Globalization, Immigrant-Origin Students & the Quest for Educational Equity
Globalization has come to define the modern world. Originally venerated as a force that would bring humanity to the peak of its flourishing through economic integration and positive cross-cultural exchange, globalization has deepened economic inequities, driven the dangerous degradation of the environment, and destabilized regions over fights for resources. Migration, a natural response to this precarity, has swelled, making the children of immigrants a growing, key demographic in schools across many high- and middle-income countries. The resilience, flexible thinking, and multilingualism of immigrant-origin students make them valuable community members in our globalized world. However, their schools are not always equipped to meet their psychosocial needs. While the current primary focus on language acquisition is an important foundation for supporting these students, an equitable whole-child approach is necessary to address their unique challenges and create an environment in which they can flourish.
Globalization defines an ever more interconnected, miniaturized, and fragile world. It flows from the growing movement of peoples, goods, services, and social practices among countries and regions. Migration is the human face of globalization; it is the sounds, colors, and aromas enveloping major cities today. For the first time in history, all continents are involved in the massive movement of people: as areas of immigration, emigration, transit, and return—and often as all four at once.
Over the last four decades, new information-communication and media technologies, the integration and disintegration of markets, and the movement of people globally have transformed countries and continents the world over. Globalization’s three Ms—markets, media, and migration—are the synergetic vectors of change shaping and reshaping the economy and society. New communication and media technologies have enabled the de-territorialization of labor, and, concurrently, the increasing global coordination of markets has stimulated significant new waves of migrant labor—internal and international. Immigrants, in turn, spur further globalization. As migration scholars David Leblang and Margaret E. Peters write, “migrants are an engine of globalization, especially for countries in the Global South. Migration and migrant networks serve to expand economic markets, distribute information across national borders, and diffuse democratic norms and practices throughout the world, increasing trade and investment flows.”1 In our research, we have argued that globalization’s new economies, technologies, and demographic changes are significant challenges for education systems the world over. In this essay, we focus on the human face of globalization by examining the journeys of immigrants and their children and the quest for educational equity.
To contextualize these journeys, we must first trace the current arc of globalization over the last four decades: from its initial triumphalist exuberance to the current age of global fragility. In its most recent wave, globalization’s promise rested on the claim that economic integration among nations would bring about unprecedented benefits for both individuals and societies. Its advocates argued that the free market would accelerate the flow of goods, services, and capital across borders, encouraging specialization, competition, and economic growth. The global exchange of ideas, knowledge, and technology across nations would foster innovation and facilitate cultural understanding and interactions among people from different backgrounds. Actors in the emerging global stage would learn about and come to appreciate diverse cultures, traditions, and perspectives. Cross-cultural understandings would promote tolerance, empathy, and mutual respect. In its utopic form, globalization would promote peace and geopolitical stability by fostering socioeconomic interdependence among nations.2 Economically connected countries would have a vested interest in maintaining peaceful relations. In sum, globalization would boost wealth creation and further human flourishing by increasing economic and sociocultural exchanges, expanding markets, and creating new opportunities.
