged families suggest that the programs designed to empower parents ought to be specifically tailored to immigrant populations. The problem , as always, is not with good intentions; notwithstanding these, governments and social service agencies face a number of problems with the planning and delivery of family support programs for immigrant families. Governments, concerned about accountability to taxpayers, prefer to fund programs according to objective criteria and, where there is a social intervention , wish outcomes to be objectively assessed. ( We are speaking of cases where a government takes a lead and is not merely trying to cater to the prejudices of constituencies. ) However, using objective indicators and stan dard measures comes more naturally to certain types of programs. Broadly speaking, the favoured programs are those where professionals determine the desired outcomes before the intervention so they predict variables and outcomes. Conversely, programs that emphasize parental input in decision making do not lend themselves as well to providing objective evidence. There are several reasons for this. Although the best programs have been able to document gains, they have been unable to demonstrate causal ity because of lack of control groups or random assignment. Where modest gains are reported, a number of factors may be involved which could explain the effects. Immigrants are often exposed to more than one program at the same time. Also, if one relies on self- reported satisfaction, it is well known that many parents do not want to seem ungrateful. Further, small, parent driven programs with limited funding are less able to follow the rigorous procedures of the social sciences. The gold standard of proof in the natural sciences ( control group and random assignment ) is, in practice, very dif ficult to implement. For one thing, all of those seeking help want to receive the best program and months on a waiting list would seem to be an unfair imposition. A crossover design might be employed but this feature causes complications and longer term planning. In short, it turns out to be beyond the means of small and medium sized programs. Are we suggesting that the smaller programs should be abandoned or not

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funded ? No. Programs in education and social assistance, at least in the short run, are often based, quite properly, on less- than -solid proof. One makes the best inferences as to what may work, based on past experiences, analogies and observed patterns of correlation . As an analogy, consider most decisions and plans in everyday life, even ones of great consequence, such as choice of spouse or partner. Small programs in education and social areas need to document their results. The data they provide become part of the improvement and planning processes in their areas. Where their evidence is thin , perhaps up the road more elaborate and rigorous studies will clarify the picture. Often the issue is not so much rejecting earlier, provisional findings, so much as seeing and interpreting them in context. When some intervention is found to “ work” for a given group, the conclusion is not so much “ This works,” as “This works for group X, in time period T,” where the qualifications are not necessarily obvious at the time. Let us consider some specific results from researchers who have looked into the issue of parenting programs and their assessment . For example, Boddy and colleagues ( 2009 ) studied in detail parenting programs in twelve countries, seven of which were considered to be the most advanced countries in Europe. Their research concluded that some of the most comprehensive interventions, such as those in Denmark, the Netherlands and France, are not operating according to objectively assessed outcomes. Rather, the countries have only used process evaluations, which focus on how the interventionists feel about the interventions. Where better evidence as to outcomes is available, the achievements of many programs as shown in these objective data , have been problematic. In a review paper, Crosnoe ( 2010) dealt with a number of the larger parenting programs for disadvantaged parents, such as Head Start and Even Start. His conclusion is that results generally have been disappointing (see also McGroder et al. 2000). He noted that part of the explanation is that in many cases the parents were simultaneously involved in other programs, which likely undermined the outcomes. Crosnoe also looked at smaller programs for Latino parents and reported a number of positive changes, particularly in self- reported parental knowledge about community resources. However, he emphasized that the benefits of the program needed to be corroborated in further research. How do we know what types of interventions will work for the newcomers we are involved with ? This chapter looks into the rationales for the various types of interventions, their theoretical foundations and also their evidence as to success. The chapter also describes the interventions themselves, in cluding how they are structured and the research and data collection that provides their foundations. Through exposure to this typology, this chapter prepares helping professionals to plan their own interventions and address 88

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the problems of collecting evidence. The chapter highlights the challenges current interventions experience gathering evidence. It may surprise some, but we hope that this excursion will provide a solid basis for future research and intervention efforts. A special focus is on the extent to which parents are genuinely involved and empowered in interventions. This means, in part, that their input is determinative regarding the setting of objectives and whether they are reached. I contrast two types of interventions in this category as extremes on a con tinuum . Limiting the discussion to two types is necessarily simplifying the picture, but the intent is to make the contrast easily apparent and thus more accessible for practical use.

Type 1 Interventions: Parents on the Side The first type of intervention program includes those that have a minor role for parents’ determinative input . Professionals determine the program goals according to an authoritative knowledge base. Focusing on this type of in tervention is not intended to disparage the knowledge of professionals or to criticize all attempts to look at objective indicators. There are good reasons to look at quantitative measures such as rates of hospitalization, school dropouts, arrest records and so on . However, implementation of these models, despite the best intentions of the interveners, can disempower the families. Looking at it from the other side, the family strengths, their cultural capital, may be overlooked or disregarded. There are now hundreds of reports of the results of programs such as Head Start, Even Start and High Scope that have a primary focus on the children and a minor focus on parents, usually ensuring that they play a supportive role in relation to the classroom practices. Parents may be involved, but their values and goals are not particularly tapped into by those who are intervening ( who are presumed to have superior knowledge of the skills parents need ). Pushor ( 2007: 3) summarized this point: With parental involvement, the scripted story of school as protectorate does not change. Because the school is still setting the agenda and determining what roles parents are to play within that agenda, the hierarchical structure of educators as experts, acting in the best interests of the less-knowing parents, is maintained.

For this reason , Pushor prefers the term “parental engagement,” since this implies they are given an opportunity to contribute their skills and knowledge. It is a more collaborative term. See later in this chapter, under the section “Ways of Connecting with and Motivating Parents,” for further discussion of this concept. 89

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Type I interventions have been extensively reviewed at the early child hood level by Chambers, Cheung, Slavin, Smith and Laurenzano ( 2010). Out of hundreds of candidate programs, forty were selected for evaluation for the purpose of finding evidence of effectiveness and / or enduring changes. Most of these programs have no parental involvement, and almost none refer to ethnic or immigrant communities. Some have a mild degree of parental involvement but no effective determinative parental engagement. Many Type I interventions aim to work with parents with the goal of improved literacy for their children. Literacy interventions vary in terms of both the philosophical foundations and their focus. They can be thought of as falling along a continuum , from a skill - based focus on the mechan ics of literacy, to an emphasis on children as active knowledge - generators. Therefore, the lack of parental input is surprising. Sustained reading growth requires that students form a bond to literacy that motivates them to read extensively for pleasure ( Bransford , Brown and Cocking 2000; Guthrie 2004 ). At this end of the continuum the adults in childrens lives are key, as it is the family members who can most effectively emphasize the pleasure of reading and focus on comprehension of meaningful texts and knowledge -generation . These interventions are part of social services to families designed to improve their functioning and promote the development of children who are at risk, whether it be from poverty, neglect or active abuse. An example of a successful program that illustrates some of the above issues is that of Pantin and her colleagues ( 2003), who reported on an intervention with 670 families ( half were in control groups). Tfie facilitators used a series of group meetings to promote parental engagement with the “ worlds” of the adolescent (family, peers and school ). The investigators worked ac cording to predetermined goals regarding parental investment and problem behaviours. Although the intervention was described as “drawing on Freire’s participatory learning model” ( 192 ), the objectives were predetermined by the interveners. To be fair, the goals are worthy ( e.g., fewer arrests and school expulsions), but the issue of parental strength was not addressed. Rather, the parents were seen as needing instruction on how to manage their children. To bring these points together, the problem of objectively evaluating programs to assist or benefit families remains unsolved. Of course there is a need for measurable outcomes and funders have a right to insist on account ability. At the same time, new forms and methods of assessment are being developed. If the gold standard of randomized trials is not feasible, there are other approaches that could yield a reasonable degree of certainty that what is supposed to be occurring is, in fact, occurring.

