Investigating Latinx Caregiver Preparation for Immigration Socialization in Mixed-Status Families

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在哈佛大学教育研究生院的卡罗拉·苏亚雷斯-奥罗斯科博士的赞助下，这项博士后奖学金资助了一位早期的职业科学家，他研究了美国混合身份移民家庭的移民社会化做法。尽管7%的美国儿童与未经授权的移民父母住在一起，但研究人员和从业者都对这些孩子及其家庭如何处理“非法”现象知之甚少。现有的研究强调了外部信息在家庭沟通中的作用，比如学校信息和媒体信息。关于种族社会化的文献表明，照顾者与孩子沟通如何应对此类信息的方法可能会对青少年的发展起到抑制或保护作用。家庭分离和其他与移民相关的威胁可能会使照顾者提供安全和适合发展的意义创造途径的能力复杂化，然而，这可能会通过缺乏归属感、自我概念或安全感影响儿童在学校的学习。拟议研究的重点是揭示家庭层面的社会化过程，即移民社会化，以更好地理解移民身份与儿童发展之间的关联所涉及的家庭机制。最终，需要以适合发展的方式提供与讨论移民和法律地位问题有关的照顾者支持。关于种族和族裔的家庭层面的社会化进程对移民和非移民儿童同样重要，因为社会、社区、学校和家庭的强烈归属感预示着学业成就和健康结果的成功。对于父母来说，驾驭移民政策可能在认知上具有挑战性，而且由于有责任保护和教育他们的孩子，移民政策可能会变得更加复杂。为了了解当前美国与移民政策相关的社会政治力量如何影响儿童和成年人作为结果的自我概念的机制，需要进行基础研究，以了解与移民相关的修辞如何通过照顾者/父母过程影响儿童的学习，以及如何干预以支持这些儿童。本项目的目标是开始建立与无证身份法律概念相关的移民社会化的基础知识。本研究以混合身份移民家庭的照顾者/父母为视角，采用两阶段混合研究方法，重点研究成人移民社会化准备的过程。第一阶段将包括对拉丁裔混合身份家庭中的照顾者进行半结构化访谈。因此，这些定性的结果将被用于调整现有的知识建设和互动的ERS讲习班系列，采用循序渐进的学习，关注照顾者的情感关切，并在第二阶段提供口头鼓励的替代社会模式，将实施经调整的内容，并收集一套措施，以获取照顾者/父母的技能、动机、信心和移民威胁，以测试有系统的准备工作的有效性，以提供干预措施，为拉丁裔混血移民家庭提供移民社会化信息。研究结果将促进有关移民特定家庭社会化的科学知识，并研究照料者-儿童移民社会化准备对父母和照顾者结果的潜在调节作用。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Carola Suarez-Orozco at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the immigration socialization practices of mixed-status immigrant families in the U.S. While 7 percent of U.S. children live with an unauthorized immigrant parent, researchers and practitioners alike have little insight into how these children and their families process the phenomenon of “illegality.” Existing research highlights the role of external messages in the family’s communication practices, like school and media messages. The literature on ethnic-racial socialization suggests caregiver approaches to communicating with their children about how to cope with such messages can play an inhibiting or protective role in youths’ development. Family separation and other immigration-related threats may complicate caregivers’ ability to provide a safe and developmentally appropriate avenue for meaning-making, which can affect children’s learning in school via a low sense of belonging, self-concept, or safety, however. The focus of the proposed study is to unpack family-level socialization processes, referred to as immigration socialization, to better understand the familial mechanisms involved in the association between immigration status and child development. Ultimately, providing caregiver support related to discussing topics of immigration and legal status in a developmentally appropriate way is needed. Family-level socialization processes about race and ethnicity matter for immigrant and non-immigrant children alike because a strong sense of belonging in society, communities, school, and the home predicts success in academic achievement and health outcomes. For parents, navigating immigration policy may be cognitively challenging and further complicated by the responsibility to protect and educate their children. To understand the ways current U.S. sociopolitical forces related to immigration policy affect the mechanism of self-concept as an outcome in children and adults, basic research is needed to understand how immigration-related rhetoric shapes children’s learning through caregiver/parental processes as well as how to intervene to support these children.The goal of this project is to begin establishing this foundational knowledge around immigration socialization related to the legal concept of undocumented status. This research study project consists of a two-phase mixed-methods approach from the lens of caregivers/parents in mixed-status immigrant families and focuses on these adults’ process of immigration socialization preparation. Phase 1 will consist of semi-structured interviews with caregivers in Latinx mixed-status families. Those qualitative findings will consequently be used to adapt an existing knowledge-building and interactive ERS workshop series using stepwise learning, attention to affective concerns of caregivers, and providing vicarious social models with verbal encouragement In Phase 2, the adapted content will be implemented, and a set of measures will be gathered to capture caregiver/parent skills, motivation, confidence, and immigration-threat to test the efficacy of structured preparation for the delivery of an intervention providing immigration socialization messages for Latinx mixed-status immigrant families. Findings will advance scientific knowledge on immigration-specific family socialization and study the potential moderating role of caregiver-child immigration socialization preparation on parental and caregiver outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.