By the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, a “triumphalist globalization” had captured the imagination of its advocates. We saw the dawn of an era of neoliberal euphoria, with the deification of the free market and a deep suspicion and even outright rejection of market controls and regulations paving the way to the “hyperglobalist path.”3 A devotion to the supremacy of the market economy over all other possible arrangements for economic prosperity saw its purest form in the so-called Washington consensus: exuberantly embracing unfettered trade, floating exchange rates, and free markets. At their most inebriated moment, globalization’s viziers saw “the end of history,” when late capitalism at the turn of the century came to represent the summit of all possible human arrangements in the pursuit of wealth, human flourishing, and eudaemonia.4
Globalization has had its benefits, but also some unequivocal and entirely negative consequences.5 First, globalization’s outsized benefits have gone mostly to the wealthy and to multinational corporations. Second, globalization has created new unsustainable levels of income and wealth inequality both within and between nations.6 Third, high-income countries saw significant job losses in sectors that could not compete with cheaper overseas labor as entire industries and manufacturing sectors disappeared, migrating to countries with lower labor costs, lax regulations, and weak workers’ rights. Fourth, globalization has contributed to economic instability, as interconnected markets came to amplify financial crises and contagion.7 Fifth, the dominance of globalized media, the ascendency of consumerism, and the spread of Western ideologies came to erode cultural traditions, challenge local values, and degrade local identities.8 Globalization puts traditional societies on a pathway for what sociologist Anthony Giddens has termed detraditionalization. He claims that “tradition provides a framework for action that can go largely unquestioned. . . . Tradition gives stability, and the ability to construct a self-identity against a stable background.”9 Globalization, however, erodes norms “as local cultures and traditions are exposed to new cultures and ideas, which often means that traditional ways of acting come to be questioned. As a result of globalization, societies and cultures go through a process of detraditionalization, where day-to-day life becomes less and less informed by tradition.”10 Sixth, globalization stimulated increased resource consumption, leading to pollution and environmental degradation. The devouring of natural resources, the destruction of ancient forests, and the loss of biodiversity have accelerated over the last four decades of globalization.11 Transporting goods over long distances contributes to carbon emissions, while lax regulations in some countries have led to environmentally harmful practices.12 The global competition for precious minerals, metals, and other resources has fueled war and terror.13 These challenges are accelerating forced migrations and displacement, as families are compelled to leave their homes due to environmental disasters, war and terror, conflicts, and lack of economic opportunities.14
Moreover, by 2020, globalization delivered with stunning momentum the COVID-19 virus from one corner of China to the entire world. Thus, in two generations—roughly from the mid-1980s to the 2020s—the arc of globalization has gone from triumphalist exuberance to the age of global fragility. Economist Danni Rodrik sums up globalization’s wrong turn:
Globalization is in trouble. A populist backlash, personified by U.S. President Donald Trump, is in full swing. A simmering trade war between China and the United States could easily boil over. Countries across Europe are shutting their borders to immigrants. Even globalization’s biggest boosters now concede that it has produced lopsided benefits and that something will have to change. Today’s woes have their roots in the 1990s, when policymakers set the world on its current, hyperglobalist path, requiring domestic economies to be put in the service of the world economy instead of the other way around. In trade, the transformation was signaled by the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. The WTO not only made it harder for countries to shield themselves from international competition but also reached into policy areas that international trade rules had not previously touched: agriculture, services, intellectual property, industrial policy, and health and sanitary regulations.15
The rise of the globalization regime ushered in the ascendancy of migration on a planetary scale. International migration grew significantly since the turn of the millennium, reaching 281 million in 2022 after a previous high of 220 million in 2010 and 175 million in 2000. The largest international migration corridors are in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. By the 2020s, the largest number of international migrants (well over fifty million) resided in the United States of America, followed by Germany (approximately sixteen million), Saudi Arabia (almost fourteen million), the Russian Federation (approximately twelve million), and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Wales, and Northern Ireland (over nine million). India is the largest country of origin of international migrants (with approximately eighteen million emigrants), followed by Mexico (twelve million). Today, women make up slightly less than half of all international migrants.16
Global migration has generated pushback. Claims against the new immigrants have centered on job displacement, social integration, cultural assimilation, crime and national security, and the strain on public resources and services needed for new immigrants and their children. As the great migration of the global era saw large numbers of migrants from Latin America, Asia, and Africa—the vast majority being people of color—old atavistic fears took hold in the countries most affected by migration. Racist animus fueled by nativistic and supremacist politicians has propagated, exemplified by Donald Trump with like-minded politicians in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Hungary, Italy, Poland and elsewhere. The United Kingdom exited the European Union, so-called Brexit, largely on an anti-immigrant platform. Thus, far from inaugurating an era of cultural understanding and convivencia, globalization came to ignite new fears and prejudices.
While the enormous potential of human capital and intercultural exchanges reflects the exuberance of globalization, the friction of anti-immigrant animus and deepening inequities reflect its underbelly. Globally, in nearly all high-income countries, immigration has become a significant focus of media, political, and policy debates, though the children of immigration are rarely part of this conversation. As the labor migration of yesteryear begat new patterns of family reunification and as immigrants formed families in their new land, students of immigrant origin have rapidly changed the makeup of schools across many countries. Thus, within the school walls, the dynamics of the twin tensions of globalization play out daily.
