Toward Race-Conscious Care-Based Healing to Support Latino Immigrant Youth

Abstract

This longitudinal convergent mixed-methods study sheds light on how school-based personnel such as educators, counselors, and district leaders perceive the needs of immigrant youth. Additionally, we explore how immigrant youth experience belonging and well-being in school and community spaces to advance a conceptual framework for ecosystems of care. The research questions ask how school-personnel manage the welcome of immigrant youth and how youth perceive belonging and well-being in schools. This study uses survey data from school and district personnel (N = 80) and qualitative data such as interviews and participant-observations with 41 Latino immigrant youth from school districts on the east coast. The study reports adult perceptions of immigrants’ needs and school climates as well as professional role constraints in fostering belonging for youth. The qualitative data shows the individual and structural level factors that impact Latino immigrant youth belonging and well-being. We theorize what we term race-conscious care-based healing in nested educational systems for Latino immigrant youth. We urge school systems, as an important nested context of reception, to consider forms of care-based healing to improve well-being, belonging and educational mobility for immigrant youth. We expand educational policy and sociological literature about schools as important contexts of reception for mitigating inequality. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Keywords

urban schools social context equity belonging immigrant youth

Introduction

Currently, Latino students comprise nearly 30% of public school students (Jimenez, 2022), and by 2025 Zalaquett and Lopez (2006) anticipate that a quarter of all students in public schools in the United States will be of Latino descent. Relatedly, Latinos from immigrant families and recently arrived students are also increasing, with Latinos comprising 20% of all recently arrived children ages 5 to 17 in 2021 (Sugarman, 2023). Despite this increasing population in U.S. public schools, Latino students remain the group with the highest high school dropout rate (Arellano & Padilla, 1996; Ceballo, 2004; Sánchez et al., 2006), are underrepresented in advanced courses in high school and on college campuses across the country (Ream, 2005; Ohrt et al., 2009), and report a lower sense of belonging in schools (Rodriguez & Wy, 2024). This leads to lower college completion rates and less opportunities for higher wages, reflecting limited class mobility (Gándara, 2015). While efforts to address gaps have supported significant gains to Latino educational equity in the last two decades, recent reports show that these gains reversed due to the COVID-19 pandemic as Latino immigrant families struggled with well-being and other challenges related to being essential workers while also facing immigration threats (Feliz, 2020). Moreover, the pandemic also heightened feelings of disconnection and emotional burdens on young people broadly, but minoritized youth disproportionately (Goldberg et al., 2022). Latino immigrant youth well-being is a topic of concern in many communities and schools are often places of potential refuge; at the very least, schools ought to be welcoming and inclusive toward immigrant youth. However, barriers in promoting well-being and opportunities for positive relationships remain in schools.

Research shows there are bureaucratic, political, social, and economic barriers to accessing educational and social resources, and familial barriers for many Latino students in the US (Abrego, 2008; Menjivar, 2006; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009). Additionally, many Latino students live in lower-income neighborhoods and households, have parents from mixed immigration status backgrounds, face threats of deportation and family separation, and attend high needs public schools where resources or quality of curriculum is limited or non-existent (Dreby, 2015; Enriquez, 2015; Teranishi & Parker, 2010; Yoshikawa, 2012). In addition, access to supportive adults who help young people navigate educational systems from K-12 through the college admissions process might be limited.

To date, responses from educational systems to the unique needs and experiences of Latino immigrant youth and their families have largely been insufficient. In fact, Latino immigrant youth have experienced racialized othering, a lack of educators’ awareness about immigration and immigrants’ rights, and unsafe school conditions due to anti-immigrant policy, community, and school climates (Lowenhaupt et al., 2021; Rodriguez, 2020; 2022). Structural barriers persist at macro-policy, meso-organizational (school), and micro-interactional levels for immigrant youth (Rodriguez, 2022). Knowing this, belonging matters for youth well-being (Arslan, 2021).