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Kids out of Context: When Parents on the Side Doesn’t Work Another issue with the replication of evidence- based programs is the use of a standard , universal model of family functioning and child development. Where the criteria for success must be pre-specified, it is tempting to appeal to universal models to state specific desirable outcomes. It is convenient to appeal to such factors as milestones for children and ways of relating to children . However, the problem is that both the local context and the desires of the specific persons involved have to be considered. A particular prototype for “ best parenting” may not be suitable in all contexts. According to this ap proach , deviations from the model are defects or pathologies. Pathologization of families and individuals who are not middle-class has been extensively critiqued ( e.g., Lareau 1989 ). This universal model is especially confining when applied to immigrants from other cultures. For example, issues of respect for parents are treated very differently in China than in the United States or Canada ( Diamond, Wang and Gomez 2006; Hutsinger and Jose 2009). Moreover, where professionals establish a program and use universal criteria for setting up the desired outcomes, there may be important and unintended consequences even where objective gains are reported. Parents might agree that their children are in some ways better offbut at the same time feel patronized or ignored by the persons running the program. If programs are to maintain long - term benefits, the issue of the participants’ sentiments cannot be dismissed. For example, a U.K. study involved interviews with 1,754 parents of young children sampled from over 10,000 households in 135 areas of the country ( Ghate and Hazel 2004). Almost 30 percent of parents surveyed felt that the professionals took over the process and generally did not respect the parents’ expertise. It can be expected that immigrants considered to have language and other deficits are likely to feel especially demeaned by certain methods of intervention. It is hard to imagine that long- term benefits could be maintained where the clientele have so many negative feelings. Another exemplary study that illustrates the problem of alleged universal criteria for good parenting or healthy children is that of Webster-Stratton and colleagues ( 2004 ), who designed a broad treatment intervention for children with oppositional defiant disorder and conduct disorder; these are official diagnostic categories from DSM - IV and are in other words very severe psychological disorders. The parenting program that emerged from this 2004 study has been scaled up to the entire child population and offered internationally as The Incredible Years program ( 2011). The participants of the 2004 study were parents who requested service at a university clinic because their children had received the diagnosis just mentioned. They were middle-income, mostly of European descent. The intervention consisted of three components, combined singly, in pairs and all together. These were parent training, child 91

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training and teacher training. Durations were as follows: child training was sixteen sessions over six months of “ Dinosaur School,” involving therapists teaching social and conflict skills to children in small groups; parents received twenty sessions involving watching seventeen videos on parenting and interpersonal skills; and teacher training involved four days. There was also a control condition and random assignment. The central point of the hypothesis was that combinations of treatments would be more effective than those in single conditions. A number of results were reported in great detail. The investigators were surprised to find that their initial hypothesis of special effectiveness of the combination of all three components was not confirmed . In fact, adding the teacher component did not affect the results. Two or three of the highlights are worth mentioning; in the area of positive parenting behaviours for mothers but not so much for fathers, child conduct improved at home but not at school . The Webster-Stratton study findings are complicated and in some cases inconsistent. This is because a large number of outcome variables were con sidered , and the cases where significant results were obtained are difficult to interpret . Apart from the specific findings, we can make some general com ments about the type of approach that Webster - Stratton and colleagues used. It was a top-down approach designed for specific conducts and behaviours that cause a child to be medically labelled oppositional and defiant . The ex tent and nature of child behaviour disorders are arguably culture - bound. The types of behaviour considered problematic may not apply in other cultures. Further, the group on which the intervention was tested was a white, middle-class group with common assumptions and values with those of the program designers. The people in such a group would have no language and value issues in communicating with the interveners. On the other hand , the parents that now attend The Incredible Years programs are quite different. Parents who are undocumented or on welfare will have very different experi ences, and their issues may not be addressed. It will be interesting to follow the outcomes as the program is offered to these more diverse groups. In our opinion, the focus on medically diagnosed behaviour disorders is a limitation as to generalization of the findings, especially to culturally diverse groups, which are the focus of this book. The program is often taken up as a universal prescription for successful parenting with all types of normally behaving children.

Going beyond “ I Talk , You Listen”: Conclusions about Type I Interventions In conclusion, there have been a number of Type I interventions that have had worthy goals and have yielded evidence deemed to be objective, valu able and convincing. These interventions can be summed up as follows: 92

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Educational policy makers, it appears, have been promoting a rather narrow version of evidence - based inquiry. The tendency is to rely on predetermined and objectively defined shortcomings or disorders. Apart from any critique of these approaches, it is important to note that the methods and procedures for data collection in these studies are absolutely required in order to obtain funding. For example, a report by Shavelson and Towne ( 2002) on scientific research and education placed great stress on rigorous methods of scientific research in education . There was some acknowledgment of the value of case studies and ethnographic approaches and no explicit disqualification of qualitative approaches. The concept of empowerment is broad and crucially based on how participants feel about the interactions and how they interact with those offering programs intended to benefit them. At the same time, helping professionals would not want to claim success in long- range empowerment of program participants if no objective gains could be demonstrated. In short, the concept of empowerment is useful when assessing real gains. The issue of how participants feel is directly connected to their level of awareness their consciousness of the characteristics of their situation. It is common sense that for people to address an issue, they have to be able to see it clearly. Structural disadvantage or oppression cannot be addressed in the absence of consciousness ( Allen et al. 1989; Cruickshank 1999; Delgado- Gaitan 1991). Individuals first need to be aware of the benefits of changing their circumstances in order to have the ability to do so. Freires emphasis on concientisization (1999) sensitizes professionals to this essential first step. Parents need to have a say about their own process of participation. If the parents feel they are merely following prescribed procedures laid down by the authorities, then they are not truly empowered and one might expect minimal effects. The goal is participation as full citizens. Of course, the professionals have knowledge and are well - intentioned about helping participating parents and children. Yet the issue of genuine empowerment remains. New immigrant parents often experience a number of difficulties. Some have high levels of education and resist being expected to play a purely re ceptive role in interventions. They are acutely aware that the knowledge of professionals is given value, whereas their own knowledge tends to be deval ued or ignored. As Freire pointed out, the process ofconcientization involves honest dialogue between all those involved in creating change. Professionals need to act as supporters and facilitators of parents. In summary, it is relevant to note that the field of migrant studies itself is quite new, as is the sub -area of interventions focused on parents. The issue of evidence and evaluation in interventions for parents is discussed by the Harvard Family Research project in their evaluation exchange special issue ( Weiss 2004/ 2005). Understandably, researchers fall back on standard test

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scores, although this emphasis can neglect other vital areas whose importance will emerge in the long run. These areas particularly concern the issue of empowerment and include the following: determinative parental input regarding process and goals; family appreciation of its cultural capital; fam ily cohesion; and students’ personal and communal identities. It is crucial to address these variables in order to bring about long- term gains in the overall well- being of families. The Type I approaches often appear to have produced benefits, and the better programs have gathered objective evidence of such benefits based on standard tests and measurement instruments. All of these efforts are to be commended. At the same time, issues of parental input and specific ways of empowering need to be addressed. What can be called Type II programs represent efforts with more or less success to deal with these issues.

