This thesis considers the education of children of immigrants in Finland, focusing on attainment and transitions around the age of 16. It is the first detailed representative study on the topic in Finland. Compared to international research it is amongst the ones to most fully explore the different aspects of education around this age. For the most part, it is limited to studying structural explanations for differences between students and ethnic groups. The majority of the analyses in the thesis are done using register data. Statistical modelling of this data is done using multivariate regression analyses. The results are supplemented with evidence from interviews with both majority students and children of immigrants. With regards to school achievement at the end of comprehensive school, many immigrant-origin groups are seen to have lower average grades than the majority. However, this is explained by lower parental resources. After controlling for parental resources, very few disadvantages remain. On the other hand, the gender gap evident amongst the majority is not found amongst many immigrant-origin groups. Looking at continuation to upper secondary education compared to dropping out, most children of immigrants are seen to have a higher probability of dropping out than the majority. This is explained by their lower school achievement and higher parental non-employment. Nevertheless, the difference between children of immigrants and the majority remains evident at the very low end of the achievement scale. Considering the choice of upper secondary school type, children of immigrants can be seen to be more likely than the majority to continue to vocational school. Yet, after controlling for prior school achievement and parental resources, almost all immigrant-origin groups are more likely than the majority to continue to general rather than vocational school. Interviews suggest that when considering their school choices, majority students tend to be driven by their interests and see their decision making as being independent of others. On the other hand, children of immigrants tend to have more specific future plans and to take the wishes of their parents more into consideration.

A master dissertation is devoted to the comparison of Russian second-generation migrants in two European capitals: Prague and Paris. It analyses ethnical identity of the children of Russian immigrants, existence of transnational ties with the homeland of their parents as well as their integration patterns. The study is based on in-depth interviews with the Russian second generation adolescents and their parents. The analytical part is preceded by a review of the main theoretical concepts used in the study with the focus on the existing theories of migrants' integration in general and second-generation integration in particular. Despite the fact that the results of the study can be generalised neither to the entire Europe, nor to the whole Czech Republic or France, the author tries to outline the main similarities and dissimilarities between the populations of The Russian secondgeneration immigrants in two European capitals as well as between two generations of Russian migrants and brings information about the Russian "new second generation" in general that can be used for further researches or policy-making.

This multi-sited ethnographic case study examines how transnationalism shapes the everyday lives of young immigrant children, particularly their literacies, identities, and learning. This study involved three second-generation Korean immigrant children whose lives encompass multiple languages, cultures, and countries through close connections with their parental homelands. Informed by a transnationalism framework and sociocultural perspective on literacy, I focused on three specific questions: How do second-generation immigrant children engage with language and literacy in and across various spaces? What transnational funds of knowledge do they build as they move across contexts? How do they position themselves and represent their identities? I employed a multi-sited ethnographic stance and collected data for one year in two locations: North Carolina, United States, and Seoul, South Korea. The data collected include participant observations, fieldnotes, parent questionnaires and interviews, child-centered interview activities, artifacts, documents, photographs, and a reflective journal. Findings from the research indicated that second-generation immigrant children play crucial roles in building, maintaining, and extending transnational networks. As these children moved across geographical boundaries, they flexibly drew on multiple languages, linguistic features, and modes. As active agents, they engaged in the circulation of care by circulating love, support, and educational resources with family members across national borders. The children also mobilized their transnational funds of knowledge beyond local-global contexts through playful engagements that I refer to as transcultural play. Finally, the children presented complex and evolving transnational ways of belonging, which demonstrated that active participation in transnational practices does not necessarily lead to strong identification with the parents’ home culture. This study provides a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of young immigrant children living in a transnational and transcultural world and challenges previous claims that second-generation immigrants lose meaningful connections with their parental homelands. By demonstrating the flexibility and mobility of young immigrant children’s literacies, identities, and learning, I provide theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical insights that are essential for researchers and educators interested in cultivating a transnational curriculum and honoring young immigrant children’s mobile experiences.

