Week 2; Jonathan Hilton

Week 2: Immigrant Children

Immigration can cause increased stress for the family.

Working with immigrant children presents its fair share of challenges. Currently, I work with Cincinnati's Guatemalan population. There is always some new mountain to scale, whether it is helping them to become literate, dealing with legal issues, or working to teach them English. Suarez-Orozco discusses the exhaustion that can come over new immigrations: on page 73, she discusses "acculturation stress". Differences in verbal and body language, dress, and other cultural elements force parents to rely more on their children, leading to a reversal of the traditional guardian-child relationship. This causes increased stress for everyone. In the picture to the right, everyone appears tired and stressed out. This is typical of the immigrant experience.


There is a lot of joy to be had from working with immigrant children, however. Despite the stress, the challenges, and the frustrations, we can maintain hope in the face of adversity by knowing that it is possible to make a difference. The adult on the right has started a relationship with an immigrant child. In addition to helping the child learn to understand U.S. culture (by speaking English with her), this adult also serves as an added authority figure. One thing that would be interesting to research is whether or not the presence of such an additional authority figure helps combat some of the negative aspects of the guardian-child role reversal that so often takes place during immigration. Perhaps having someone from the dominant culture reinforce and bolster the child's parents would help maintain the traditional familial sense of order.

--Jonathan H.