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Type II Interventions: Treating Parents as Equals The distinguishing characteristic of the second type of intervention programs with families is full parental involvement . They involve parents in the role of determining the course of interventions affecting their children . In these ideal cases, parents are empowered , participate in decision making and are treated as equals. Four examples are discussed below: La Familia Initiative, Parents as First Teachers, Abriendo Puertas and Parent School Partnership Program ( MALDEF ). A fifth example from the author s own research is covered in the next chapter.

La Familia Initiative, California A study by Jasis and Ordonez- Jasis ( 2004 ) reported on a parent -organizing project called La Familia Initiative. Latino parent organizers partnered with a non-governmental organization ( NGO ) to address the fact that Latinos in a middle school, in the southwest U.S., were the lowest performing group in the entire school. At the start of the project, teachers were interviewed , and they blamed the Latino childrens low scores on lack of parental participation . Further, they assured the researchers that they had already tried everything and it was impossible to get parents to participate. The parents testified how futile it was to attend parent meetings when teachers patronized them . At the first official parent meeting, a small steering committee of parents was created and the eight parents in attendance shared stories about their contacts with the school. They created an organization that met independently of the school and managed to phrase their requests in ways that were well received by the principal and the staff. One area of change was in teaching methods and student evaluations. The parents met with science and math teachers and 94

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a change in manner of evaluation of students was put into effect. In a short time, the parents held a community forum and expanded to five other schools in the district. Parents began to participate in district - level policy events. Based on two years of participant observation and two hundred hours of interviews, the report examined the elements that resulted in the parents becoming active in school programs and developing an image of themselves as good parents and community advocates. The school responded positively, and a more equal dialogue began between parents and teachers. The authors explain the success of the partnership as follows:

To be successful, this relationship had to be re-constructed on a more equal basis to overcome generations of negative assumptions about the perceived lack of interest of these parents regarding their childrens schooling. The school . . . had to begin to see Latino parents as the most important, positive influence in their childrens schooling, and as the teachers’ main allies to improve educational outcomes. ( Jasis and Ordonez- Jasis 2004: 38-39)

This example of grassroots democracy and parental determination resulted in school achievement gains for the children. After two years of the program , three of the Latino students were in the top ten of the school, which had never happened before. Also, there were more Latino students participating in the senior math and science courses when they reached high school.

Parents as First Teachers, New Zealand Another parent -centred intervention approach is a Maori program in New Zealand consisting of home visits and group meetings. It served parents during pregnancy and continued until their children were age three. The program was initially adapted from the American Parents as Teachers Program (PAT). The PAT program was a large, well - funded program whose participants were five thousand kindergarten children and their parents. An extensive rigorous evaluation of the process is detailed by Zigler, Pfannenstie and Seitz ( 2008). The government in New Zealand wished to reach disadvantaged Maori children and initially set up Parents as First Teachers ( PAFT) based on the PAT model. Soon after the large-scale implementation of the program, a number of reports examined the assumptions of PAFT in particular, the assumption seemed to be that Maori child - rearing was deficient ( Dalli 1992; Pihama 1996). The program was adapted in the year 2000 to emphasize strengths and pay attention to key Maori concepts of family life and child development. The Maori dimension of the program was called Ahuru Mowai, a Maori term meaning warm and sheltering haven. This component pays attention to Maori concepts of child - rearing, such as unconditional love, caring for

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others, relating to others, genealogy, spirituality, roles of older siblings and the rights of the child as paramount. It is noteworthy that in this program the values were derived from the context, not from authoritative manuals written by child development experts in another culture. Many of the interveners themselves are Maori and have been recipients of the program . The group of interveners, like the participat ing parents, were people with varied cultural backgrounds. Farquhar ( 2002) conducted an evaluation of the program with four hundred families. While the majority in the sample were of European descent , a sizable minority were Maori or mixed ( 17 percent ). There were significant numbers of other groups such as Asians and Pacific- Islanders. Findings indicated that the new adapted program resulted in a high degree of parental satisfaction; 94 percent felt their culture was well supported and an additional 5 percent felt mostly supported. Several of the findings indicated that the ethnicity of the intervener was less important than their personality. The parents, regardless of whether they were Maori, mixed or other, felt supported in making deci sions about parenting and saw the PAFT visitor as a trusted friend and source of information , guidance and support.

Abriendo Puertas, California A parent engagement program that can be categorized as allowing parents to have a determinative role is Abriendo Puertas, consisting of ten sessions drawing on dichos, or culturally based sayings that encourage parents to reflect on their upbringing. In this way, the program reflects the inputs, concerns and values of the Latino parents. A main premise of the program is that the parent is the expert and leader of the family. They are taught how to set goals and achieve them . Other program topics include communication , ages and stages of development, promoting literacy, choosing preschool and childcare services, health and nutrition , socio -emotional wellness, Earned Income Tax Credit and advocating for children , families and communities. There is also information on the special education system and how it works. The program is part of Families in Schools, an organization that runs a number of research based, culturally relevant programs for Latino children . Bridges, Cohen , Fuller and Velez ( 2009) conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the Abriendo Puertas program . The program included 109 lowincome parents born in Central and South America . More than half of the parents in the sample had completed high school. Surveys were conducted at three points: beginning, completion and between two and six months after completion of the program . There were also short questionnaires, field notes from participant observers and focus groups with participating parents. The largest program effects were on confidence about parenting skills as well as knowledge and access to health services in their communities. A small but

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important effect was that there was a change in the parents’ thinking about voting. Following the program , they took action to encourage others to vote on behalf of children.

MALDEF Parent School Partnership Program, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta The Parent School Partnership ( PSP ) program is focused on leadership devel opment and guiding parents to take collective action as part of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund ( MALDEF), a non - profit organization rooted in the civil rights movement. It operates in elementary schools in Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and Atlanta. The main goal is to empower parents and encourage them to take the lead in their childrens education and to recognize and build on their social - intellectual capital. The twelve weekly sessions include topics such as parents’ rights and responsibilities, the structure and function of the school system, financial aid and college requirements. There are also guest speakers who are principals, school board members and city representatives. Finally, the parents brainstorm their concerns and engage in collective action projects. An evaluation study ( Bolivar and Chrispeels 2011) was conducted at two elementary schools in Los Angeles that served similar proportions of Hispanic students ( 95 percent and 98 percent ), with most of them qualifying for lowincome subsidies. Data included observations to document dynamics of the sessions as well as interactions with school personnel. Focus group interviews explored what parents learned and how this affected their actions. In addition, focus group interviews were conducted with twenty-eight PSP graduates who had established ongoing parent groups in other parts of the district. An important finding was that parents appreciated being supported by an NGO whose role is to defend their children’s rights. The trust they felt for both the NGO and the facilitator helped them become more active in the system. They learned to trust and support one another’s efforts in the system. The basis for parent empowerment was to understand the system and to learn how to effectively interact with it . These are skills that are taken for granted by middle- class families. Gains were also reported in the parents’ ability to talk to officials in a way that is polite and based on good background knowl edge. They learned about implicit and explicit norms involved in interacting with school officials. The program yielded a number of benefits. The parents became aware of their rights to ask questions and make demands upon the system. Knowledge about their rights and the system also helped many parents voice opinions and concerns. One parent reported that PSP has made her “realize that she can question and have an input in decisions being made involving her son’s education” ( 18). 97

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The parents in the MALDEF program worked cooperatively with school personnel and principals. Where necessary, they also learned to work their way up the hierarchy in order to ensure their concerns were heard. On an individual level, they learned to check their childrens cumulative files, to make appointments with teachers, how to ask specific questions about how the children were doing academically and how to write letters to the school if their concerns were not adequately addressed. The parents’ efforts produced a number of successes. Some of their projects included obtaining an intersession for their children , opening a computer centre and changing the cafeteria food. Among graduates of the program , three organizations had been established and sustained. One was a parent centre at a school, another worked at the school district level and now has non - profit status and a third developed a partnership with a university and later filed a formal complaint against one of the schools.

