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chapter 2 Adolescents’ Families, Schools, and Communities: Shaping Political Engagement in Young Adulthood During adolescence in America, an individual’s social world widens greatly. As a child, his or her world and identity development were centered in the family and the home. During adolescence, however, the individual begins to branch out, making connections with friends and other community members beyond the fold of the home. The world of the adolescent expands largely through the school—through relationships with peers, teachers , and mentors and the social networks that shape the educational experience . This is not to say that families and communities are no longer important , but rather that schools are uniquely situated to have a major impact on the development of adolescents—including their political development. Adolescence is a pivotal period for developing a political identity and becoming politically engaged, and adolescent political development often affects early adult political behavior (Atkins and Hart 2003; Callahan, Muller, and Schiller 2008; Frisco, Muller, and Dodson 2004; Glanville 1999). In fact, adolescents and young adults have led the charge in several recent movements for political and social change, just as they have at other points in history (Jennings, Stoker, and Bowers 2009). The youth vote mobilized in response to Barack Obama’s campaign in the 2008 election (Kirby and Kawashima-Ginsberg 2009), as well as around the Iraq War in 2004 (López, Kirby, and Sagoff 2005). And perhaps most central to our thesis, the potential political importance of the relatively young and growing immigrant population was highlighted in 2006 when the rallies on behalf of immigrant rights were led largely by the adolescent and young adult children of immigrant parents (Bloemraad and Trost 2008; Seif 2011). Issues related to immigrants and immigration remain at the forefront of the political debate; the children of immigrants coming of age today no doubt have a heightened awareness of what is at stake in elections compared to their peers with nativeborn parents. In many ways, the social and educational experiences of children of imCallahan .indb 33 2/4/2013 12:15:53 PM 34 Coming of Political Age migrants during adolescence are likely to parallel those of their peers with native-born parents, but their experiences will also differ in substantive and significant ways. As children of immigrants come of age, they must navigate not only the culture and perspective of their parents but also those of the school and the outside world. With this in mind, we consider the range of experiences that shape political development, especially among children of immigrants. Immigrant Adolescents, Their Families, and Their Political Socialization The family-based transmission of political behaviors and ideologies has been well documented (Jennings et al. 2009; Miller and Shanks 1996), but research findings on such transmission may be more applicable to children of native-born parents than to children of immigrants, since patterns of political socialization among immigrant families have been less comprehensively studied . The existing research on immigrant families points to bidirectional patterns of political influence from children to parents as well as from parents to children (Bloemraad and Trost 2008; Wong and Tseng 2007). Although family and community are certainly central to the political development of all youth, we argue that in the immigrant family the experiences of adolescent children and the intergenerational changes associated with the immigrant family’s adaptation make the socializing experiences of school particularly important in the political socialization of these children. Many of the teachers in our qualitative inquiry referred to what they perceived to be a role reversal between children of immigrants and their parents in the sharing of political and civic understanding. The teachers were particularly aware of how these children connected their lives in school with their lives at home. Mr. Rocca, a European history teacher in Florida, aptly noted that his immigrant students often brought the content of the class to the dinner table. Even if it’s not formally a part of the curriculum, the kids will go home and talk to their parents about it. . . . I know from my own personal experience that some of the things that we have talked about, the kids have gone home and talked to their parents, and the parents have become more civically active when the kids explain it to them, even if it is in Spanish, for example. Having already negotiated a somewhat difficult political construct in class, children of immigrants in this class then take that concept home for further discussion—often, as Mr. Rocca...

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