About this paper symposium

---

Panel information
Panel 17. Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Paper #1
Are all Latinos Illegal?: An Exploration of Children’s Awakening to Immigration Status
Author information	Role
Sarah A. Rendon Garcia, University of Connecticut, United States	Presenting author
Abstract
5.6 million (27%) of families in the U.S. are mixed-status immigrant families. In the United States, these are families in which individual family members have different types of immigration statuses (e.g., legal permanent residency, US citizenship, undocumented). Existing within a mixed-status family as a younger person brings its own cultural ecology, from navigating the legal ramifications of one’s own or a loved one's immigration status to coping with the impact of varying immigration status and their consequences on family system dynamics. The possible implications for balancing the context of living in a mixed-status family within the larger context of the dominant U.S. dominant culture calls for a deeper look into immigration socialization within these families. Despite a long line of research establishing the relation between parental immigration status and children’s developmental outcomes, there is a gap in our scholarly understanding and empirical documentation about how youth learn about their own or their parents’ undocumented status, and what their process of knowledge development looks like around this phenomenon. This study focuses on the salience of immigration status for children based on their exposure to the experience of immigration status, determined by their membership in a mixed-status immigrant family. To begin generating foundational knowledge about this, I interviewed 27 children across 19 mixed-status family units between the ages of 7 and 15 years old (Table 2.1). I used an innovative interview design to examine children’s knowledge of immigration status, including a children’s book reading, a video viewing, and a series of short narratives with questions. Through this study design, I explore the individual-level perceptual and cognitive processing factors influencing children in Latinx mixed-status families’ understanding of their and/or their family member’s undocumented status. The study explored children’s experiences with their families in addition to assessing the degree to which they understood undocumented status. The study design builds upon findings revealing children as young as three years old are aware of the threat of family separation due to the current presidential administration (Cervantes, Ulrich, & Matthews, 2018). The findings (Figure 2.3) suggest that children’s awareness of undocumented status before adolescence centers around threats to their caregiver–child relationship rather than the direct impacts of immigration status on the child’s own life outcomes. As children’s developmental age range increased, so too did their level of knowledge of migration, undocumented status issues, and their family members’ immigration status. Their displayed knowledge relied on travel-related indicators of difference and the threat of family separation. Given these findings, I propose a continuum of knowledge development among the children that aligns with their developmental age and suggest there is a gradual progression from no awareness to critical understanding. These findings provide a useful heuristic through which family members, practitioners, and researchers can gather information about a particular child in a mixed-status family to better support their ongoing meaning-making around the topic and overall well-being.