Ways of Connecting with and Motivating Parents The interveners in all these programs made specific efforts to involve parents in a number of ways. They also focused on particular ways of motivating parents. We may summarize these points as follows: 1 ) The connections with parents were based on equality and were non - hierarchical. The central concept was of partnership, working together for a common goal. 2 ) Parents were treated as knowledgeable, as experts in their own lives. The professionals were helping build upon that basis of competence. They were not bringing professional competence to bear upon a hapless victim of the system . 3) Those directly involved with the parents were often of the same cultural or ethnic background and in many cases had common language. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of being able to communicate with a person in his or her own language, particularly where feelings are concerned . Issues of engagement and active participation have been extensively covered in literature on therapeutic and social interventions ( Gitterman 1996; Krill 1996; Saleebeyl 997). Yatchemenoff ( 2005) published a psychometric study of engagement, identifying four main factors in client engagement. These were: receptivity ( I need help); buy - in (same as I want ); working relation ship ( respect each other ); and mistrust ( I can trust ). This sort of analysis has promising results. One might question, however, the weight given to the mistrust factor. We must realize that her primary focus was on non -voluntary clients, who had some basis for mistrusting the helpers who were assigned to them. Those clients are involuntary, and that is not the case for the any of the programs reviewed in this book in detail.

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Honouring and Building upon Unique Strengths: Overall Comments about Type II Interventions The successful programs we have discussed tended to be based on concepts and assumptions similar to those we set out earlier in this book. From Chapter 5, the importance of capital (social, cultural, intellectual ) and funds of knowledge was greatly emphasized and built upon in all of the programs. The issues of language and identity were given special attention. The programs incorporated and honoured the norms of various cultures. From Chapter 6, the programs expressly acknowledge diversity, especially in the area of knowledge. They tended not to prescribe some single norma tive path of development but looked at multiple paths. The issue of social dominance was faced directly in respect to acknowledging the families’ initial disadvantage and disempowerment in the situations they faced, particularly vis-a -vis the institutions that they had to deal with. From Chapter 7, identification of strengths of families was essential to all of the programs. The families’ assets of various types were acknowledged and drawn upon. The programs looked at external assets such as neighbourhoods and families as well as paying attention to the motivational characteristics of the person and their assumed caring and commitment to improving their situation . It is appropriate to say some words about evaluation of these programs, especially as it is currently practised. For funding purposes, certain outcomes have to be defined in standard measurable ways. These might be health related , social services - related ( utilization ), school retention and drop-out rates, or school performance. The programs described here paid attention to such outcomes and in fact succeeded in standard measures of these. As well, the programs succeeded in culturally defined outcomes according to qualitative reports of the parents’ levels of satisfaction. All of the programs, of course, have a number of areas that could be improved and refined.

In Conclusion: Reaching Out , Reaching Up Helping professionals experience dilemmas with no easy solutions. There are challenges associated with working with children and families in different ways. The issue of data quality in social sciences is not simply solved by pairing an interviewer and interviewee with the same native language. Likewise, no helping professionals can claim to be free of ethnocentric bias. Working with newcomers and people whose backgrounds differ from our own is challenging. Professionals come face to face with ethnocentric and professional biases. What professionals generally see is that they are guard ians and advocates of an authoritative knowledge base and that they have 99

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acquired expertise not found in laypersons. The intent is not to demean the knowledge and skills of psychologists, social workers, educators and other professionals, but the problems involved need a wider perspective than can be achieved within any given professional discipline. The issue of power is primary, and professionals need to work within collaborative models where power is shared and where the program participants are helped to gain and assert their own powers. Policymakers have generally paid insufficient attention to issues of participant empowerment. The complexities of the problem have been ignored. In some cases, those assessing programs have favoured experimental or quasi experimental program evaluation to obtain evidence that will be considered solid. The wealth of qualitative studies that exist is not appreciated. Policy makers are not the only ones with problems as to evidence. Educated people in general simply assume that the evidence gathered must be of a certain type to be valuable: namely quantitative, control groups and random assignment. Likewise, none of us can be said to be free of ethnocentric bias. This is not an attempt to give simple answers for complex problems. In fact, in line with Portes and Baratz ( 1989), it is likely that even researchers of the same culture may have biases against others of that culture. It is rec ommended that all those conducting research consider these problems. The issues deserve more airing in professional forums. Professionals need some humility and realism about the limitations of present approaches.

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NEWCOMER PARENTS AS CONSCIOUS, ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS IN THEIR CHILDREN’S EDUCATION Personal Initiatives with Newcomer Families The crucial element of empowerment is to build on families’ strengths and enlist them in determining optimal outcomes for their children. This chapter describes some of my own interventions designed to empower families and summarizes the insights I gained from these studies. An early project involved eight months as a member of a research team with a group of twelve working with Latino parents of children in Toronto schools ( Bernhard , Freire, Pacini- Ketchabaw and Villanueva 1998). We stressed the parents’ finding their own voices, speaking up and advocating on behalf of themselves and their children. The group gave the parents support in their efforts and supplemented their existing networks. A spin - off from this program was the Canadian Parenting Workshops, which involved a scaling up of the project for fifty -five Spanish -speaking newcomer mothers in three cities ( Bernhard, Freire and Mulligan 2004). These mothers attended all or almost all of the sessions and participated en thusiastically in their first language. The groups themselves became sources of support for the mothers. Within the workshops, the mothers were able to discuss their ideas on child development and reassess some of their traditional ideas about physical punishment. In surprising contradiction to their qualitative comments, based on pre- and post -survey results, mothers felt less positive about their parent - child relationships at the end of the workshops. This contradiction may have further evidenced their struggle to put what they were learning into practice. An important gain for the mothers was their increased understanding of the education and welfare systems. They reported being comfortable exercising their rights in communication with school personnel. Generally they felt more empowered to advocate for their children with schools and other institutions. In the teams’ reflections after the project, we realized that certain language and identity issues could well have received more attention. The parents as well as the teachers expressed reservations about the effects of Spanish -only home environments. Indeed, many parents were convinced of the necessity to switch to English. Further, we found the institutions with which the parents 101

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dealt almost entirely exerted their influence in the direction of replacement of the home language with English.

