Kids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families

Chapter 1: Children, Family, and Community

1 I Luis is eleven years old.1 He is soft spoken, with warm brown eyes partially hidden by long, thick hair he shyly retreats behind from time to time. Luis is the eldest of Ana and Felipe’s three US-born sons; both parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico. Felipe works in a clothing factory for an hourly wage as the family’s sole breadwinner; Ana hasn’t worked since her youngest son was born two years ago. Both parents have had limited employment options in part because of their unauthorized residency status, but also because they, like many of their contemporaries, cannot speak, read, or write proficiently in English. The focus of this family is not the toddler tugging at Luis’s pant leg, angling for his big brother’s attention. Luis’s seven-year-old brother, Julio, is severely epileptic . His condition was initially misdiagnosed when he was an infant, resulting in two untreated, grand mal seizures that left him so brain damaged that he will never be able to speak. So Luis speaks for Julio—and for their parents—when they go to the many doctor appointments that Julio needs. Luis, a straight-A student, routinely misses school or forgoes completing his homework to help his parents communicate with English-speaking staff at the emergency room, at scheduled doctor visits, and at Julio’s rehabilitation services, for which Luis helped his parents complete the required paperwork. As the primary English speaker in his immigrant household, Luis uses his language proficiency, familiarity with US cultural norms, and ability to connect with content via various media formats to help his family access available community resources. Luis regularly makes phone calls and searches for local news and information in community newspapers and online, sometimes at his parents ’ request and sometimes on his own initiative. He presents his findings to his parents so that together they can make decisions about locating and securing goods and services they need. c h a p t e r 1 CHILDREN, FAMILY, AND COMMUNITY 2 Kids in the Middle By performing these tasks, Luis is a crucial link between his Spanish-speaking parents and their English-speaking environments. He is hardly unique. While no representative data specifically document how many children assist their parents as he does, 61 percent of children of immigrants in the United States have at least one parent who has difficulty speaking English. Among children with a parent from Central America, that proportion rises to 68 percent, and for children with a Mexican-born parent, to 82 percent (Urban Institute 2009). Furthermore, the odds of children of immigrants having at least one parent with limited English proficiency have risen steadily, from 49 percent in 1990, to 55 percent in 2000 (Johnson et al. 2005), and to 61 percent today (Urban Institute 2009). These trends suggest that for children of immigrants—and particularly for those of Mexican or Central American origin—having parents who need help navigating community interactions may be the norm, rather than the exception. Bringing Children’s Contributions into Focus While this book focuses on children of Latino immigrants, children like Luis are not unique to a single immigrant group, to a particular receiving community or country, or to contemporary migration flows. Half a century ago, Ephraim Kishon (1967) observed that immigrant mothers in Israel learn their “mother tongue” (i.e., Hebrew) from their children.2 Biographical accounts by US-raised children of Italian and Jewish immigrants describe these forms of family assistance as a normal aspect of their childhoods in the early twentieth century.3 Children of Holocaust survivors interpreted Yiddish and English for their parents on the streets of New York and Toronto (Epstein 1979; Fass 2007). And now, in the post-1965 immigration era, children of immigrants from Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Southeast Asia help their families navigate interactions in their adopted communities.4 Children’s assistance is often an important feature of immigrant family life, but their contributions have generally been relegated to footnotes or passing comments—at least, until recently. There is burgeoning interest in children of immigrants’ roles and responsibilities among researchers in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe.5 To date, most have explored how children facilitate their parents’ interactions in schools and, secondarily, how they contribute to family-owned businesses (Buriel and De Ment 1998; Chao 2006; Orellana 2009; Orellana, Dorner, and Pulido 2003; Park 2001; Song 1999; Tse 1996; Abel Valenzuela 1999...