Who are our immigrant-origin students?17 They include both first-generation and second-generation youth. (The first generation are foreign-born, and the second generation are youth with at least one parent who is foreign-born.) Both groups have immigrant parents who were motivated to migrate for a variety of reasons.18 Migration, although sometimes driven by individual choices, is often influenced by socioeconomic, historical, and political factors, as well as networks of relationships between sending and receiving countries, particularly when it occurs on a large scale across borders. Notably, the decision to migrate is never the child’s—though children must navigate their development within a disoriented family in a new land.
In the United States, immigrant-origin children make up the fastest-growing student population: 26 percent of all children and one-third of young adults have at least one immigrant parent.19 While it is difficult to establish precisely comparable percentages in other immigrant-receiving nations, a good proxy can be drawn from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA collects data on fifteen-year-olds from OECD nations and enumerates “immigrant background” (having a parent born in a country other than where the PISA test was taken) among its demographic variables. In 2022, across the eighty-one OECD nations, the share of fifteen-year-old students with an immigrant background averaged 13 percent. In twenty-one OECD countries, the share of immigrant students was higher than 15 percent, and in eleven countries, it was higher than 25 percent. In Germany, 35 percent of fifteen-year-olds were classified as having an immigrant background. Similarly, 20 percent of fifteen-year-olds in the United Kingdom and 29 percent in Australia were classified as having an immigrant background.20 As such, immigrant-origin children and youth are now, and will continue to be, a diverse and demographically important segment of many high-income nations’ populations.
Immigrants and their children are contributing to the rapid racial and ethnic diversification of the high-income countries they call home.21 Over the last half-century in the United States, the influx of immigrants from Asia and Latin America has significantly transformed the country’s demographic profile. Similarly, in Europe, substantial immigration from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe has led to increased racial and ethnic diversity. Australia has experienced substantial immigration from Asia, particularly China, India, and the Philippines, leading to its racial diversification. Canada has as well.
Immigrants also contribute to the cultural diversification of their societies.22 Immigrants bring their native languages to their adopted countries; in the United States, there are now an estimated 350 languages spoken in homes across the country, many brought by immigrants and maintained through familial and community ties.23 Immigrants are also breathing new religiosity into their communities. In North America and Europe, immigrants are contributing to a significant growth in religious pluralism, with surges in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam occurring in societies that had previously been both predominantly Judeo-Christian and increasingly secular.24
Children in immigrant families come with a diverse range of skills and resources, and their experiences differ significantly based on the specific combination of these resources and their contexts of reception.25 Some are refugees (or asylum seekers) escaping political, religious, and social strife or environmental catastrophes. Others are motivated by the promise of better jobs, while still others frame their migration as an opportunity to provide better education for their children. Most are documented migrants, though millions are undocumented. Some join well-established communities with robust social supports, others settle in under-resourced high-poverty neighborhoods, and still others move from one migrant setting to another. Some receive excellent schooling in their countries of origin, while others leave educational systems that are in shambles. Some are the children of educated professionals, others have illiterate parents.
Both first- and second-generation students share the experience of having immigrant parents and are less likely than nonimmigrant students to speak the language of the new country at home or share the cultural practices taken for granted in schools. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge that the first and second generations face distinct experiences.26 The first generation makes the transition to the new land within their own lifetime. Depending upon their age of arrival, navigating the losses of relationships, memories, and linguistic and cultural ties to their sending country and adjusting to their host society are among their personal challenges. For the first generation, key challenges often include adapting to a new culture and overcoming the traumas related to migration, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers. In contrast, the second generation more commonly faces the challenge of developing a complex ethnic-racial identity. For the second generation, the attachments to the sending country may be more abstract and are often filtered through parental/caregiver narratives.
Notably, “contexts of reception” (as coined by sociologists Alejandro Portes and Rubén Rumbaut) play an important role in adaptation and integration. Contexts of reception encompass the social policies, prevailing societal attitudes, and economic conditions in the host country.27 When these contexts are welcoming and inclusive, offering equitable access to resources and opportunities, immigrant youth are more likely to experience positive adaptation (including academic success, robust identity formation, and social integration). Conversely, if the contexts are characterized by hostility, discrimination, and structural barriers, the adaptation process can be adversely affected, leading to marginalization, identity struggles, and socioeconomic challenges. These contexts not only influence immediate adaptation, but also have long-term implications on the life trajectories of the immigrant-origin youth, ultimately affecting their ability to contribute to and participate in their new societies.