The present study sheds light on how belonging is critical for Latino immigrant students’ well-being and positive mental health. Youth in the study, who are immigrants and children of immigrants in mixed-immigration status families, highlight the need for long-term positive academic and social outcomes, and they share how education systems struggle to implement caring systems in school. To contribute to past scholarship, we bridge conversations about immigrant youth, the impact of immigration, belonging, and well-being from social science literature, for example, educational and sociological domains since issues related to immigrant well-being and the impact of immigration cut across disciplinary boundaries. Drawing on data from a longitudinal mixed-methods study of how school districts respond to and perceive Latino immigrant youth needs, and how youth themselves report their sense of belonging and the factors that contribute to it, we ask the following research questions:

How do schools respond to Latino immigrant youth and families’ needs?

How do Latino immigrant youth perceive their sense of belonging?

What are the factors that inhibit their well-being and belonging?

To answer these questions, we share school personnel responses to the influx of immigrant students in their schools, including the challenges they perceive of serving this population as well as how youth identify the need for care-based healing educational systems, which we define below. We find that there are individual level factors, such as youths’ personal experiences, feelings, and interactions, and structural level factors that contribute to youths’ perceptions of their belonging and inhibit it. By structural, we mean at the organizational level, and macro-policy and societal level (Rodriguez, 2022). We situate this work within the larger social science research about contexts and nested contexts of reception (COR), specifically viewing schools as nested contexts where tensions about belonging for immigrant youth manifest. We review the COR literature and the larger growing body of work about immigrant youth in educational spaces (Dabach, 2015; Lowenhaupt et al., 2021; Rodriguez, 2022), and how various school-based personnel function as resource and social service brokers in discretionary ways that do not always offer opportunities for sustained relationships between youth and adults (Rodriguez et al., 2022). We note the importance of social, supportive relationships that contribute to relational well-being for Latino immigrant youth, and that provide opportunities to build networks of support beyond Latino youth school experiences (Small, 2009; Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Using youth voices and experiences, we advance the notion of care-based healing in educational systems.

Literature Review and Conceptual Influences

We anchor our study to understand how to improve educational systems for immigrant youth in previous sociological and education research that shows how contexts shape outcomes for immigrant youth. Such “contexts” receive immigrant students and can vary on this reception from the host society. Studies show the impact of societal contexts for immigrant incorporation into US society (Portes et al., 2009). Anti-immigrant, exclusionary policies such as Title 42, which empowered the U.S. Border Patrol the power to turn away people seeking asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic, led to increased immigration surveillance and the criminalization of immigrants (Arriaga, 2023). These negative contexts contribute to fear in immigrant families and limited feelings of relational well-being as youth experience chronic stress concerning the fate of family members with uncertain citizenship status (Abrego, 2019).

While difficult to challenge macro-policies that are anti-immigrant and criminalizing, and the overall contexts of the reception frame, scholars argue that we consider variation in contexts across levels (Golash-Boza & Valdez, 2018; Menjívar, 2021). For example, communities and schools might provide some sanctuary from anti-immigrant climates and immigration surveillance, and racialized othering. Further, some recent educational research contends that schools can be nested contexts that provide critical opportunities for belonging and resources (Rodriguez, 2019; Bajaj & Suresh, 2018). For instance, Golash-Boza and Valdez (2018) expanded to a “nested” contexts of reception (NCOR) framework that accounts for different institutional, local, state, and federal policy levels. Similarly, Rodriguez (2022) applies this “nested” lens to the experience of undocumented and unaccompanied youth in public schools by examining the interaction of macro, meso, and micro levels where immigrant belonging is negotiated and contested across racialized lines. Rodriguez centers youth experiences in this effort to reconceptualize how lived experiences of immigrant youth can inform larger policy and school intervention and improvement. Golash-Boza and Valdez (2018) and Rodriguez show how a “nested” understanding of context invites researchers and practitioners to reveal organizational and interactional routines and attitudes toward immigrant youth, and how resources to support these youth are distributed in the racialized, cultural borderlands of schools. Portes and Rumbaut (2006) describe the racialization of immigrant children in the schools as evidence of the “decisive role” of the context of reception in shaping outcomes (p. 295). The impact of nested contexts of reception may be most salient for immigrant students with precarious legal statuses or whose families are in mixed-status households.

