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

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。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事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在哈佛大学教育研究生院Carola Suarez-Orozco博士的赞助下，该博士后奖学金奖支持一位早期职业科学家调查美国混合移民家庭的移民社会化实践。尽管7%的美国儿童与非法移民父母生活在一起，但研究人员和从业人员都对这些儿童及其家庭如何处理“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实践中的作用，比如学校和媒体信息。关于种族-种族社会化的文献表明，照顾者与孩子沟通如何处理这些信息的方法可以在青少年的发展中发挥抑制或保护作用。然而，家庭分离和其他与移民有关的威胁可能会使照顾者提供安全和与发展相适应的意义创造途径的能力复杂化，这可能会通过归属感、自我概念或安全感低而影响儿童在学校的学习。本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系所涉及的家庭机制。最终，需要以适合发展的方式提供与讨论移民和法律地位相关的护理人员支持。关于种族和民族的家庭层面的社会化过程对移民和非移民儿童都很重要，因为对社会、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，而保护和教育孩子的责任则使其变得更加复杂。为了理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人自我概念的形成机制，需要进行基础研究，以了解移民相关的修辞如何通过照顾者/父母的过程影响儿童的学习，以及如何干预以支持这些儿童。该项目的目标是开始建立与无证身份的法律概念有关的移民社会化的基础知识。本研究项目采用两阶段混合方法，从混合移民家庭的照顾者/父母的角度出发，关注这些成年人的移民社会化准备过程。第一阶段将包括对拉丁裔混血家庭的护理人员进行半结构化访谈。因此，这些定性研究结果将用于调整现有的知识建设和互动式ERS研讨会系列，使用逐步学习，关注照顾者的情感问题，并提供口头鼓励的替代社会模式。在第二阶段，将实施调整后的内容，并收集一套措施来捕捉照顾者/父母的技能，动机，信心，和移民威胁，以测试为拉丁混血移民家庭提供移民社会化信息的干预措施提供结构化准备的有效性。研究结果将促进对移民特定家庭社会化的科学认识，并研究照顾者-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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.