Despite these diversities of cultural origins, circumstances for migration, and contexts of reception, there is an array of shared experiences that can influence immigrant-origin students’ educational trajectories across contexts. In the face of adversity, immigrant-origin students demonstrate a repertoire of strengths and resiliencies that are often underrecognized. Key among these attributes is the embodiment of immigrant family—the enduring belief in a future that surpasses present circumstances—that emerges as a driving force in their pursuit of education and better life outcomes.28 This disposition is further enhanced by immigrants’ dual frame of reference—endowing them with the perspective to make sense of experiences in the context of both their countries of origin and their adopted countries—fueling flexibility and positive attitudes toward education.29
The robust ethic of familial support common in immigrant communities is the core of multiple strengths. This familial emphasis engenders a culture of shared responsibility and collective ambition, forming a vital pillar of resilience in the face of adversity.30 Families provide emotional support and facilitate community connections that help children navigate the stresses associated with adjusting to their new cultural environments. Moreover, immigrant families often nurture high educational aspirations in their children.31 Last, well-maintained home languages and traditions provide a sense of cultural continuity and identity coherence that can buffer against acculturative stress.32 And multilingual capabilities, far from being a deficit, are a considerable advantage for both the immigrant-origin students themselves and their larger communities within today’s interconnected world of commerce and industry.33 Their ability to navigate multiple languages cultivates cognitive flexibility, fosters empathy, and facilitates cross-cultural communication—attributes that contribute significantly to resilience. In short, fortified by hope, dual perspectives, a familial ethic of care, and multilingualism, immigrant-origin students display personal and familial resiliencies that serve to partially inoculate them to the tremendous challenges they too often encounter in their educational journeys.
Understanding the challenges that immigrant-origin students face is vital for developing effective strategies to support their educational transitions and success. Most first-generation students confront initial challenges related to language acquisition as they enter the K–12 educational system. These challenges can significantly impact self-confidence, accurate educational assessments, and academic pathways.34 Educational systems tend to prioritize funding for interventions around teaching the academic language of instruction to newcomers and students who are nonnative speakers. And newcomer students typically report being preoccupied with learning the language of their new land.35 While students often quickly learn what language-development scholar Jim Cummins has termed “basic interpersonal communication skills,” it takes many more years to achieve what he calls “cognitive academic language proficiency” comparable to that of native-born peers.36 Complicating matters, these students frequently struggle to access quality second-language programs due to underresourced schools and a dearth of adequately trained or supported educators.37 Standardized assessments, typically developed and normed for native-born speakers, pose additional challenges for these students; scores may not accurately reflect their academic understanding or skills, resulting in inappropriate instructional planning, misplacements, and gatekeeping.38 Further, the stress and stigma associated with the prolonged new academic language acquisition process can undermine self-esteem, motivation, and school engagement.39
First-generation immigrant students with limited or interrupted formal education constitute a growing segment of students in host language programs of instruction. Interruptions in schooling may occur for a variety of reasons, including displacements due to conflict or natural disasters, as well as complications in the migration journey; in some cases, students may have missed a few years, and in others, they may have never attended formal schooling at all.40 These interruptions pose substantial challenges to educational adjustment, attainment, and performance, often resulting in lower grades, increased risk of dropping out, and reduced likelihood of pursuing higher education.41 Additionally, interrupted schooling can exacerbate acculturative stress by making it more challenging for youth to adapt to new educational systems and norms, potentially leading to feelings of isolation and hindering social integration.42 These educational interruptions may also compound existing mental health vulnerabilities.43