Nested Educational Systems

While these nested educational systems cannot alter federal immigration law, they can mitigate its exclusionary impact for immigrant students; educational systems can provide immigrant youth with access to state scholarships, resources, and support, and contribute to immigrant youths’ relational well-being. As such, schools are important sites where the conditions of illegality are further articulated or challenged (see e.g., Delgado, 2022; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009). Schools, as part of these nested contexts, can temper societal exclusion and build social capital among immigrant students or reinforce divisions (Gleeson & Gonzales, 2012; Stanton-Salazar, 2004). Students may feel stressed, or perceive it is too risky to discuss their immigration status (Dabach, 2015) or may find key “institutional agents” or school-based personnel such as educators or school social workers to help broker resources (Stanton-Salazar, 2011; Rodriguez et al., 2020). Thus, schools are considered important contexts for young people’s development and well-being because, although barriers related to poverty and neighborhood segregation persist, community-school relations can also provide access to networks of support for immigrant students and their families and help them overcome the barriers they may face (Rodriguez, 2022; Stanton-Salazar, 2011).

Scholars have examined how harmful policies and institutions have, in practice, failed immigrant students. Specifically, research shows that a major concern in public schools is educators’ and education leaders’ inadequate understanding of Plyler and other policies that impact immigrants’ lives. Where some school districts may purposefully be causing harm by, for example, straight out rejecting Plyler and petitioning for the removal of unaccompanied children, education leaders lack of knowledge of these policies unintentionally results in restrictive practices (Rodriguez & Crawford, 2022; Rodriguez & McCorkle, 2020). Even further, while these policies are in place and where school districts may be trying to support newcomers, federal support is gravely lacking (Pierce, 2015). While some case managers or school mental health professionals try to fill the gaps that larger institutions miss, case managers often provide this support at their own expense meaning their additional support is limited and newcomer immigrants or children from mixed-status immigrant households may not be supported as they face the realities of bureaucratic neglect (Grace & Roth, 2020).

Exemplifying this paradox of neglect and (over)surveillance in schools is shown in a recent study by Rodriguez and McCorkle (2020), the authors surveyed 5,190 educators (e.g., teachers) about their awareness of immigration policies impacting immigrant students. The authors found that teachers largely held false narratives about immigration policies or had an overall lack of awareness about policies impacting immigrant students, which led to neglect of resources. This combination of being part of a system (e.g., a school) where actors lack awareness but are also part of larger bureaucracies (i.e., social services and state or child welfare systems) that can broker resources or not is critical to address. Yet helping immigrant students to access resources is often ad hoc or left up to particular critical support personnel such as teachers, school social workers, or other personnel (Rodriguez et al., 2022). While the strategic actions of teachers and other school personnel help immigrant youth navigate the bureaucratic systems, at times, it is also an example of how they are labeled–naming/subjecting them to a set of institutions and policies–while also leaving their educational opportunities and access to chance. These failures have prompted scholars to call for enhancing communication and cooperation between the multiple institutions and educational and social service systems involved in supporting immigrant youth and their families, such as the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) advising districts about releases, so districts are better prepared (Greenberg et al., 2021; Pierce, 2015).

In the school environment, additional barriers and non-caring responses relate to curriculum (Bajaj & Bartlett, 2017; Garcia & Bartlett, 2007; García et al., 2011; Pacheco & Brown, 2022; Valdes, 1998), and the criminalization and adultification of immigrant youth due to assimilationist principles (Diaz-Strong, 2021; Hamann & Harklau, 2010; Rodriguez, 2019, 2020). The literature calls for US schools to radically rethink the fundamental assumptions of the national schooling system that marginalize immigrants (in addition to minoritized groups broadly) and replace it with what we term care-based healing systems in education, which we return to next.

To summarize, we situate our work in the broader social science and sociological frameworks of contexts that impact immigrant youth educational trajectories and social mobility. We note that educational systems are nested contexts that can be protective or harmful for Latino immigrant youth well-being and belonging. To contribute to past research, we extend this nested notion to include a care-based healing component as part of educational systems. To this end, we first unravel educator and school-personnel perceptions of their school systems and climate toward immigrant youth, and how youth perceive their school climates as fostering their well-being and belonging. We next describe our conceptualization of race-conscious care-based healing in nested educational systems.

