Week 4- Dominique Lawson- Psychosocial Experience of Immigration

While immigration is a chance at a better life sometimes, it comes with developmental and socialization issues in most cases. The most obvious way that immigrants are typically affected is through the language barrier. This barrier is not only in verbal communication but in nonverbal as well. As a country, our way of socializing the immigrants is through education. "In almost every culture, educational systems are strong socializing agents and there is an intimate link between culture and education across many areas: language, school systems, parental and familial values, teaching styles and teacher-student relationships, different ways of learning, attitudes and appraisals of students" (Vaughn 166). It is said that school is the reflection of what a culture believes is important to learn because it "mirrors the culture's view on intelligence" (p. 166). In our schools we teach language. If they do not understand the language it is hard to learn the other topics of study. For most immigrant children it is hard to adjust to the new educational systems. Almost all of the children in Igoa's novel needed friendship to get them through the years. Cindy expresses the happiness at being paired with another Chinese student in the US because at first she "didn't understand anything at all" (Igoa 87). In cases where they could not make friends, they reached out to friends from back home because of the communication barrier (87). Most children have emotions related to leaving the country. Some expressed sadness at leaving their friends, others express the joy of leaving war trodden countries. But while leaving the country may have been in the best interest, it comes with psychosocial costs.
Many families go through a role reversal. Because the child is receives educational support, they are typically more cultured than the parents. In instances like this, the child is often seen translating for the parents in business and medical situations. The family has to work together to help each other out more than a typical American family would.
There is also the experience of being different whether it is by skin color, the language spoken, or cultural differences. Children experience it at school and parents experience it at work. "I was afraid to say anything. I was afraid people would make fun and laugh at me because of my feeling different from others. I kept quiet" (Igoa 78). Most immigrant children go through this at some point. It is important that the families work together to talk out the problems and the emotions, but in many cases this does not happen. Immigration often causes people to change the way the normally act. For the immigrants it is adjusting to a new culture, for the host country, it is learning to communicate and make the immigrant feel welcome.