A study of the influence of political, school, and family contexts on the relationship between immigration status and immigrant generation status and educational outcomes among low-income urban adolescents

The increased presence and diversity of immigrant children in the nation\u27s public schools is a pressing educational challenge. Questions about the contextual and psychological factors that contribute to immigrant children\u27s educational experiences and academic pathways abound. Using Spencer\u27s (1995, 2006) Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST), this study examined the intersections between immigrant identity (i.e., immigration status and immigrant generation status), context, and coping among a racially/ethnically diverse sample of low-income urban adolescents (n = 872). The context variables focused on participants\u27 perceptions of their political, school, and family contexts. Participants\u27 educational expectations, absenteeism, and achievement-oriented values constituted the study\u27s outcome variables. Independent samples t-tests and analyses of variance (ANOVAs) yielded significant differences on the context and outcome variables by immigration status and immigrant generation status. The findings lend limited support to Ogbu\u27s (1991, 1993, 2003) cultural ecological hypothesis as well as Kao and Tienda\u27s (1995) immigrant optimism hypothesis. Using stepwise regression, the study found that participants\u27 perceived context mediated the relationship between their immigrant identity and educational outcomes. Specifically, participants\u27 perceived parental educational expectations explained the relationship between immigration status and absenteeism across Black, Latino/Hispanic, and Bi/Multiracial students. Similarly, the study found that among Bi/Multiracial and Latino students, perceived parental educational expectations explained the relationship between immigrant generation status and educational expectations. Finally, among Asian immigrants, the study found that anger about social injustice explained the relationship between immigrant generation status and educational expectations. The study\u27s scientific and educational implications along with its conclusions are discussed