Immigrant-origin children—especially first generation and, within that group, asylum seekers, refugees, and unaccompanied youth—often experience traumatic events before, during, and after their migrations. Prior to migration, they may experience violence, war, persecution, or severe poverty in their home countries.44 During the migratory journey, they may encounter life-threatening situations, physical and emotional abuse, or separation from family members. After arrival, these children may confront further challenges, such as acculturative stress, discrimination, and difficulties adjusting to a new educational system, language, and culture.45 Additionally, these traumatic experiences may be compounded by the challenges of navigating complex immigration systems and potential legal insecurities flowing from their status.46 These multifaceted traumas can have profound impacts on the well-being and educational adjustment of immigrant-origin children. Further, while second-generation children may not experience firsthand immigration-related trauma, they—like first-generation children—may experience the effects of intergenerational trauma given the extreme stresses and anguish their parents and caregivers endured.47
Many first-generation students are separated from their parents and caregivers as part of the migratory experience, posing significant socioemotional and adaptive challenges. From a psychological perspective, separations can cause significant distress, anxiety, and depression, which may impede a child’s cognitive and socioemotional development.48 These emotional disturbances can negatively impact academic performance, concentration, and school attendance.49 The absence of parents or primary caregivers can also disrupt the child’s access to essential resources such as tutoring, emotional support, and help with navigating educational systems, thereby further complicating the educational adjustment.50
Undocumented students and students in mixed-status families face unique and substantial challenges that impact their academic progress and psychological well-being.51 These include fear of deportation and associated family separations, discrimination, limited access to resources, and financial constraints. Additionally, they are confronted with virulent xenophobia, often resulting in a sense of marginalization and social exclusion.52 Access to resources is likewise constrained due to their (personal or familial) legal status, and they may lack opportunities for financial aid, limiting their possibilities for higher education and career development.53
For immigrant-origin students in the K–12 system, the educational system in the United States is fraught with systemic and contextual challenges. Racial and economic segregation continue to plague our school systems, leading to highly uneven learning opportunities.54 Many schools remain largely unprepared to effectively serve the unique needs of these students, particularly in terms of addressing their socioemotional needs.55 The educational sector’s narrow focus on language acquisition—often driven by funding streams, data collection, and teacher education programs—may overlook crucial elements of the student experience, such as social-emotional learning and trauma-informed care.56
Additionally, many teacher education programs lack robust training about immigrant-origin children or immigration issues, causing a disconnect between the principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy and actual instructional practices.57 This can result in educators who are ill-equipped to understand, respond to, or support the complex cultural, linguistic, and socioemotional needs of their immigrant-origin students.58
Moreover, the absence of comprehensive and disaggregated data collection in school climate assessments—by factors such as generation, race/ethnicity, language, and religion—limits the ability to understand and address the varied experiences of immigrant-origin students in diverse classrooms.59 This is further complicated by an increasingly hostile sociopolitical climate toward immigration, marked by some states turning away from diversity, equity, and inclusion lenses in education.60
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these contexts of reception and the vulnerabilities of international migrants.61 New data suggest that COVID-19 accelerated cascading anti-immigrant sentiments, making migrants vulnerable to hate crimes and social exclusion. Millions of Asian immigrants became targets of xenophobic violence and denigration as the former president of the United States and others framed the COVID-19 pandemic using vulgar terms like “the Chinese virus” and “kung flu.” According to FBI data, U.S. hate crimes against Asian Americans rose about 76 percent in 2020 amid the pandemic.62
Following the emergency phase of the pandemic, job-related stresses posed a distinct threat: a thin supply of teachers, especially among faculty of color.63 Further, exceptionally high learning losses were reported in school districts serving immigrant-origin students and students of color.64 This situation has made it even more difficult for immigrant-origin children to access equitable education and achieve academic success.
