Determinants of Academic Success Among Immigrant Students
A comparison of the socio-economic factors affecting American immigrant
students, to the socio-cultural factors affecting Canadian immigrant students, on
their academic endeavors.
History 2703:
The Cultural Mosaic and Melting Pot
By Clayton Dinger
Historically, Canada and the United States have been considered two of
the principal destinations for immigrants seeking refuge, political freedom, or
economic opportunity. Apart from now-amended early 20th century legislation,
which represented the first legal mechanisms available to enable selective and
restrictive acceptance policies on undesirable immigrants, both countries have
maintained roles as active facilitators in the process of global migration.
Immigration is now recognized as an essential factor of modern day economic
growth, development, and national prosperity by Canada and the United States,
with key aspects of both nations’ cultural reputation fundamentally linked to first
and second generation’ers born elsewhere. These immigrants come from vastly
different regions of the world, and they are subjected to vastly different
experiences upon their arrival to either Canada or the United States. Past
research has indicated scholastic achievement as one valid measure for
interpreting and quantifying these experiences, and for understanding the
immigrant populations’ overall positive or negative affect on national interests and
on that of their own. This suggests that an investigation of the best academic
contributors, ethnically speaking, may be an area of interest for directing future
immigration initiatives and introducing supportive measures. However, an
immigrant’s ethnicity in and of itself is not a significant determinant of academic
success, but rather, it can be more closely attributed to a major distinction
between their final choice of residence: academic success of immigrant students
is most affected by socio-economic influences in the United States, and
comparatively, by socio-cultural influences in Canada.
The United States is a global leader and its economic landscape has been
the center stage for two of the largest-scale economic phenomena’s of the 21st
century: The Recession of 2008, and the Occupy movements of 2011. These
events had global ramifications, and indeed help to contextualize the significance
of socio-economic influences and their responsibility in defining American life.
This definition logically extends to the United States immigrant-student population,
whose struggles are at often times amplified by their minority status and the
economic hardships associated with it. It is not uncommon for US minority groups
to be characterized as impoverished communities, laden with crime and
unemployment due to a lack of economic resources that are comparatively more
accessible to their non-visible minority counterparts. In Cruz’ investigative analysis
which aimed to more thoroughly contextualize immigrant youth’s socio-economic
status, she discovered that “first and second generation immigrant youth have
higher income-to-poverty ratios than their third generation peers” (11). Her finding
establishes a resource gap between the immigrant and native-born population
segments, which reflects the restraint that increased socio-economic barriers
place on the upward mobility of disadvantaged minority groups as they attempt to
escape the poverty trap. Most importantly, Cruz asserts that her findings also
reveal a negative association in the relationship between poverty and educational
attainment. This negative relationship creates an inescapable paradox in which
American immigrants require access to education as a vehicle for removing
themselves from poverty, while simultaneously their impoverished status
negatively impacts their ability to experience academic progress. The socio-
economic disparities between the American immigrant population and the nonvisible minority population are significant, and the level of educational-attainment
that separates the two groups is a direct consequence.
The disproportions in educational attainment as a result of limited
availability to economic resources for visible-minority immigrants is only partially
explained by the first, second, or third generation American statuses of students.
Socio-economic barriers to minority educational attainment are so significant in
the American context that they have academically alienated different minority
populations from the non-visible minority segment with varying degrees of
separation. This has developed into ethnic segmentation, effectively
disassembling the American-immigrant population. This cultural dissonance, as
opposed to alliance, further inhibits all ethnicities’ ability to organize, support each
other, and collectively progress towards the unified goal of improved socioeconomic status through academic achievement; understanding that “the impact
of socio-economic status on high school completion – a primary mechanism for
socio-economic mobility across generations – must not be understated” (Lutz,
334). The minority groups on the lowest end of the socio-economic resource
accessibility spectrum suffer considerably more than those on the higher end
when it relates to opportunities for educational attainment, and subsequent
upward social mobility. The significance of varying educational-attainment levels
of ethnically segmented immigrant populations, augmented by the size of the
resource gap between immigrant and non-immigrant populations, is best
exemplified in Amy Lutz’ investigation into the effects of poverty on Latino
students educational attainment. Her research dictates that:
The issue of socioeconomic status for [Latinos] is particularly
important because, among Mexicans with the same
socioeconomic status as non-Hispanic whites, there is no
difference in their likelihood of high-school completion (Lutz,
335).