Conceptualizing Race-Conscious Care-Based Healing in Educational Systems

We argue that educational systems need to incorporate a care-based healing perspective. By care-based, we mean attention to racial discrimination, or racialization, which is a process of how groups are othered or criminalized and authentic caring needs to be embedded within the system (Rodriguez, 2022; Valenzuela, 1999). The incorporation of healing is imperative as immigrant youth face daily injuries from anti-immigrant policies, sentiments, threats of immigration criminalization, and other forms of systemic oppression (Alvarez & Tulino, 2022). These seen and unseen injuries prompt the need for a care-based system that addresses youth’s need to heal. We chose an orientation toward healing because just as immigrant youth experience daily injuries they need daily care; healing indicates the ongoing nature of this work and the long-term commitment needed to create systems where immigrant youth can thrive. The combination of a racialization lens with one of authentic caring that involves reciprocity and trust among immigrant youths and adults might help educators, researchers, and policymakers think about structural inequalities rather than an individual’s ability to “assimilate” into an American culture understood as dominant white culture. Several examples in educational spaces call attention to the need for a lens that is attentive to the potential past/current harm on immigrants’ sense of belonging in educational settings. Next, we expand this line of inquiry to think about the incorporation of care.

To increase or improve immigrant youths’ sense of belonging, there must be a collective understanding about structural inequalities based on race, class, and immigrant identity markers; we argue that this is what might constitute “authentic” or “critical care” (DeNiccolo et al., 2017). Past research often focuses on levels of assimilation into a broken societal context evidenced by the lack of structural opportunities for immigrant youth; we interrupt these conversations by centering care-based healing approaches in educational systems. By care-based healing, we draw from emerging research in the social sciences that identifies “care” as trauma-informed and understandings of cultural assets of immigrant youth (Shapiro, 2018). Care also includes building, fostering, and structuring opportunities to build and sustain trusting relationships with peers and adults in school spaces (Stanton-Salazar & Spina, 2003). These relationships must also include empathy and strategic resource-brokering (Rodriguez et al., 2020; Rodriguez, 2021). In addition, Latino immigrant youth report that the factors that limit their sense of belonging include a lack of affirming messages about their racial/ethnic, immigrant identity markers (Rodriguez, 2024). Understanding these processes of racialized othering and discrimination is a component of building educator awareness about their experiences.

We now consider additional aspects of care as central to immigrant belonging to build out our conceptualization in relation to this study. Past research has called for “critical authentic care” that allows researchers and educators to consider structural barriers that allow for inequities among immigrant groups to persist (DeNicolo et al., 2017). These authors called for reimagining school spaces through critical care to challenge deficit-based perspectives toward minoritized groups. Specifically, DeNicolo et al. (2017) call for a “pedagogy of critical and authentic care [. . .] to promote school belonging through relationships, curriculum, and practices”. Their study showed the importance of care lenses for school and community groups; we build on this thinking by centering race-conscious approaches to working with immigrant children and youth and consider inside and out-of-school spaces, specifically immigrant-serving community-based organizations (CBOs) that are partners in our research.

To care, in the context of racialized immigrant youth experiences, is to honor larger societal, organizational (schools) racial attitudes toward non-European immigrant groups. Care, from critical and authentic perspectives, acknowledges the racial hierarchies in the U.S., sociopolitical contexts that are structural, and affirms the identities of immigrant students (Valenzuela, 1999). Without race-conscious perspectives, practices and programs will remain deficit-based because colorblind and race-evasive perspectives in and out of schools are a form of “soft caring” rather than authentic (Antrop-Gonzalez & De Jesus, 2006). To extend, supportive relationships are sustained and maintained through on-going and structured opportunities to connect youth with other youth and adults in ways that affirm their racial/ethnic identities. Counter stratification efforts, or critical consciousness raising for educators and school-personnel, is vital to support students in understanding the systemic and structural racism within which they are situated (Rodriguez, Monreal, and Howard, 2020; Stanton-Salazar, 2011). The pursuit of critical consciousness raising within the context of caring relationships allows immigrant youth to see opportunities available to them when they accept support and advice (Stanton-Salazar, 2011).