However, the educational challenges that immigrant-origin students face are not unique to the United States. Similar concerns permeate school systems in other post-industrial countries. In Canada, for instance, schools often struggle to adequately meet the diverse linguistic and cultural needs of students, despite the country’s long-standing commitment to multiculturalism and inclusion.65 Similarly, in Germany, Sweden, and Australia, a strong focus on language acquisition can overshadow the broader social-emotional needs of students; teacher education programs rarely include training about immigration-related issues or culturally responsive pedagogy, nor are trauma-informed care supports provided.66 The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified these preexisting disparities across these nations as well, often resulting in higher learning losses among immigrant-origin students and students of color than their white/nonimmigrant peers.67 Moreover, much like the United States, these countries have faced a sociopolitical climate increasingly hostile to immigration, which further complicates the educational experiences of immigrant-origin students.68
As such, immigrant-origin children globally face a strong undertow. Given the high proportions of students of immigrant origin, providing them with adequate and equitable educational opportunities is not simply ethical and just, but also an economic and societal imperative. Without a sharp educational focus, immigrant-origin students are more likely to experience academic underachievement, higher dropout rates, and a decreased likelihood of pursuing higher education, as well as miss opportunities for higher remuneration in the labor market.69 As education is a significant driver of socioeconomic mobility, immigrant-origin students who do not receive equitable educational opportunities are at a higher risk of experiencing long-term economic disadvantages.70 This not only affects each individual’s economic mobility but also impacts the broader society by underdeveloping the potential contributions of all its members. Because immigrant-origin students are a significant and growing part of the future workforce, underinvesting in their education will lead to a less skilled workforce, with wide-reaching implications for the economic competitiveness and innovation potential of society. Last, as many countries face aging populations, immigrant-origin students represent an important demographic critical for sustaining economic growth; failing to invest in their education is a missed opportunity to address these challenges.71
Beyond economic arguments, there are socioemotional and social cohesion arguments for providing equitable, welcoming, and inclusive education to immigrant-origin students. When students do not see their cultural backgrounds represented and valued in their education, it can impact their self-esteem and sense of belonging, leading to alienation and identity conflicts.72 If inadequately supported, immigrant-origin students may struggle to integrate fully into society, with potential implications for broader social divisions and a lack of social cohesion. Conversely, providing these supports has the potential to lead not just to higher levels of personal well-being, but also to greater intercultural understanding.73
How, then, should host societies shoulder their responsibility in the quest to provide equitable educational opportunities for their youngest members? What educational policies and practices across postindustrial nations are required to better serve this significant and growing sector of the student population? Most data, practice, and funding for immigrant-origin students in education have focused on the domain of language learning.74 While language acquisition is clearly linked to both cognitive and academic development, a narrow focus on language development has tended to neglect many of the other critical domains of a whole-child approach.75
A whole-child approach is child-centered and considers several domains of child development. These include the classic foci of schooling: the academic (attainment of core literacy, math, science, and social science skills and knowledge) and cognitive (related to attention, perception, and memory) domains. However, the whole-child approach also encompasses the mental (a state of well-being to cope with the stresses of life and attain potential), social-emotional (skills and mindsets related to self-regulation, stress management, social interactions, and resilience), and physical (such as wellness, nutrition, and sleep) domains. Last, it recognizes the central role of identity (including personal, cultural, racial, and ethnic identities) and belonging. Each of these domains of development are interrelated and must be addressed for children to thrive.76
A guiding principle of an equitable whole-child approach specifies providing care within transformative settings.77 Such settings begin with a focus on developing positive relationships between educators and students, between students, and between educators and caregivers. This is essential to establish a safe class and school setting where all students from every cultural, ethnic, and racial background feel like they belong. Learning experiences necessarily should be rich, meaningful, engaging, and inquiry and problem-solving based; students should see themselves reflected in the curriculum while learning perspectives across cultures and history.78 As neuroscience now makes clear, however, academic development does not stand alone. As such, schools should incorporate both structures and practices that support students in the social-emotional learning of habits, skills, mindsets around self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-calming; task planning and implementation; perspective and empathy taking; and positive interpersonal relations and conflict resolution.79
A transformative whole child–oriented setting that aims to provide equitable care and educational services begins with supports provided in a tiered manner.80 Tier 1–Universal Supports are provided across all classrooms to all students, prioritizing relationships, a climate of cultural safety and belonging, and enriched learning environments, while incorporating social-emotional skills. Tier 2–Integrated Supplemental Supports are provided as extra supports are needed, including, for example, tutoring, after-school programs, counseling, and social work supports. Tier 3–Intensive Personalized Supports should be provided on a timely basis for students identified with greater needs, including special education services, health and mental health services, and family assistance, among others. This is good practice for all students.
Various structural practices have value for immigrant-origin students at the school level.81 One such practice involves extending opportunities for learning across both the school day and the school year—allowing students to catch up following interrupted learning and family and work responsibilities. Community partnerships also have the potential to extend the reach of schools in dramatic ways, as community members and organizations are often trusted by caregivers and can provide services that schools are simply unable to deliver.82 Advisory periods are integral to establishing a community of relationships in which students and educators can connect in essential ways. Further, educators must be provided with ample professional development and coaching to be equipped to give necessary support to their students.
