Immigration, Diversity And Student Journeys To Higher Education Hardcover

Peter J. Guarnaccia

Immigration, Diversity and Student Journeys to Higher Education presents an in-depth understanding of how immigrant students at a major public research university balanced keeping their family cultures alive and learning U.S. culture to get to college. A revitalized anthropological understanding of acculturation provides the theoretical framework for the book. The text builds its analysis using extensive quotes from the 160 immigrant students who participated in the 21 focus groups that form the core of this study. The students' families come from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America, and reflect a wide diversity of experiences and insights into how these students successfully pursued higher education. A key theme of the book is the "immigrant bargain," where students repay their parents' hard work and migration sacrifices by excelling in school. A large majority of the parents made clear that a major motivation for immigrating was so their children could have better educational opportunities; these parents had the original dreams for their children. Immigration, Diversity and Student Journeys to Higher Education examines the similarities and differences across this diverse group of students, ending with a series of recommendations about how to improve acculturation research and how to facilitate immigrant students' journeys to educational success.

1433159910

9781433159916

English

Peter Lang Publishing Inc

08 Jan 2019

188

Peter J. Guarnaccia is Professor in the Department of Human Ecology and Investigator at the Institute for Health at Rutgers University. He is co-editor of A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship (2006).

Peter J. Guarnaccia's book is an enjoyable and thoughtful examination of how cultural capital plays a role in the triumphant educational stories of immigrants. It is rare to read reflections of successful immigrants effectively navigating the educational U.S. system, but Guarnaccia's book does exactly that. His book is a revelation of how culture anchors immigrants to persevere through educational challenges, from applying to college or being 'seen' as different in college. It touches on the intimate maintenance of cultural roots and how those roots embed values, routines and interpretation in everyday life that can become assets. His book opens a window into how culture imprints identity and meaning, weaving the scientific research evidence with the personal narratives and reflections of immigrant college students. At the same time, it reveals the author's personal journey to better understand how our heritage gives us meaning and a lens to construe interpretations of the world. It also is an insightful exploration of how immigrant families' dreams of social mobility get transferred into the DNA of their children. I very much enjoyed the descriptions of how the immigrant family clan supports educational aspirations, and his chapters offer perceptive views of how 'cultural resources and optimism' characterize immigrants, even in the face of adversity. Many will recognize themselves in these pages since it is a glorious collaboration of Guarnaccia's storytelling with the lived experience of immigrant students. From this book, we can learn much about why immigrants do so well, and what we might need to learn from them."-Margarita Alegria, Professor, Departments of Medicine & Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School and Chief, Disparities Research Unit, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital "Immigration, Diversity and Student Journeys to Higher Education offers a much needed and insightful account of the successful transition to university among immigrant students. The compelling analysis draws on the voices of students to highlight the powerful role of family, community, schools and the university context in shaping their paths to and experiences with higher education. College is now the ticket to upward mobility in the United States, and yet, we still know little about how the children of immigrants make this critical transition, along with the crucial identity and language shifts they encounter along the way. Peter J. Guarnaccia, an expert in immigrant cultural adaptation, has written a timely and important book."-Vivian Louie, Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College, Author of Compelled to Excel: Immigration, Education and Opportunity among Chinese Americans and Keeping the Immigrant Bargain: The Costs and Rewards of Success in America "This book, rich with intimate and insightful quotations and narratives from immigrant college students, unpacks the challenges that students from many different countries face, often with limited resources, in navigating multiple languages, cultural expectations and performances, and family and institutional demands. Written in accessible language, the concepts it unfolds-identity, language, culture, acculturation-are central to understanding and appreciating the complexities of the immigrant experience in higher education. A classic of its kind, the book offers a valuable theoretical, social, cultural and political contribution to the contemporary dialogues and diatribes around immigration, migration and the resilience of recent arrivals to the United States as they strive for success in American higher education."-Jean J. Schensul, Senior Scientist and Founding Director of the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, CT, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut, and Editor and Author of The Ethnographer's Toolkit