Furthermore, these caring relationships provide much needed social and emotional support when immigrant youth act upon their empowered consciousness and utilize agency in disrupting social hierarchies (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). While school systems often lack these aspects of care as they are focused on testing, accountability, and assimilability of immigrants or anti-immigrant, “hegemonic ideologies” (DeNiccolo et al., 2017; Hurie & Callahan, 2019, p. 507), community-based organizations and partnerships tend to have specific awareness and agendas that prioritize authentic caring relationships, center youth voice and experience, and allow for youth-driven programming. Holistically, this effort toward authentic care can be embedded in organizations and can promote belonging. Embedded authentic care in CBOs may also support meaningful connections and networks-building in ways that facilitate mobility.

Research shows that meaningful relationships can support minoritized Latino/x youth from low-income backgrounds (Gray-Nichols & Miranda, 2020), including undocumented young adults (see e.g., Gonzales, 2016). For example, research widely confirms that supportive adult relationships can help to reduce ongoing barriers and improve youths’ sense of belonging. Some scholars note how network connections are potentially a factor to reduce inequality for Latino students (Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Stanton-Salazar & Spina, 2003). Relationships with adults who affirm the cultural identity of immigrant youth and model bicultural success can increase both a sense of belonging and academic engagement and perseverance (Boat et al., 2002). Within-school network connections, both weak and strong, can result in increased access to valuable knowledge and resources potentially lacking within a youth’s family and community ecosystems. In caring relationships, adults nurture “multistranded” roles (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). In this case, a caring adult may be a teacher, coach, or counselor but may also serve as a mentor or college advisor. This relationship will likely be “multiplex” in nature in that the adult will offer various resources, types of knowledge, and possibly material assistance at times (Stanton-Salazar, 2011).

The creation of a care-based healing environment where these authentic, empathetic relationships with immigrant youth can be formed and maintained is crucial for immigrant youth to feel comfortable in seeking ongoing support. Sometimes these relationships are formed in schools and outside of schools, that is, through partnerships. As we will show, youth report several factors that impact their limited well-being and lack of belonging in schools due to schools’ lack of care-based healing responses.

In sum, we define care-based as responding to immigrant youth needs including understanding the structural and individual level factors that impact their belonging and not only fostering but expanding sense of belonging through relationships. By belonging, we draw from past interdisciplinary research that shows it is important for youth to feel “connected” or that they fit in by having identities and cultures affirmed (Goodenow, 1993; Rodriguez & Wy, 2024). In our efforts to conceptualize this, we develop this ecosystem of care that examines nested educational systems since Latino immigrant youth, while interacting with several institutions, largely attend school in the US; thus, school becomes one of the most important contexts that can shape educational and social mobility. We call for a vision that includes multiple types of social-emotional support and actors coordinating with one another (Figure 1).

Ecosystem of Care

We envision several terms and key points in Figure 1 that relate to research-based approaches to working with newcomer immigrant populations. While our research involved newcomer immigrant youth and US born Latino youth with parents from immigrant or mixed-status backgrounds, we urge educators and policy-makers to consider our conceptualization of care across immigrant groups. Key concepts in our conceptual model include: community-based partnerships and relationships (Rodriguez, 2020; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009; 2010), social emotional learning and trauma-based practices, and student-teacher relationships of care. We acknowledge the multiple structural, macro policy level factors operating. While, in order to create a true ecosystem, federal and state actors will also need to center care in their policy, we locate this work in the nested educational system context, building upon work in schools and partnerships between schools and community-based spaces.

We note that this Figure 1 includes our conceptual framework of care-based healing. We recognize there are several components, and we are limiting our discussion to what we learned from youth and school-based personnel responses in our study. As such, the federal and state policies constitute the macro, and structural levels we refer to below that impact youth and families in the nested contexts of school-community based partnerships. Meanwhile, the school-based experiences are within the meso-organizational structural level, and youth interactions and relationships are within the individual level factors that we outline as factors that impact well-being and belonging (Rodriguez, 2022). We return to how these practices of care manifest in our nested educational system in this study.