If negative socio-economic influences, such as poverty, are not present for
this group, the gap in educational attainment between immigrant and nonimmigrant students is eliminated. This suggests that certain isolated immigrant
populations would be just as capable as the non-visible minority student
population if enabled; they are just being suppressed by over-bearing socioeconomic impediments, typical of contemporary USA.
Shifting focus away from the preventative socio-economic influences on
immigrant-student academic success, it becomes evident that the absence of
socio-economic enablers available for immigrants to level the playing field with the
non-immigrant population is as responsible for their socio-economic deficiencies
as opposing influences are. This suggests that support systems for visible
minorities are necessary to promote their educational attainment efforts. Using
Latinos, the largest-represented immigration population in United States, again for
a reference group, Ramirez investigates “the most disadvantaged minority group
of students in the country” (4) to emphasize the difference that socio-economic
support systems can make for even the most underprivileged groups of
immigrants. A sample of 9698 students in the California State University system
were analyzed over a seven year period to evaluate the effect of the College
Assistant Migrant Program, a government-mandated program instituted to
promote migrant students’ academic experiences and performance, on those in
the program relative to the general student population. This analysis yielded
informative results for future policymakers with respect to future immigrant support
programs:
Results for baccalaureate degree attainment indicate that
migrant students, who receive [grant funding], outperformed all
other student groups. Despite migrant student’s impoverished
backgrounds, this finding suggests that these students better
achieve with financial assistance (Ramirez, 10).
This result provides clear evidence to support the advocating of socioeconomic support mechanisms to foster academic success among the visibleminority immigrant population. Through an active effort to change the socioeconomic landscape of the United States from preventative influences to
promotional influences on academic success for visible-minority immigrants, they
can break down the stereotypical molds that have restricted their transition out of
the underclass and into mainstream, middle-class society.
The cultural mosaic that has been used to characterize Canada’s
acceptance and general social embrace of immigrant cultures into mainstream
society is substantiated by the stark contradictions observed when comparing the
general schemas applied to the academic success of visible-minorities in both
Canadian and American contexts. While describing the forces responsible for
educational attainment among American immigrants has focused on the negative
connotations associated with the absence and presence of influential socioeconomic factors obstructing their scholastic achievement, introducing the
Canadian contextual implications allows the argument to recognize how similar
groups of people interact in dissimilar environments. The inherent differences in the
history of ethnic relations for both nations reveals a major cultural distinction that
has persisted in the US but has not developed in Canada: a segmented immigrant
underclass. As explained by Monica Boyd,
Contrary to the “second generation decline” and segmented
“underclass” assimilation models found in the United States,
adult visible minority immigrant offspring in Canada do not
have lower educational attainments…in fact, the 1.5 and
second generations who are visible minorities exceed the
educational attainments of other not-visible-minority groups
(Boyd, 1053).
This information describes a complete opposite perspective on the
academic success of immigrants in Canada as compared to those in the US, and
is warranted by the similarly opposite performance of Canadian immigrants
relative to their domestic, non-visible minority counterparts. The general propensity
for social acceptance of minority cultures in Canada is an important point to note
when considering socio-cultural factors that influence the Canadian immigrant
population’s educational attainment. Looking back on Canada’s history of
immigration, Boyd again provides relevant commentary on how “sustained
immigration into post-industrial society can create and perpetuate a strong
advocacy for educational attainment among immigrants and their children” (1055)
which develops out of an internal belief system acknowledging the importance of
education as a vehicle for upward social mobility. With an investigation of the
unique sources that define those systems, motivations, and aspirations for this
group of students, we can begin to understand which, and to what extent, sociocultural factors influence the academic success of Canadian immigrant students.
The general social attitude towards minority cultures in Canada is one of
acceptance and embrace that fosters the coexistence of unique foreign cultures
within a single social sphere. Canada cemented its reputation for this attitude
towards immigration and social policy with formal legislation in 1971 in the form of
the Official Multiculturalism Act. This progressive approach to immigrantintegration was overtly contradictory in nature to the assimilation expectations
commonly imposed on newcomers in most post-war societies, which were
traditionally dominated by advocates of homogeneous social structures. The
melting pot metaphor was subsequently identified as the universal description for
societies with these approaches of socializing immigrants; the United States is still
associated to this framework, if not to some other slightly adapted, more aesthetic
version. Where the reputation for immigration and immigration-related policy
approaches that diminish cultural diversity has stuck with the United States, the
Canadian reputation for multiculturalism has persisted concurrently. The
heterogeneous social philosophy dismisses attempts at socialization, and rather
facilitates a nation-wide acceptance of, and appreciation for, maintaining traditional
ethnic and cultural values as a part of everyday life in Canada. As immigration
continues and the visible-minority communities grow in size and participation, the
traditional value systems and cultural influences of these immigrants’ native
countries perpetuate themselves, and are equally relevant in the Canadian
contexts they have permeated.