The Early Authors Program The first major project that I describe in some detail was the Early Authors Program, a large-scale, twelve-month early literacy intervention for threeto five-year-old children ( Bernhard, Cummins, Campoy, Ada, Winsler and Bleiker 2006). It involved thirty-two childcare settings, sixteen family child care providers, seventy-four centre- based care providers, 1,179 children and eight hundred families. The study involved random assignment to control and experimental groups. Our investigation relied heavily on Freire, whose theories and practice were introduced in Chapter Five. To reiterate the most relevant points here, he worked to empower oppressed communities in Brazil and believed that the interaction between teacher and student did not occur in a vacuum, but rather in an elaborate social context in which the pupils did not passively reproduce the information presented to them. By empowering students and using cultural references, he tapped into sources of strength and ideals. For example, when Freire worked with peasants to teach them to read, he found that in order to be effective, the learning opportunities needed to be experiential and emotionally engaging. His teaching involved discussion and dialogue, rather than repetition and memorization. The process of becom ing conscious of their place in the system was labelled conscienticization. Freires methods are outlined in The Pedagogy of Hope ( 2004) , a book that has inspired educators worldwide to encourage their students to read the “world through the word.” Following Freires lead, the Early Authors research team knew it was essential that the project be based in the languages and cultures of the participants. In particular, there should be no question about the value assigned to the home language. While we realized that the parents and families had to interact with an English-speaking school system about which they needed to learn, this in no way detracted from the crucial importance of maintenance of the home language and culture. The principal elements of the program were all designed to affirm the participants’ linguistic and cultural bases. Early Authors was built on a program developed by Ada and Campoy (2003) for use in elementary schools. Created to improve the possibility of more equitable outcomes for all children , Authors in the Classroom was modified and implemented at the early education level under the name Early Authors Program (see Bernhard et al. 2006; Bernhard, Winsler, Bleiker, Ginieniewicz and Madigan 2008; Taylor, Bernhard, Garg and Cummins 2008). The Early Authors Program was first implemented in Miami - Dade County, one of the poorest areas of the United States. The Early Authors Program aimed to promote early bilingual literacy in preschool children by 102

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having the adults and children create bilingual books. Each centre was provided with a digital camera, colour printer, computer and laminating equipment. A total of 3,286 books were written by children, parents and educators in both English and the home language of the children, usually Spanish or Haitian - Creole. The books were based on family histories, the children’s lives and the childrens interests. The children, their friends, relatives and pets were often the main characters in their stories. One assumption of the program was that if children reared in economically and socially disadvantaged situations were going to grow up to become leaders of their communities, they needed to be treated as protagonists of their own lives at the moment their personalities are developing. The children and adults created the dual language books and read them together. They took pictures that became the illustrations for some of the books. Family photographs were also scanned and used to illustrate the books. Childrens drawings were also incorporated into their books. Lamination made the books durable enough to withstand repeated use. Copies of the books were placed in the classroom libraries and other copies were taken home by the children and added to their family libraries. In addition, copies of the books were displayed in an exhibition at the local childrens museum. The Early Authors Program used a pre-test / post -test experimental design, in which the children in the program were randomly selected from the larger group of consenting families in the classrooms or centres. Similarly, children in the control group were randomly selected from the larger group of centres that were serving the same population of families in the same neighbourhoods as the experimental group. Program leaders used the term “identity texts” to describe the literature created by the children and their educators and parents. The childrens identities were incorporated into the stories, increasing their pride in themselves and their families. The books served as mirrors in which the childrens identities were reflected. Reading these very meaningful books engaged the children and developed “affective bonds to literacy.” Moreover, the process was geared toward the acquisition of a strong sense of self-worth and pride in cultural identity. In terms of identity and self-esteem, one of the literacy specialists whose language and cultural heritage was English said: I think making their own books . .. to see themselves in the books and to talk about themselves . .. there was a lot of pride when the book was finished . .. When they got their final book, they shared it with the class and they just beamed. They were so excited to show their book and they felt so proud.

The process of self-authoring books aimed not only at enrichment of childrens outcomes but also at the strengthening of links between and among 103

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children , their families and educators. Classroom observations and parent interviews suggest that, in the process of transcribing these compositions in English and in the home language, the relationship between educators and family members was reframed, in that parental knowledge became a form of academic capital. There were also important academic outcomes. The Early Authors Program used a rigorous experimental design , and the childrens development was carefully assessed using standardized instruments. Without going into detail, the outcome measures on standardized instruments were examined , and these included the LAP - D ( Nehring et al. 1992 ) and the PLS - R ( Zimmerman et al. 2002). The participating children generally showed significant gains. Our qualitative data showed a number of positive impressions of the program in the educators and the parents. Yet, the program was not without its difficulties and limitations. For example, we noted possible researcher and new intervention effects. The presence of researchers made it impossible to determine, in the design that was used, how much of the effect was due to the inherent characteristics of the program and thus makes unclear the degree to which the results could be replicated in a normal classroom with a typically lower level of support. This problem of transition from research to successful widespread adop tion in educational settings is well known in the empirical literature. It is important to continue implementation and evaluation efforts to determine where improvements can be made and to understand why certain aspects of the program were more successful than others. The Early Authors Program provided early childhood educators with one starting point for tapping into families’ funds of knowledge and for acknowledging family and community cultural capital.

Parenting Circles My next project built on the understandings gained from the Early Authors Program. For a number of reasons, proactively working with parents to recognize and build on their own cultural capital, including their home lan guage, became my priority. The Early Authors Program data about parents in Miami - Dade were incomplete and not a proper basis for rigorous analysis. I decided that a Toronto project based on the same principles should be set up and specifically structured to allow for the collection and analysis of parent data. As well, we incorporated a feature of the Canadian Parenting Workshops, described above, and provided the parents with information about the education system. The aim of the Parenting Circles project was to focus clearly on affirming newcomer parents’ linguistic and cultural identities. In this way, rather than losing their cultural capital, newcomer families would be encouraged to tap into their own knowledge, resources 104

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and experiences to help their children succeed in school. The research team aimed to be systematically collecting qualitative data over the whole course of the program . Because it was small and with limited funding, we did not have a control group. The research team worked with a group of twenty parents in a six- week program that combined elements of Freirian dialogue, content from Canadian Parenting Workshops and an approach to transformative literacy, drawn from the Early Authors Program, that involved parents writing books for and about their children . In addition to the earlier goals of providing newcomer parents with relevant information about the local school system and how to access resources and networks of support in the community, Parenting Circles incorporated a creative book authoring element for parents to encourage home language maintenance and the acquisition of a strong sense of self - worth and pride in cultural identity. Both Parenting Circles and the Early Authors Program incorporated a transformative literacy model in which parents and children self -authored books or “ identity texts” about themselves, their families and their goals. Scanned photographs and word processing were used to create the books, which allowed parents to communicate and share their personal experiences. The process of involving newcomer students and their parents in self authoring books aimed not only at enrichment of childrens print motivation and increased vocabulary, but also at the strengthening of links between and among children and their families. The focus of the texts written by the parents was on affirming the linguistic and cultural identities of their children and covered such themes as This Is Who I Am , The Story of My Name, A Special Person in My Life and Hopes and Dreams for My Child. Prior to the start of the Parenting Circles sessions, the parents were asked to rate their goals and desires for their children for the next five years. Fluency in English, adaptation to the new environment and academic success were the top three goals identified among the participants, with adaptation and academic success seen as dependent on English fluency. By the end of the project, there was a heightened assertion and appreciation of the groups cultural heritage and recognition of the value of transmitting that heritage to their children . The following account of the findings is drawn from the excellent dissertation of my masters student Catalina Garcia ( 2008). The data collected by our team were set out and analyzed in some detail by Garcia, and I have drawn upon her organization and summary. The following interpretations, however, are my own. Our findings from the program were based on pre- and post - interviews and surveys. A key finding was that we had succeeded in securing a high 105

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degree of parental involvement. A great deal of communication and trust had evolved among the participants. The use of Spanish during the sessions helped reinforce the idea of the importance of home language maintenance. Jimena, one the participating parents, said: Well, what impacted me the most was that at the workshops I learned that it is true that the children should not forget their mother tongue, in our case, Spanish, at home. To keep on speaking our language, Spanish , at home, to maintain the mother tongue and to keep our roots.