Thesis advisor: María Estela Brisk / Linguistic assimilation has been historically regarded as a cornerstone for nationalistic sentiments in the United States. Schools have been utilized as influential filtering sites where non-English languages are marginalized, and then assimilated into the dominant American English ways of languaging (Crawford, 1992; Flores, 2014; Heath, 1976; Nieto, 1999; Wiley & García, 2016). Drawing on theories of language policy (Spolsky, 2004) and governmentality (Foucault, 1991), this dissertation examined the links between family language policies and educational language policies at two public elementary schools in the state of Massachusetts during its final year of enforcing an English-only educational policy (Chapter 71A of Massachusetts General Laws). The participants were four fourth grade children, four parents, and eight school staff at two public elementary schools in two different districts (one urban and one suburban). The families spoke Cape Verdean Creole, Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish as their heritage languages. The study was designed as a qualitative multiple case study to conduct a multi-sited analysis of language policy. The data for the case studies were collected through surveys of parents, language logs filled by the children, interviews with the children, the parents, and the school staff, as well as weeklong school observations of each child. The units of analysis were family and school as two main language policy contexts the children regularly navigated. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The findings indicated that although the families and the schools seemed to appreciate bilingualism, they were still strongly influenced by the historical monoglossic ideologies of the society that convinced them to eventually conform to English in the name of ensuring success for the children. These ideologies were communicated between schools and families as “unspoken dialogues” through children who navigated language policies in both contexts. The findings highlight implications for teacher preparation, curriculum development, language policy research on schools and families, and educational language policies that impact children of immigrants. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This dissertation explores the perspectives of culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners on school conditions that enable them to share their heritage languages and cultures, as well as the ways that these learners propose that their heritage languages and cultures could be more recognized in an English-only middle school setting. This study focused specifically on the role that culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners perceived that they played in the process of their own social empowerment, a role that could be achieved through the development of their voices by becoming critically involved in creating spaces for their heritage languages and cultures in English-only settings. In this study, student voice is the means for the culturally and linguistically diverse and English learners' voices to emerge: the voices that are frequently oppressed because of the lack of power. This framework provides guidance to integrate the excluded learners' voices in a school milieu that habitually muffles these voices. Listening to the bicultural and bilingual voices is important but not sufficient to challenge the power structure of U.S. schools. In this study, culturally and linguistically diverse learners and English learners conceptualized ways that their heritage languages and cultures could be (more) recognized in their school settings. The voices of the students are important; they should be respected and valued. Hearing the students in this study reminds us and validates the assertion that students from diverse languages and cultures are not monolith. They have different and unique experiences and this study gave voice to some of those. Leaders from state level, district level, and school level could open the doors for students to share their experiences in the schools; in the case of this study, to learn from these students what a school milieu that authentically recognizes their cultures and languages is. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The feminization of Mexican migration to the United States is increasing, and more mothers who migrate leave their children behind for long periods to be cared for by grandparents or relatives in Mexico. Women also form new families when they arrive in the United States, but continue to "care" for the children who stayed in Mexico. We know little about how transnational familial ties across the U.S. -Mexico border influence the educational trajectories of children who stay behind, are born here and are brought over from Mexico. This study asks how Mexican maternal migration has influenced care arrangements and education trajectories of the children in Mexico, comparing these to their siblings who were brought over to America or who were born in the United States. In this dissertation I address how U.S. bound Mexican maternal migration shapes and influences children and youth in both sides of the border. These families, or what refer to "transnational care constellations" include the following types of members: New York based undocumented mothers; the children they brought to the U.S. (also undocumented); their U.S. born offspring (U.S. citizens); children they have left behind in Mexico; and children's caregivers in Mexico. Drawing on ethnographic method I examine transnational caregiving practices among women with children in New York and Mexico. After recruiting twenty families to participate in my study I established three levels of engagement with participants. Eight transnational care constellations constituted the center of my qualitative research. I spent time with them in Mexico and in New York and tracked half of them for over three years. The second level of engagement happened with the other twelve families who I interviewed and observed in New York City, but visited less times in Mexico. Finally, participants who belonged to the third level of engagement were forty mothers in New York City, fathers, caregivers and over sixty children and youth in Mexico who were not matched. In addition I surveyed over 200 children between the ages of seven and sixteen in three schools in Puebla to assess the impacts of maternal remittance on school achievement. Specifically, I compare the educational experiences and social trajectories of three groups of children: the ones left in Mexico, the undocumented children and youth brought to the U.S., and those born in the U.S. The ethnographic core of my dissertation work tracked twenty transnational families who are split between Mexico and the U.S over a period of 18 months. I have traveled back and forth between different states in Mexico and New York in order to capture the dynamism of communities who are "here and there." The children and youth in what I refer to as "care constellation" share the same biological mother who has migrated to New York City, but their lives differ dramatically in terms of academic achievement and familial support.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how parental beliefs, practices, and values of Korean immigrant parents regarding mathematics education in the United States are adjusted from the perspective of ecology of human development. This research further explored how participants’ cultural identities are affected by acculturation process. In addition, the researcher examined the transformations of parents’ perspectives on mathematics learning and achievement as they integrate into the dominant culture. The study used mixed methods to obtain information about the research participants’ experience as immigrant parents and interrelationships with their second-generation children regarding mathematics learning and achievement. A sample of Korean American parents (n = 44), whose children were currently enrolled in a mathematics course at the time or had taken at least one mathematics course within the past 3 to 5 years in middle or high school, participated in a quantitative survey; a subsample of immigrant parents (n = 10) participated in semi-structured interviews. The study utilized the Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (SL-ASIA) and the Attitudes Toward Mathematics Inventory (ATMI). The results of the study indicated that even though Korean American parents shared the same nonnormative transition, they developed diverse intrinsic values and acculturation styles. Further, the parents’ perspectives on their children’s mathematical learning and achievement were influenced by traditional culture, dominant culture, and the interaction of both. The study also revealed that Korean immigrant parents used other Asian American students’ mathematical performance and learning as a frame of reference for their own children’s mathematical performance and learning; in addition, parents’ participation in children’s mathematics at home differed by acculturation levels. The main reason for the parents’ active support of and engagement in mathematics was that mathematics was the only subject which these immigrant parents adequately understood, and their aspiration for higher mathematics education was due to both immigrant optimism and pessimism. After moving to a different country, Korean parents’ abilities to perceive, conceptualize, and interact develop at different levels in new complex environments, where values, customs, and socioeconomic status contrast with those they had developed previously. These changes in intrafamilial processes and extrafamilial situations affected the development of the Korean immigrant parents’ cultural identity and reciprocal interactions with their second-generation children.