As contemporary research has established, one of the most influential
factors affecting the drive for academic success among immigrant youth are their
parents’ expectations of their own future educational achievements (Li, 477). From
the Canadian perspective on the most significant determinants of educational
attainment among immigrants, the contemporary model supports the socio-cultural
basis for the correlation of parental expectations to academic aspirations among
visible-minority Canadian immigrant students. To facilitate a more comprehensive
and intuitive understanding of the parental influence on student aspirations to
higher academic achievement, this parameter draws and compares conclusions
made from a quantitative research review and a qualitative case study; both of
which reflect Canadian-based data sources to measure and interpret parental
involvement’s effect on the academic success aspirations of their children.
Despite the cultural mosaic status Canada has embodied since the
1960’s, the covertly racist practices employed to deter undesirable immigration
post Second World War established a discriminatory presence that has yet to
completely diminish. With that being said, most other nations pale in comparison
in their level of cultural acceptance. These socio-cultural burdens are often
realized as entry barriers in bureaucratic hierarchical structures that favor the
candidates most representative of the ethnography-type that built the
organization in the first place. Immigrant parents have recognized academic
achievement as a means to counter systemic racism, and as a result “visibleminority and immigrant parents, compared to other parents, may place greater
faith in education as a way of overcoming systematic disadvantage” (Krahn and
Taylor, 410). Alternatively, the discriminatory-based disadvantages experienced
by Chinese-Canadian immigrant students were seen by their parents as too
difficult to overcome as Li describes that “to avoid competing with main stream
society, all seven families encouraged their children to excel in science subjects
so as to take up professions in engineering and other technical fields” (486).
Although both these situations outline the need to counteract negative sociocultural barriers, such as discrimination, they utilize academic means in vastly
different contexts to accomplish this.
Immigrants represent a dynamic aspect of the population of any nation,
but for immigration-recipient giants such as the United States and Canada, this
minority segment’s socio-economic and socio-cultural impacts respectively, have
immense, and far-reaching implications for the general population. For this
reason the importance of understanding how the immigrant population interacts
with the non-immigrant population and among its own subgroups cannot be
discounted. Behavioral information regarding immigrant academic success can
provide insight into other related areas of interest such as socio-economic status.
Gathering sufficient social, economic, and cultural information about immigrant
populations can serve a mutually beneficial relationship in which they take an
active role as a source of economic contribution to the nation state, while at the
same time realizing the benefits that drew them there in the first place.
Works Cited
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Segmented Assimilation?" International Migration Review 36.4, Host Societies
and the
Reception of Immigrants: Institutions, Markets and Policies (2002):
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<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4149491?ref=searchgateway:6b93acede83b54bf0847f477ce4e8622>.
Cruz, Vanessa. "Educational Attainment of First and Second Generation
Immigrant
Youth." (2009): n. pag. Urban Institute. Summer Academy for
Public Policy Analysis and Research. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.urban.org/uisa/upload/UISA-Brief-5.pdf>.
Krahn, Harvey, and Alison Taylor. "Resilient Teenagers: Explaining the High
Educational Aspirations of Visible-minority Youth in Canada." Journal of
International Migration and Integration 6.3/4 (2005): 405-34. Springer.
Web. 18
Mar. 2014.
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Li, Jun. "Expectations of Chinese Immigrant Parents for Their Children's
Education: The
Interplay of Chinese Tradition and the Canadian Context."
Canadian Journal of
Education / Revue Canadienne De L'éducation 26.4
(2001): 477-94. JSTOR. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/1602178?ref=searchgateway:423c95313762bb338199955b81e154a0>.
Lutz, Amy. "Barriers to High-school Completion among Immigrant and Latergeneration Latinos in the USA: Language, Ethnicity and Socioeconomic
Status." Ethicities 7.3 (2007): 323-42. Culture in the Classroom. Sage
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2014.
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.
Ramirez, A. D. "The Impact of the College Assistance Migrant Program on
Migrant
Student Academic Achievement in the California State University
System."
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 11.1 (2012): 3-13. Scholars
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