Kids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families

Vikki S. Katz

Published by Rutgers University Press 2014

Kids in the Middle

How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their Families

Vikki S. Katz

In the series Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813562209

Overview
Contents

About this book

Complicating the common view that immigrant incorporation is a top-down process, determined largely by parents, Vikki Katz explores how children actively broker connections that enable their families to become woven into the fabric of American life. Children’s immersion in the U.S. school system and contact with mainstream popular culture enables them more quickly to become fluent in English and familiar with the conventions of everyday life in the United States. These skills become an important factor in how families interact with their local environments. Kids in the Middle explores children’s contributions to the family strategies that improve communication between their parents and U.S. schools, healthcare facilities, and social services, from the perspectives of children, parents, and the English-speaking service providers that interact with these families via children’s assistance. Katz also considers how children’s brokering affects their developmental trajectories. While their help is critical to addressing short-term family needs, children’s responsibilities can constrain their access to educational resources and have consequences for their long-term goals. Kids in the Middle explores the complicated interweaving of family responsibility and individual attainment in these immigrant families.

Through a unique interdisciplinary approach that combines elements of sociology and communication approaches, Katz investigates not only how immigrant children connect their families with local institutional networks, but also how they engage different media forms to bridge gaps between their homes and mainstream American culture. Drawing from extensive firsthand research, Katz takes us inside an urban community in Southern California and the experiences of a specific community of Latino immigrant families there. In addition to documenting the often-overlooked contributions that children of immigrants make to their families’ community encounters, the book provides a critical set of recommendations for how service providers and local institutions might better assist these children in fulfilling their family responsibilities. The story told in Kids in the Middle reveals an essential part of the immigrant experience that transcends both geographic and ethnic boundaries.

Author / Editor information

VIKKI S. KATZ is an assistant professor of communication at Rutgers University. Her research explores the communication challenges immigrant Latino families face as they integrate into U.S. society. She is also co-author of Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies (2011).

Reviews

"With richly painted portraits of children and families working together in a variety of contexts, this book deepens our understanding of the complex work involved in immigrant family language brokering, as well as ways to support that work. Katz shows the critical role that youth play in giving families access to new media technologies as well as to health and wellness."

— Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, UCLA

"Engaging like a novel, but solid as a major academic work … Katz has the ability to present theory, case studies, and findings in an engaging way that makes this topic relevant and comprehensible not only for academics but also for people who interact with immigrant families and child brokers on a daily basis."

— International Journal of Communication

"Kids in the Middle is a timely, informative, and methodologically well-designed study. Katz impressively approaches the topic of children brokers with a multi-methodological design that will fill a gap in current scholarship."

— Angie Y. Chung, University at Albany

"This book is informative, insightful, and interesting. The chapters provide solid data and research, but also personal narratives that help the reader get a better understanding of child brokers and their unique responsibilities."

— Journal of Youth and Adolescence

"A rich synthesis of research on immigration and family dynamics integrated with data from a significant ethnographic research project, giving us a compelling view of the role some children in immigrant families play as brokers within their family systems and the consequences of this role for themselves and their families."

— Journal of Child and Media

"Vikki Katz’s nuanced ethnography offers a fascinating analysis of how brokering performed by children of immigrants can both promote and undermine the larger immigrant bargain."

— Robert Courtney Smith, Baruch School of Public Affairs and Sociology Department, Graduate Center, CUNY

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
1. Children, Family, and Community Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Settling in Greater Crenshaw Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
3. Child Brokers and Their Families Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	32
4. Community Begins at Home Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
5. Gateways to Family Wellbeing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
6. Shortchanging the Immigrant Bargain? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
7. Brokering and Its Consequences Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
Appendix: Challenges of Departure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	149
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181