Research Methodology

Design

The current study used a convergent parallel mixed-method design, where we collected quantitative and qualitative data in parallel time frames from (2022-present), analyzed data separately, and then merged the data in the interpretation and discussion of the findings (Creswell et al., 2011). This process helps illuminate findings comprehensively. The quantitative data, which included a survey of 80 school-based personnel, that is, educators, counselors, teachers, principals, superintendents, was used to identify challenges and barriers these groups face in serving immigrant youth and families (described below). Their responses shed light on structural problems in schools that limit immigrant youth belonging. This survey data provides descriptive information about schools’ organizational context that does and does not include care-based responses to supporting immigrant youth.

The qualitative data included interviews with 41 Latino immigrant youth. In a convergent design, the purpose is to collect “complimentary data on the same topic” (Morse, 1991, p. 122), which in this case related to factors that impacted immigrant youth well-being and belonging in schools from multiple perspectives, such as the school-based personnel in the survey and the youth themselves through a survey, qualitative interviews, and fieldwork. A mixed-methods convergent parallel design was the most appropriate approach to answer the research questions because the two forms of data provide greater insight into migrant youth and their well-being in the post-migration context of schools and from their perspectives across multiple school and community-based contexts (Creswell et al., 2011).

Positionality, Data Generation, Sources, and Sample

Positionality

The first author developed a partnership between school districts and two community-based immigrant-serving organizations on the east coast. The first author has a strong investment in promoting equitable access for immigrant youth and has worked extensively with schools and community-based organizations to support their efforts. Identifying as a child of a foreign-born Latinx immigrant and mixed-race as well as a first-generation college student, the racial/ethnic identity of the research team that the first author maintains was particularly critical in working with the community-based organization as they serve children of immigrants, and immigrant youth. The second author is a first-generation college student and daughter of immigrants, whose Latinx identity shapes her unique perspective in this research. Engaging in qualitative coding of open-ended survey responses, site observations, and interviews with youth, the second author’s identity and professional background in community-based organizations informed the data collection and analysis as well as the development of the ecosystem of care conceptual bases (Figure 1). The third author is a first-generation college student and identifies as white. She has worked with immigrant and refugee communities assisting with college access in schools for a decade. She engaged in data analysis with the team.

Survey Data Generation and Sample

School-based and district personnel were sampled through a larger study about how school districts support immigrant students conducted by Sophia. The criteria included working in an immigrant-serving district and interacting with immigrant students and families through their roles. Due to the timeliness of the topic, we sought maximum variation in the type of role each personnel played. Thus, we received responses from superintendents, principals, assistant principals, educators, counselors, and social workers who were invited to participate in a previously validated survey about educator experiences and awareness of immigration policy, and immigrant students (Ee & Gándara, 2020; Lowenhaupt et al., 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022). The 20-item survey for school-personnel included three sections: demographic information, school climate, role, and two open-ended response options about any additional challenges they face in serving immigrant students. In total, 100 school personnel across the districts were invited, and 80 responded. They work in a range of schools on the east coast, across multiple states and urban and suburban districts. These districts share similar challenges in serving immigrant students and their families, in part due to recent demographic change and a growth in recently arrived immigrant families. The years of experience range from 1 to 32 years. Most (over 75%) of the respondents are white and female, regardless of role. We report responses to these items to understand how school-based personnel understand the needs of immigrant youth and the areas they perceive to be important in relation to their professional role.

The youth in the current sample for this paper include 41 students who self-identify as Latino/a or Hispanic and who are immigrants or have immigrant parents. There are 19 males and 22 females in the group. They range from ages 12 to 16. They are English and Spanish speakers. They report their parents as Spanish dominant. They report their country of origin as Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

These youth self-selected into a community-based program that is organized by a nonprofit organization that focuses on Latino youth immigrant justice and organizing for educational and linguistic justice. The youth are in a large urban district from multiple Title I schools and primarily live in low-income neighborhoods. The after-school program meets twice a week during the academic year and four days a week for a six- week summer program. Youth in the project learn about a variety of issues related to advocacy from personal identity, belonging, and aspirations to more societal and structural racism and discrimination impacting Latino immigrant youth and families. We focus on this group because they participate in this program that specifically attempts to address Latino immigrant youth belonging. We also did administer a youth belonging survey with the youth in this program as part of a pilot of the youth belonging survey for school districts (N = 41; Rodriguez & Wy, 2024). Latino youth reported lower belonging in school than in community-based spaces. In this article, we center the lived experiences of youth from our fieldwork and wanted to understand contextualized experiences of belonging in a bounded space of this youth program that we were embedded in for the past year.