Long-standing research and practice have established many productive instructional approaches essential for immigrant-origin students to reach their potential. For example, for students to learn optimally, they should be allowed to use their own home language(s) as well as the language of instruction as they engage in learning—a practice known as translanguaging.83 Students should be grouped together in purposeful ways—either heterogeneously or homogenously—depending on the task, as intentional grouping can provide students with peer support and help ensure students are working within their zone of proximal development.84 Principles of universal design for learning provide flexible options and differentiated instruction to ensure greater access to learning across a range of learners. Students with limited or interrupted formal instruction need extra support to make up for gaps in classroom experience. Such support can include additional instruction and an intentional focus on literacy, providing differentiation and scaffolding for language and content learning. Last, checking for understanding and attainment of learning goals should occur throughout the year. It should be incorporated holistically across all domains of development using various strategies, including portfolios (a collection of student work that demonstrates their efforts, progress, and achievements across various areas of the curriculum over time).
The quality of the school climate has implications for school belonging, academic achievement, and healthy developmental outcomes.85 Evidence, however, suggests that students from marginalized immigrant backgrounds experience worse school climates than their white and more privileged peers, reporting more bullying, less interpersonal safety, and less connection with their teachers.86
Further, xenophobic and exclusionary attitudes and policies have increased over the past decade and have trickled into school settings.87 To better promote healthy school climates for all students, we must begin by accurately understanding how students are experiencing their schools. Thus, schools should comprehensively assess school climates by intentionally soliciting perspectives directly from all students, including their students of immigrant origin. This process should seek to understand the role of students’ distinct social identities in shaping their school experience through both close- and open-ended response options. This should include a careful examination and response to reports of bullying and discrimination, recognizing that students, faculty, and staff all can act as bullies. The quality of interpersonal relationships is fundamental for the school climate. Positive student-teacher and peer relationships are protective buffers that promote a positive school climate and must be intentionally cultivated. Thus, establishing school and class norms that include intergroup respect and antibullying, as well as advisory groups, may enhance relationships.88
A whole-child approach attends to well-being and social-emotional development for all students to reach their potential. This is especially essential for immigrant-origin students, given that immigration involves managing losses of relationships and family separations, negotiating acculturation and hybrid identities, and forging pathways to belonging, among many other complex facets.
Many immigrants have experienced a variety of traumas. A trauma-informed lens of practice attending to social, emotional, and mental health domains is essential for learning and thriving.89 A whole-student approach takes a resilience- and asset-based perspective and a trauma-informed approach while explicitly providing instruction around transformative social-emotional skill supports.90 It also requires centering culturally responsive learning communities where students see themselves reflected in the curriculum and where they see that their caregivers are welcomed and respected.91
As a last recommendation, we focus on teacher preparation programs. A foundational premise of culturally responsive and culturally sustaining practice is a baseline understanding of the experiences and assets of the students and families being served.92 However, there is a large gap between most educational preparation programs and the realities of the lives of immigrant students attending schools across high-income countries. In 2002, teacher education scholar A. Lin Goodwin scanned the research literature to examine how teacher preparation addressed immigrant children.93 She identified a significant gap beyond addressing second-language acquisition. Fifteen years later, she reexamined the field to consider whether educators were better “prepared to work with immigrant children.”94 Lamentably, she found minimal progress. We wholeheartedly concur with education policy researcher Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj and colleagues’ call to action: “It is time for teacher education to realize its mandate to prepare teachers for the students of today and tomorrow, and this means embracing the centrality of immigration in a growing share of students’, families’ and, increasingly, in educators’ lives.”95
Immigrant-origin children face considerable challenges as they navigate complex currents in new countries, particularly during their transitions. At the same time, it is essential to acknowledge, appreciate, and build upon newcomers’ resilience, hope, and work ethic. Concurrently, we must endeavor to lessen and reverse the powerful undertow of xenophobic disparagement threatening to drown the children of immigrants and refugees in anomic withdrawal from the new society. Unless we do, we risk them never reaching their potential, sinking into despair, or being driven to the underground economy or long-distance nationalism. Providing the kinds of ecologies of care outlined above will go a long way toward helping these children and youth thrive and become contributing members to their new global societies, serving our collective future well.96