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Perceived Discrimination and Linguistic Adaptation of Adolescent Children of Immigrants

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

This study examines the relationship between perceived discrimination and self-reported proficiency in English and non-English languages among adolescent children of immigrants. Data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study was used. The average age of participants was 17.2 years; 1,494 were females and 1,332 were males. Among 2,826 participants, 61% reported Latin American and Caribbean national origin and 39% reported Asian national origin. Findings from probit regression analysis showed that adolescents who felt discriminated against by school peers were more likely to report speaking and reading English less than “very well”. On the other hand, adolescents who felt discriminated against by teachers and counselors at school or reported perceived societal discrimination were more likely to report speaking and reading English “very well.” The results suggest youth’s English, as opposed to non-English language, as the primary venue in which perceived discrimination influences youth’s linguistic adaptation. The findings further indicate that the direction and possible mechanisms of this influence vary depending on the source of perceived discrimination.

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Notes

  1. Non-English language in this paper refers to the language, other than English, which a participant reports knowing, and speaking at home. The English versus non-English distinction appears to be less problematic than “native” versus “foreign” language distinction. Depending on the place of birth and parental nativity, some participants might consider English their “native” language. Depending on the length of stay in the United States, other participants might consider English their “foreign” language.

  2. Portes and Hao (1998) defined a bilingual speaker as speaking English “very well” and speaking a non-English language “well” or “very well.” The present analysis extends this definition to bilingual proficiency and presents separate analyses for English or non-English languages. Because of the “parallel monolingualism”, or relative independence of two languages of bilingual adolescents (Caldas and Caron-Caldas 2002; Yeung et al. 2000), this strategy appears to be appropriate.

  3. The results of the factor analysis indicated the one-dimensional structure of the perceived societal discrimination scale. The extracted Factor 1 was highly correlated with Item 1 (r = 0.78, p < 0.001), Item 2 (r = 0.79, p < 0.001) and Item 3 (r = 0.55, p < 0.001).

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks Ross Stolzenberg, Woody Carter and Anthony Orum for their useful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th Street, Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Maria Medvedeva

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  1. Maria Medvedeva
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Correspondence to Maria Medvedeva.

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Medvedeva, M. Perceived Discrimination and Linguistic Adaptation of Adolescent Children of Immigrants. J Youth Adolescence 39, 940–952 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-009-9434-8

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