Paper #2
The Protective Role of Biculturalism in the Link Between Discrimination and Psychosocial Adjustment
Author information	Role
M. Dalal Safa, Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States	Presenting author
Michael R. Sladek, The University of Oklahoma, United States	Non-presenting author
Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Harvard Graduate School of Education, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Ethnic-racial discrimination is a common experience for U.S. immigrant and ethnic-racial minoritized youth (Umaña-Taylor, 2016). The detrimental effects of exposure to ethnic-racial discrimination on minoritized youth’s adjustment are well documented (e.g., academic engagement, self-esteem; Benner et al., 2018; Lee & Ahn, 2012). Thus, identifying developmental assets that support adolescents’ positive adjustment in the face of discrimination is important (Barbarin et al., 2020; Umaña-Taylor & Rivas-Drake, 2021). Integrating ethnic-racial and national identities (i.e., bicultural blendedness and harmony) and developing behavioral proficiency in responding to demands from these cultural systems (i.e., bicultural facility) are key developmental tasks for minoritized adolescents (Safa & Umaña-Taylor, 2021; Vedder & Phinney, 2013). Importantly, adolescents’ engagement in these tasks has been theorized to emerge, in part, as an adaptive response to derivatives of social stratification, including exposure to discrimination (García Coll et al., 1996). It follows, therefore, that bicultural facility, blendedness, and harmony may support adolescents’ positive adjustment in the face of discrimination. Indeed, emerging empirical work provides evidence for the buffering role of bicultural blendedness and harmony in the discrimination-adjustment link (Cheah et al., 2021, Saleem et al., 2018). This work, however, has relied on cross-sectional designs and has not examined the moderating role of bicultural facility. The current study addressed these gaps by longitudinally investigating multiple mechanisms of protection. Specifically, we examined whether bicultural facility, blendedness, and harmony buffered the negative association of ethnic-racial discrimination (Wave 1, W1) on psychosocial adjustment (Wave 4, W4). The sample included 145 ethnic-racial minoritized and immigrant youth (Mage = 14.1 years; SD = 0.34; 42.1% male; 83% at least one immigrant parent) who completed online surveys at the beginning (W1) and at the end of their 9th grade academic year (W4). Surveys assessed exposure to ethnic-racial discrimination (Fisher et al., 2000), academic engagement (Skinner et al., 2008), self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1979), and the extent to which adolescents perceived integration and overlap across their ethnic-racial and national identities (bicultural blendedness and harmony, respectively, Huynh et al., 2018), and facility navigating demands from these cultural systems (bicultural facility; Basilio et al., 2014). All measures demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α’s > .60). Gender, immigrant generation status, and ethnic-racial background were included as covariates. Results from multivariate path analyses revealed that bicultural facility and blendedness (but not harmony) moderated the association between W1 ethnic-racial discrimination and W4 academic engagement (Figure 1). Probing the simple slopes revealed that adolescents who more frequently experienced ethnic-racial discrimination demonstrated higher academic engagement in the presence of bicultural facility, particularly at high levels compared to low levels of bicultural facility. In the absence of bicultural facility, however, the expected negative association between ethnic-racial discrimination and academic engagement was evident (Figure 1, Figure 2a). Further, adolescents’ higher ethnic-racial discrimination was more strongly associated with lower academic engagement at high levels of bicultural blendedness compared to low levels of bicultural blendedness (Figure 2b). Findings will be discussed drawing from risk and resilience perspectives to elucidate the multiple mechanisms via which bicultural components may inform adolescents’ adjustment in the face of risk.

Paper #3
The Role of Family and School Ethnoracial Socialization on Adolescents’ Biculturalism Development
Author information	Role
Ariel Guicheng Tan, Harvard Graduate School of Education, United States	Presenting author
M. Dalal Safa, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, United States	Non-presenting author
Michael R. Sladek, The University of Oklahoma, United States	Non-presenting author
Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, Harvard Graduate School of Education, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Biculturalism is a multifaceted psychological construct that captures how individuals internalize and navigate their ethnic-racial and national identities, involving processes such as blending, harmonizing, and developing proficiency in navigating demands from these cultural systems (Basilio et al., 2014; Benet-Martínez & Haritatos, 2005). Biculturalism has important implications for the development of immigrant and ethnoracially minoritized youth (Safa & Umaña-Taylor, 2021). However, few studies have examined the process of developing biculturalism. Emerging work shows that adolescent biculturalism development is informed by opportunities to learn about their ethnoracial cultures (enculturation) within family (Safa et al., 2020, 2021) and school (Henandez et al., 2023) settings. These proximal contexts that facilitate enculturation may function as potential mechanisms for biculturalism development. Additionally, gender has emerged as an important social position factor informing youths’ ethnoracial socialization. Prior research has found differences in how boys and girls engage with family ethnoracial socialization messages, with findings attributed to parenting and cultural practices that are informed by traditional gender norms (Lambert et al., 2015; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2009); variability by gender in school ethnoracial socialization experiences has not been examined. To explore the development of biculturalism, the current study investigated how family and school ethnoracial socialization were associated with biculturalism development among bicultural youth in the U.S., and whether these associations were moderated by gender. Participants were 145 U.S. bicultural youth (Mage= 14.11, SDage= 0.34; 42.07% male; 57.93% female and another gender identity) attending high school in the Northeast U.S. In this longitudinal study, bicultural youth included youth of color, multiracial youth, or youth with at least one immigrant parent. Biculturalism was operationally defined as bicultural harmony, blendedness, and facility – measured with adapted versions of the Bicultural Identity Integration Scale – II (Huynh et al., 2018) and the Mexican American Bicultural Facility Scale (Basilio et al., 2014). Both measures have been used reliably with ethnoracially diverse samples. Family and school ethnoracial socialization were measured using the Familial Ethnic Socialization Measure (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2004) and the School Cultural Socialization subscale of a culturally sustaining teaching measure (Schachner et al., 2021), respectively. Controlling for baseline and demographic variables, a significant interaction between family ethnoracial socialization and gender on biculturalism emerged (Figures 1 and 2): family ethnic socialization was a significant positive predictor of bicultural harmony (β = 0.32, SE = 0.14, p = .02), bicultural blendedness (β = 0.37, SE = 0.14, p = .01), and bicultural facility (β = 0.52, SE = 0.13, p <. 01) for male-identifying students, but not for students identifying with other gender identities (p > .05). Ethnoracial socialization from the home environment may lead to greater abilities in blending ethnic-racial and national identities, a more harmonious view on bicultural identity, and greater facility in meeting bicultural demands, particularly for male-identifying students. School cultural socialization was not a significant predictor of biculturalism. Results support the link between family enculturation and bicultural facility that has emerged in prior work (Safa et al., 2020) and highlight the interactive nature of family ethnic socialization and gender on adolescents’ biculturalism development.

