A Language Graveyard? The Evolution of Language Competencies, Preferences and Use among Young Adult Children of Immigrants

This chapter examines the evolution of English and foreign language competencies, preferences, and use among young adult children of immigrants in the United States, including the extent to which bilingualism is sustained or not over time and generation in the U.S. The issues of language loyalty and change are first considered in a broader historical context, and a national profile is sketched of foreign and English language patterns over the past three censuses. It then focuses on results from the last wave of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), which followed a large sample of 1.5- and second-generation youth (immigrant children who arrived in the U.S. before adolescence, and U.S.-born children of immigrants) for more than a decade from mid-adolescence to their mid-twenties. The baseline sample of more than 5,000 was representative of 77 nationalities, including all of the principal immigrant groups in the U.S. today. The CILS data set permits both comparative and longitudinal analyses of language fluencies across the largest immigrant groups in the U.S., from widely different cultural and class origins, in distinct generational cohorts, and in different areas of settlement. The analysis is supplemented with other available survey and census data

Self and Circumstance: Journeys and Visions of Exile

The self in exile, and the circumstances of exile, are as varied as human character and human history. Forced uprooting from one's homeland and community, coerced homelessness, may be the common crisis that confronts all exiles and refugees, but such groups that are affected by it perceive and react to their changed and changing circumstances in different ways. Exile is not a uniform journey, but many different journeys, and, “it,” cannot be grasped by a single vision, but many, reflecting the different vantages and framings of different selves, and indeed of the same self over time, in circumstances that never stay the same. The meaning of exile, and of home, varies, not least as a function of age and generation, of biography and history, of self and circumstance. These four short essays on a common theme, “Two Generational Perspectives on the Experience of Exile,” were written a quarter of a century apart by a father and son, a psychiatrist and a sociologist: the former spoke as a survivor of “four shocks," including, “exile shock,” a concept he coined to distinguish it from other phenomena; the latter spoke from the vantage of the “one-and-a-half” generation, the term he coined to distinguish between the first-generation adult protagonists (Literally, “first actors”) of the decision to go into exile, and the generation of their children, who as deuteragonists (“second actors”) tend to be free of the impulse for self-justification that drives their parents' exilic vision. Taken together, this collaboration consists of a selective set of reflections, spanning a quarter century of changing circumstances, of two selves, two journeys, two visions, two voices, two generational perspectives on the experience of exile

Self and Circumstance: Journeys and Visions of Exile

The self in exile, and the circumstances of exile, are as varied as human character and human history. Forced uprooting from one's homeland and community, coerced homelessness, may be the common crisis that confronts all exiles and refugees, but such groups that are affected by it perceive and react to their changed and changing circumstances in different ways. Exile is not a uniform journey, but many different journeys, and, “it,” cannot be grasped by a single vision, but many, reflecting the different vantages and framings of different selves, and indeed of the same self over time, in circumstances that never stay the same. The meaning of exile, and of home, varies, not least as a function of age and generation, of biography and history, of self and circumstance. These four short essays on a common theme, “Two Generational Perspectives on the Experience of Exile,” were written a quarter of a century apart by a father and son, a psychiatrist and a sociologist: the former spoke as a survivor of “four shocks," including, “exile shock,” a concept he coined to distinguish it from other phenomena; the latter spoke from the vantage of the “one-and-a-half” generation, the term he coined to distinguish between the first-generation adult protagonists (Literally, “first actors”) of the decision to go into exile, and the generation of their children, who as deuteragonists (“second actors”) tend to be free of the impulse for self-justification that drives their parents' exilic vision. Taken together, this collaboration consists of a selective set of reflections, spanning a quarter century of changing circumstances, of two selves, two journeys, two visions, two voices, two generational perspectives on the experience of exile

CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENT The Roles of Family, Acculturation, Social Class, Gender, Ethnicity, and School Contexts

Intergenerational relations in immigrant families are managed and shaped within divergent contexts of reception and incorporation, and with divergent sets of resources and vulnerabilities. Still, after taking into account the objective circumstances within which children of immigrants are coming of age – such as their parents’ socioeconomic status, family structure, peer networks and school contexts – there remains substantial and unexpected variance in the children’s interpersonal and intrapersonal responses. This paper explores these dimensions of their adaptation process: the ways they perceive their relationships with their parents and families, their school experiences and work discipline, their sense of self-worth, and the way they imagine and project their educational and occupational adult futures. That mix of psychosocial factors, in turn – especially experiences, attitudes, beliefs and expectations about education – can mold motivation and achievement, an analysis of which then follows. The data for that analysis come from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), the largest study of its kind to date in the United States. The study has followed the progress of a large sample of teenage youths representing 77 nationalities in two main areas of immigrant settlement in the United States: Southern California and South Florida