Jimena and other parents had put these ideas into practice and began

encouraging their children to use Spanish at home. Books had constituted and facilitated new forms of communication . One participant , Marta, said:

Another thing that I really liked was learning to make the books as a medium for family communication . It was a wonderful experience, and I will never forget it. My son saw the books and was stimulated, motivated and happy about the things that I communicated to him . . . It is exactly the way to communicate with photos, designs, creativity, with written text, for our children , this type of written communica tion is what was really new for me. When Cintia, a mother in the Parenting Circles, was asked what she liked most about the group she said, “ la convivencia” ( collective creation , solidarity and bonding ), as the parents could share with each other and talk about subjects that interested them. The mothers jumped into the project wholeheartedly. By the end of the project, the results were that the parents strongly perceived themselves as experts in their childrens education . The empowerment of parents was crucially facilitated through the process of their becoming co - leaders of the sessions. The parents embraced the challenge, and, in the end, this was a principal reason for their continual participation. This could ultimately result in them starting their own groups and expanding their support networks. The parents realized the importance of moving beyond a small kin network to one that expanded into their childrens schools and their churches. The purpose of the group was to ensure that the parents were not only able to apply what they learned in the sessions, but to also create a support network and eventually administer their own Parenting Circles in their communities. When the parents were asked to comment on what suggestions they had for bettering the group, most said to add another session per week or increase the hours to meet . One such mother was Carolina, who wished that the sessions were longer so the parents would have more time to get better acquainted: 106

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I would really have liked it if when we finished, well, if we began at five in the evening, and we could take two hours or two and a half hours to do the work and another half an hour to socialize and get to know one another. Because when we finished, well, for example, I would go to the sessions with my cousin, and with her sister-in law and another friend. We already knew one another, so we could rapidly discuss certain issues, but to get to know other people, no, five minutes was not enough . So if at the end of each session there would have been a little more time for those who wanted to get to know others, they could do so. Those who didn’t want to, did not have to.

Carolina had family members and a friend who were part of the group, which added to the dynamic. However, their ability to meet new people with whom they could exchange ideas after the session was limited. The value of a family support network cannot be denied, but the addition of other people to consult is also an asset to them. This becomes increasingly difficult when the community they feel most attached to and are able to communicate with is not concentrated in one physical location . Jimena felt that unfortunately the Latino community was fragmented: When you get together with other parents you learn that when you are in contact with other people in your world, in the sense of a com mon language, roots, Hispanic people are totally different to other groups, like Arabic people, Canadians. Where I live in Mississauga I don’t see that the Hispanic community is very united, everyone is dispersed , for example, when you see a store where there are people from India, everyone is Indian , they all help one another. But I don’t see Latinos as a united group.

Jimena’s observations are accurate and as such make creating an expanded social network difficult, like in the case of Cintia, Carolina and Jimena, who travelled from Mississauga to attend the meetings. These types of support networks helped parents feel less alienated and allowed them to interact with other people who may have some insight into their current circumstances. Reducing their alienation is a crucial step not only to their successful settlement but also to their children’s positive adjustment to life in the new country. A group like this can connect other immigrant parents who want to encourage their children’s academic success and, with time, can make significant strides in uniting the entire community. The Parenting Circles program was designed in such a way that once the parents completed the sessions they would feel empowered and prepared to establish their own groups. When this idea was first introduced at the beginning of the meetings, the participants did not seem open to this 107

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possibility; however, as the weeks went by, the parents were eager and interested in beginning their own groups. By the final interview on week seven, all the parents indicated that they would continue with the sessions in their neighbourhoods. Juan said he was not yet ready and needed to clarify some information, but once this was achieved he would be prepared to run his own sessions. Nevertheless, some parents felt ready to begin groups immediately and had already spoken to others who might be interested. Cintia took an active role in speaking to other people who may benefit from the group: I had already spoken with my cousin about the possibility of getting help here in the school LINC site to form a group, because there are many people that are interested , there are many people here, many Latin - American mothers. And we would need help to get supplies or for somebody to come and give us some assistance. Cintia even began to think about the ways in which she could receive help from her Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada ( LINC ) program in order to begin her group with other Latina mothers who have children in various schools. It was inspiring to witness the parents transformation from being intimidated with the idea in the first few sessions to fully embracing the possibility of conducting their own group and helping other parents. Maria said this about starting her own group:

More than anything else what I need is to be informed. I study in college and there are a lot of people who speak Spanish, a lot of Colombians, a lot of Hispanics in general. For me, to start something there, no? With that group of women and also in the childrens schools.

The success of the Parenting Circles depends on a number of key elements that we have stressed since the beginning of this book. The over- arching goal was to facilitate the meaningful participation of Latino parents in their chil dren’s education. A space was created where the parents felt free to express themselves. All of the measures taken were with the goal of empowering the parents and honouring their cultural capital and life competence generally. Based upon this, trust was established. Many of the parents’ reports empha sized their feelings of trust and sense of everyone’s willingness to exchange ideas. Further, they viewed the authoring of the books for and about their children as the most poignant of the topics, acknowledging the implications these texts could have on their children’s language maintenance, self - identity and self-esteem. The focus on information about the school system and the sharing of personal experiences prepared participants for their new roles as important actors in their children’s education . This was also a way to incor108

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porate their funds of knowledge as a useful tool in their new support group. Finally, the parents embraced their roles as co- leaders of the sessions, which were vital for the group dynamic. This was crucial so that they would begin their own groups in their community. Absence of funding ultimately undermined the launch of new groups. Apart from the issue of continuation there are limitations to the conclusions that can be drawn . In particular, there was no control group, and thus inferences as to the causal efficacy of the program lack a solid basis in the evidence. Further, the parents were essentially volunteers who self-selected. Therefore, it is not possible to generalize about the prospects of a program such as this one, which was conducted with a non - randomly assigned group of parents. The Parenting Circles created books as an empowering tool, not only for the parents but for their children as well. We found that convivencia was important for the parents. Parents’ previous experiences were respectfully heard and they were encouraged to share their skills. This helped to recognize and make use of their human , social and cultural capital, resulting in academic and personal benefits. The encouragement given to continued use of the participants’ home language was key because it helped with identity and family cohesion and structure. My findings with the Parenting Circles program and the earlier studies can be considered in relation to several of the categories of developmental assets listed by Benson et al. ( 2012 ), discussed in Chapter Seven ( refer to figure 7 -1). The key developmental asset addressed in these studies is parental involvement in schooling ( asset 6 ). Early Authors, in particular, encouraged positive family communication (asset 2). School engagement (asset 22 ) and other internal factors that are part of the framework were also addressed. More importantly, I aimed in my interventions with families to demonstrate and encourage a number of the positive values (assets 26-31) highlighted by Benson et al. ( 2012 ). The concern for equality and justice (asset 27) is a substantial component within Freires and Cummins’ frameworks. The communications between parents and the interveners were based on honesty ( asset 29 ) and responsibility ( asset 30). The skills components of the interventions are resistance skills ( asset 35) and conflict resolution skills ( asset 36 ). Some of the main benefits of the interventions, which Cummins referred to as identity, overlap with personal power ( asset 37), self -esteem (asset 38 ) and a positive view of personal future ( asset 40) in the framework by Benson et al. My experiences as well as my findings confirm the usefulness of this framework. Another way of interpreting our findings is in terms of Moll’s funds of knowledge. At every point we were eliciting the parents’ ideas and having them state what they value. We were implementing the approach in terms of their writing and our celebration of the writing, and the creation of the 109