Three questions are explored in this dissertation. The first is whether the executive functions of Head Start participants are improved in comparison to those of children who did not attend center-based care before attending kindergarten. By matching and comparing the outcomes of a nationally representative cohort of kindergarten children (ECLS-K:2011) grouped by the type of childcare they received in the year preceding school entry, I find that Head Start participants exhibit slightly higher cognitive flexibility scores (as well as reading and math outcomes) in comparison to highly similar children who did not experience center-based care before starting school. Children who participated in Head Start demonstrate working memory skills that are not significantly different from those of closely-matched children who experienced no center-based care, but their skills in this area are slightly weaker than those of similar children who attended school-based public pre-k or other center-based care. The second question is how math content level during kindergarten affects children with different early care experiences, with focus on Head Start participants. The use of piece-wise linear growth curves to analyze children’s development in working memory, cognitive flexibility, reading and math reveals that advanced math content in kindergarten does have a positive relationship with math and reading achievement for Head Start participants, but these students do not gain as much on average from this instructional approach as more advantaged groups do. More basic math content, such as counting has a negative association with growth in math for more advantaged groups of children. Finally, any increases in kindergarten growth rates resulting from math content do not appear to persist through first and second grades. The third question asks whether there are significant differences in the trajectories of Head Start participants according to parent nativity. In analysis using piece-wise linear growth curve models to analyze Head Start (HS) participants’ development in working memory, cognitive flexibility, reading and math, results indicate that HS participants with immigrant parents exhibit an additional surge in EF development in the period between the spring of kindergarten and the spring of second grade, later than the average kindergarten increase for all HS participants. Additionally, HS participants with immigrant parents exhibit slightly higher average growth rates in reading during kindergarten when compared to HS participants with non-immigrant parents.

Latinos are the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority group in the United States. Academically, they are significantly trailing their non-Latino peers in graduation and overall educational attainment. Among many socioeconomic factors, parent engagement has been identified as being a defining indicator of student success. Reflective of racial and class disparities, this study explored with the use of critical race and intersectionality theory, that low Latino parent engagement is a result of the historical devaluing and omission of Latino culture, history and language from formal academic settings, and compounding social factors that make engagement complex for Latino immigrants in America today. In search of programmatic designs that better engage Latino families, this study explored a culturally specific program in San Francisco and its impact on engaging Latino immigrant parents. Using ethnographic methodologies, this study found via direct observation, a parent focus group, nine parent interviews and seven school personnel interviews that culturally specific programs can successful build relationships, create inclusive spaces, counter ideas of deficit thinking, interrupt systems of oppression, and strengthen community engagement. Implications of this study on social work education, practice, and policy will be discussed.

This dissertation is a study on Mexican-American families focusing on undocumented parents with U.S. born children. I argue that these families represent the most contemporary wave of migrants to enter the United States without documentation since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Research on social inequality situates transmission processes between parents and children, I show how undocumented status can be transmitted and experienced through the creation of a particular social context that encapsulates entire families, including U.S. born children. States, which adopt a legal and institutional framework, aimed at restricting immigrant rights present social and cultural challenges for these parent’s, and their children’s integration experiences. I examine how a process of racialization tied to immigration status translates to what it means to be Mexican American. I observe the ways that social support and intra-group relations across Mexican-American communities are weakened because of the increasing stigmatizing element that is undocumented status. By qualitatively capturing families’ experiences across North Carolina and New York, I highlight the meaning and consequences of legal status and detail how it is hindering this group’s progression overall. How families experience undocumented status varies across the individual, community and state levels. Families are learning to adapt to enforcement measures that merely serve to sustain a durable form of inequality that I argue is creating a new Mexican-American experience.