Paper #4
Chinese American Parents’ Bi-Cultural Socialization and their Adolescents’ Perceived Cultural Harmony Two Years Later
Author information	Role
Christa Schmidt, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States	Presenting author
Charissa S.L. Cheah, The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States	Non-presenting author
Abstract
Chinese American bicultural adolescents’ ability to perceive harmony between their two cultures and identities is an important developmental task and is associated with a host of positive adjustment outcomes (BII-Harmony: Bicultural Identity Integration Harmony; Huynh et al., 2018; Cheah et al., 2021; Schwartz et al., 2015; 2019). Past research demonstrates that parents’ teaching about their heritage culture is an important contributor to ethnic identity development in their adolescents (Hughes & Chen, 1997; Huguley et al., 2019). However, how Chinese and American cultural socialization informs the developmental trajectory of adolescents’ ability to harmonize their two cultures and identities over time is unknown (Schmidt et al., 2023). Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether Chinese American parents’ transmission of messages about both cultures at Wave 1 is associated with their adolescents’ perception of compatibility and congruency between their two cultures and identities two years later. Chinese American adolescents (N = 163; Mage = 13.8, SD = 2.34) reported their BII-Harmony at three waves (Huynh & Benet-Martinez, 2018). Their parents (Mage = 45.9, SD = 5.04; 80% first-generation immigrants) reported their engagement with Chinese and American cultural socialization (Juang et al., 2016) at Wave 1. Bivariate correlation results demonstrated that the only potential covariate related to adolescents’ BII-Harmony was socioeconomic status (SES), which was included in subsequent analyses. We first conducted one unconditional linear growth model for BII-Harmony, which demonstrated an adequate fit (Table 1). The intercept of BII-Harmony was significant and the mean slope was negative, suggesting a decrease in BII-Harmony across the waves, although it was not significant (Table 1). Second, we conducted one random intercept and slope latent growth curve model to evaluate the association between parents’ engagement in Chinese and American cultural socialization at Wave 1 and adolescents’ BII-Harmony across the three waves, with SES as a time-invariant covariate. This model was a strong fit with the current data (Table 1). Parent socialization of Chinese and American cultures was not significantly associated with the intercept (Table 1). SES was not associated with BII-Harmony at any wave. Parent socialization of both cultures were negatively associated with slope changes; however, only American socialization significantly predicted lower BII-Harmony across the three waves (Table 1). The American socialization scale used in the present study captured parents’ emphasis on speaking English and friendships with non-Asian Americans (Juang et al., 2016). This strong emphasis on American culture across all contexts–broader society, school, and at home, during a period of rapid identity development may increase feelings of incompatibility between bicultural adolescents’ heritage Chinese and American cultures and identity (Bamaca-Colbert et al., 2019). A high emphasis on American cultural socialization in first-generation Chinese immigrant parents’ homes may also add to the feelings of conflict (Huang & Lamb, 2014). Together, these findings highlight the need to study the complex contributions of both heritage and American cultural socialization to bicultural identity development.

⇦ Back to session