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books helped cement these ideals. Funds of knowledge, a term coined by Luis Moll (Gonzalez, Moll and Amanti 2005), refers to a person’s or a commun ity’s historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge.

Learning from Experience: Application to New Contexts and Future Interventions The character of an intervention is determined by its context . Although the content of each of the sessions can be outlined in detail so as to reduce the preparation time for the workshop facilitators, each program is customized and delivered in a particular context at a specific moment in time. When used again , the program could never be replicated exactly, nor should it be. Exact replication of the techniques and content of the program is not required, though fidelity to its principles certainly is. The effectiveness of the package does not depend on replicating fine details of procedure or content. Even if particular procedures are outlined in detail, it would be inappropriate to transfer them directly into different environments. This point about context has implications for all programs based on the assumption that parents benefit from developing networks and trusting relationships with other parents with similar backgrounds. From the start , my research projects have insisted on homogeneous language groups where parents can dialogue in their own language. When government policies or education institutions are not supportive of parents’ home language use, there is a danger that the program will stray from its principles and be reduced to lecturing to parents. One clear recommendation for newcomer-serving organizations, school districts and communities wishing to use these models is to begin with the translation of the curriculum and resource materials into the language in which the program will be delivered. In addition , it is essential that facilitators fluently speak the home language of the participants. Another factor that will contribute to the success of future parent group programs is for sponsors to clarify and confirm the availability of the resources needed for program delivery. For example, it is necessary to consider that it takes time for facilitators to set up and close down each meeting. Tasks such as contacting participants between sessions and arranging for guest speakers require investments of time as well. It is also important to make provisions for childcare for the children of the parents participating in the groups. The staff-child ratios need to be appropriate for the ages of the children. Transition time for parents to drop off, settle and pick up their children also must be planned for. The parent programs described above were designed to include research and evaluation components. During each phase of this work, my colleagues and I were guided by feedback obtained from both facilitators and partici pants to determine what participants learned and what gaps still needed to 110

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be addressed . The consistent use of pre- program and post -session informa tion from participants enables facilitators to respond to the priorities of each group. The Canadian Parenting Workshops published curriculum includes evaluation materials that can be used by facilitators and those hosting the workshops. Using external facilitators to conduct participant focus groups further strengthens the quality of the evaluations. Additional evaluation work is needed in relation to any specific objectives of sponsoring organizations in local contexts. For example, the program could be used and evaluated with transnational newcomer families that have experienced significant separation from their children or with families with less than full legal status. It could also be used with groups of fathers or groups of grandparents. Other applications might involve at- risk families and those with special needs such as families involved with child welfare agencies and parents of children with exceptional learning challenges. Although the programs have been developed for and piloted with groups of immigrant parents, it is likely that native - born parents would also be interested in such groups. Both the topics and the teaching methodologies appear to have broad appeal among all parents. What are the possibilities of setting a program based on the principles of the Early Authors Program within Canada ? While in theory this mayseem like a simple or straightforward proposition , a number of practical difficulties would have to be overcome. To date, this has not happened. Existing programs, especially those with mainstream credibility and “evidence-based support ” continue to dominate the field. Type I interventions are extensively marketed , and they appeal to proven results based on thousands of partici pants in their interventions. Despite the existence of evidence for successful outcomes of smaller programs such as the Early Authors Program, they are generally not well known and their evidence of success is not taken seriously. In general , school boards and provincial ministries seem attracted to internationally marked “celebrity programs,” which are apparently proven and claim widespread success. Throughout the book we have asked: What are the criteria of success? What is normal in children ? And what do parents have to offer? The difficulties of practical implementation we have just discussed show the crucial ramifications of these questions. Still, what we have called Type II or family-centred programs do have the potential to be used to benefit families in other settings and on a larger scale if practical matters can be dealt with. Recent work by Weiss and the Harvard Family Research Project ( 2010) includes a detailed analysis of scaling issues. That analysis makes it clear, in hindsight, why our projects, like Ada and Campoy s ( 2003) Authors in the Classroom project, did not continue or catch fire and spread into other communities. We have already mentioned some of the dimensions of this issue in Canada. To continue, designing and 111

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marketing materials and securing approval and favourable ratings from key agencies and institutions requires expertise. Researchers are not always business entrepreneurs. Marketing skills and administrative capacity and, above all, large budgets are needed if useful programs that benefit newcomers are going to move beyond small pilots led by researchers to be adopted as public policy and implemented on a larger scale. It is beyond the scope of this book to address strategies for scaling up what has been learned from research.

In Conclusion: Valuing Newcomer Parents and Children Millions of families have come to the immigrant - receiving countries, where many have achieved visible financial and social gains. However, indicators such as graduation from high school and placement in gifted education classes draw attention to the fact that newcomer children of certain backgrounds enjoy less educational success. Many of these childrens parents did not finish high school, a pattern known to show some persistence, but school success is not considered for a number of reasons. Parents must be on - side in the educational endeavour since they, more than educators, will be the ones to have a long-lasting influence in their childrens lives. In spite of policies mandating parent participation in schools and the best intentions of educators, many newcomer parents do not feel their views are valued by school personnel and are often unaware of how much they can contribute to their childrens education . Attempts to empower parents, to engage them in meaningful participation in their childrens schools, can do much to alleviate this problem. Parent participation models promoting equal opportunity have been largely ineffective. Too often these models are based on the assumption that it is the experts who should impart facts and the parents who should listen and alter their present practices. In contrast, the programs described above recognize the parents cultural, linguistic and social capital. The beneficial outcomes were all related to the key elements that facili tated the meaningful participation of parents in their children’s education . The incorporation of the children into the process was very important to the parents. The parents had the option of being reimbursed for childcare fees but most chose to bring their children to the sessions.

