Vietnamese Immigrant Youth and Citizenship: How Race, Ethnicity, and Culture Shape Sense of Belonging
December 2011
ISBN-13: 978-1-59332-503-9 / Hardcover
Dimensions: 5.5 x 8.5 / x, 238 pages
Nguyen focuses on the connections between immigrant youth and the role that schools function in shaping their citizenship. Drawing on data from an ethnographic study that took place in an urban high school, Nguyen examines the processes that recent immigrant youth underwent as they transitioned to their new school contexts and engaged with issues of race, ethnicity, culture, gender, language, and citizenship. Findings help to illuminate how immigrant youth constructed meaningful citizenship and forged a sense of belonging while other social processes – cultural maintenance, racialization, assimilative ideology, and exclusionary practices – were acting on them.