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Chapter Ten

EM POWER IS A VERB Putting These Ideas to Work Throughout this book the topics of immigration and immigrant families serve as a basis for raising a number of more general issues. The solutions to the real and perceived problems within immigrant families and between immigrants and their host countries call for an appreciation of differences in values. It cannot be assumed that the basics of psychology and child development that constitute common knowledge in immigrant - receiving countries are well known elsewhere and that the norms are well established and universally agreed upon . Because of the issues of values, I propose that interventions with im migrant families need to be reconsidered. While it is true that the families have universal needs and problems and that professional judgments about health issues need to be respected, the specific characteristics of the families have to be considered as well. The examples presented here include a great deal of specific data. They are intended to illustrate the detailed ways in which basic principles have been more or less successfully applied. At the same time, it is important to remember that the specifics of one case are not necessarily transferable to other situations. The goal here is to help bring about an increased appreciation of context and of approaches that empower families and honour their interests and values. It is impossible to put forward a recipe for successful professional practice with newcomers. Instead, I propose principles as the foundation for planning interventions with immigrants. Interventions must take account of the families’ interests, values and objectives. It is recognized that this bottom - up approach makes it difficult to document effects or prove the efficacy of interventions. It is a complex task to define what will count as evidence of a good outcome and devise ways to collect such evidence. Of course, outcomes have to be considered for the children as well as other family members. Interveners need to consider what newcomers want and say that they want for themselves and their children. Asking families what they want is a strategy for empowering them. If families are empowered, they are more likely to get what they want and what family members consider to be best for themselves. Empowered families are also of benefit to the whole society. Interventions that increase the well-being of immigrant families yield many advantages. Families that are empowered tend to be healthier and more productive members of the larger society. Promoting 113

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the empowerment of families represents a win -win approach. As our earlier demographic data make clear, pressing social issues cannot be addressed in the absence of measures to welcome and include immigrants as full citizens. The persons standing to benefit from professional interventions must have determinative input concerning the services they will receive. Families, in general, know what is best for themselves. This is not to deny that there are objective measures or constituents of successful outcomes. The prerequisites for material and social well - being are widely known by both professionals and families. There is certainly a place in assessment for hard data , and there is every reason for seeking objective measures such as rates of high school graduation, visits to hospital emergency rooms and convictions for criminal offences. While parents are often aware of the big picture as far as the life success of their children goes, parents are often unaware of how to go about improving the odds of achieving success. They share this uncertainty with professionals. Professionals often state that they are at a loss when working with newcomer families and feel unsure about how to make connections with them . In my many years working with immigrant families I have found that the education issues they raise are often well- known problems such as homework, child guidance and discipline, parent - teacher relationships, and the grading and reporting policies of schools. These are not issues that are unique to newcomers. The approaches advocated here as a foundation for professional relationships with newcomers are also relevant and applicable to non - immigrant families. Among immigrant families there is a great deal of heterogeneity. In immigrant - receiving countries school populations are a mixture of cultural backgrounds, religions, immigration status and worldviews. Responding to this diversity requires the creation of mechanisms for professionals, parents and other family authority figures to meet , collaborate and hear one another. Honouring the process of collaboration and consultation is an intrinsic component of an empowerment approach. Empowerment is not just an abstract concept. This book introduces ex amples of approaches that show respect for the wishes and values of families. The most crucial factor here is recognition of the strengths of families. This includes their implicit and explicit knowledge of the world, as well as their skills. The concepts of cultural capital and funds of knowledge are crucial elements of family strengths. Applying these concepts in practice involves assuming that the vast majority of families, most of the time, have what it takes, as opposed to being deficient and needing professionals to supply what is missing or bring them up to speed. This is not to ignore serious pathologies, like alcoholism or criminal behaviour. Many of the problems that profession als address need to be understood within the cultural context in which they 114

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arise and the solutions to these problems, if they exist, take into account the family’s values and objectives. Crucial elements of empowerment include cultural and ethnic identities derived from the use of home language and immersion in the cultures of families and their traditions. There has been a marked change in the field of immigration and adaptation studies over the last fifteen years. There is now a greater degree of preservation of ties to family members who have not immigrated. The issue of preservation of linguistic and cultural identities has come to the fore, and it is apparent that older models that spoke of assimilating into the mainstream society are no longer applicable. The research of Cummins and others has stressed the importance of retention of home

language and the children of immigrants becoming additively bilingual and bicultural, being able to function in both worlds. Programs for newcomers need to be carefully planned, efficiently administered and accurately documented and assessed. There are many different types of measures, both of process and product, qualitative and quantitative, subjective and objective, pre-determined versus bottom - up and emergent. There is no conflict between delivering programs that encourage parent em powerment and respect parents’ goals and impartial, objective assessments of program outcomes. Honouring parents’ wishes is not a vague feel -good approach to issues. Many parents themselves are quite aware of objective indicators, and it is a mistake to portray programs that acknowledge and address their wishes as inherently vague or lacking the possibility of rigorous assessment. The location of data and evidence is particularly relevant to issues of funding. The programs I call Type II, or parent -determined, all succeeded in varying degrees in obtaining funding based on evidence and measurable outcomes. It is beyond the scope of this book to detail the procedures and strategies for obtaining funding, but the importance of program quality, docu mentation and collection of measurement data has been stressed. Likewise, the issue of scaling, addressed in detail by Weiss ( 2010), is important but beyond the present scope. Carefully designed, high quality programs based on parental input are in a good position to scale up as needed and compete for the necessary financial support from funders. The central point is that intervention programs must honour the social and cultural contexts of the participants. Issues such as legal status and fam ily history have often been neglected. Governments of immigrant - receiving countries would be well advised to provide pathways whereby undocumented individuals and families who are long- established can normalize their legal status. Families with one or more undocumented members or members whose legal status is precarious are living with a great deal of stress, which is detrimental to their well - being. Because of the importance of context, inter115

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vention projects have to be tailored to specific situations. One implication of this is that simple replications are neither possible nor desirable. While this realization requires a departure from usual assumptions about research evidence, the goodness of fit of a program may undercut the ability to replicate it. At the same time, the principles enunciated ( e.g., respect for families and soliciting their input ) are replicable and crucial as constituents of effective programs. These meta -level principles are subject to a type of replication or corroboration once they are tailored to specific circumstances. Immigrant families show great diversity as to background. The demographic data confirm differences associated with gender, education , income, sexual orientation, country of origin and life experience. This book has focused on micro-level interventions that take account of heterogeneity and specific contexts. These are part of a larger picture of efforts to secure the well - being of newcomers. Families are the place for micro - level interven tions. We need to start at the bottom. It is especially important that helping professionals work with them in ways that empower families in their local contexts of school and community. In conclusion, I encourage all helping professionals in immigrant receiving countries to commit to and build on this foundation of empowering practices. Your work has the potential to initiate positive change in your community. By treating newcomers with respect and compassion and lending a hand when necessary, you will be contributing to the creation of a better world.

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mmigration is an important topic that continues to appear in news reports across Western countries. However, few reports examine what adjusting and integrating into a new country means for immigrant families. The traditional strategy employed by social workers, teachers and other social service practitioners is decidedly Euro- centric and treats immigrants as if they have little cultural or community - based means of integrating of their own . Judith K. Bernhard argues that immigrants have deep cultural, familial and communal resources to aid their integration and that these resources need to be tapped by social workers, teachers, counsel lors, settlement workers, early childhood educators and child and youth care workers alike. Providing several alternative, integrated , research - based programs that combine cultural resources, traditions and family dynamics, Stand Together or Fall Apart will help practitioners to better understand the struggles of immigrants and thus be better able to assist them as they adjust to life in a new country.

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udith K. Bernhard is a professor in the School of Early Childhood Education , Faculty of Community Services, Ryerson University.

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