We conducted participant-observations in the community-based program. We followed the youth for 1 year through a summer program and the academic year and observed their sessions as well as helped facilitate some of the sessions.

Analysis, Validity, Trustworthiness, and Limitations

Analysis Plan

Our research team, comprised of the lead faculty investigator and two doctoral research assistants, met weekly to determine the analysis plan, refine our conceptual framework, and analyze data. In convergent parallel mixed methods designs, analysis plans involve multiple strategies. Our first research question asked how schools respond to immigrant youth and families, and we utilized the survey data to answer this because the school personnel’s responses provided information about the structural constraints schools face in serving immigrant students. To analyze the quantitative data, we downloaded the raw data from Qualtrics and excluded instances of non-response. For this paper, we utilized the data visualization feature in Qualtrics initially to determine the percentage of and frequency of responses. We acknowledge the limitations of this data set and seek to utilize it to report the data as contextual and descriptive information rather than draw statistical generalizations from it. Consistent with our research design, this survey data set is compared to the findings of the qualitative to understand the interaction between structural (the school/school personnel perspectives) and individual (youth) experiences of sense of caring and well-being.

Our second and third research questions ask about how Latino youth perceive a sense of belonging and examine the factors that impact their belonging. To analyze the qualitative data, we used a software program called Dedoose. Our team engaged in inductive and deductive coding. The former was useful for understanding forms of well-being and definitions from youth perspectives. Example codes include belonging, relationships and well-being, which included anxiety, mental health, and, affirming or non-affirming identities. Given our focus on belonging, we drew definitions from previous scholarship to deductively code. We report the factors we found to impact belonging. We collapsed our initial codebook of 45 codes related to belonging (e.g., relationships and interactions with peers and adults as one example) into larger constructs of the individual and structural level (Appendix A). This flexible and constant comparison of data within and across datasets was critical for this type of convergent study where we wanted to understand these factors impacting well-being and belonging from multiple perspectives.

Validity and Trustworthiness

Merriam (1998) defines internal validity as dealing with “the question of how research findings match reality” (p. 201). Establishing validity in a convergent mixed methods study involves, first, establishing validity in the qualitative and quantitative components of the study (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). We used several strategies to establish validity for the qualitative findings, including: clarifying theoretical orientation related to belonging and care-based healing systems, and using the data from youth to anchor the meaning of those constructs; using multiple qualitative data sources, for example, multiple youth interviews, artifact analysis of youth products from sessions, and participant observations to triangulate, or “confirm the emerging findings” (Merriam, 1998, p. 204); and using the analytic strategy of “explanation building” (Yin, 2014), and leveraging our on-going data collection to confirm or contest our emergent understandings of belonging and care-based healing in education.

To establish validity for the quantitative findings, we used previously validated measures for educator and school-personnel awareness of immigrant students’ needs (Ee & Gandara, 2020; Lowenhaupt et al., 2021). We limit our quantitative findings to descriptive information for this paper to show the context and perceptions of school-based personnel as they work with immigrant youth. We measured educator awareness and perceptions of school climate toward immigrant youth; we also examined this qualitatively by asking youth about their experiences of belonging in their schools (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). For example, both qualitative and quantitative data captured the factors impacting immigrant youth belonging and well-being. There are several limitations here as we are not seeking to generalize to all Latino immigrant students. We are trying to make analytic generalizations and build theory (Yin, 2014) about care-based systems from immigrant youth perspectives of what it means to belong and feel a sense of well-being.

Findings

We organize the findings based on the three research questions outlined earlier. We identify individual and structural level factors that impact youth in our study’s sense of belonging and well-being (Figure 2; Rodriguez, 2022). The first factor concerns how school staff address the needs of immigrant youth and their perceptions of their role in doing so. We present this descriptive information to give context to the larger feelings of well-being, belonging, and isolation that youth report. We then discuss youth perceptions of their schools and challenges they face in feelings of belonging and well-being. As we create this care-based healing model, we recognize that the focus of this paper is to examine structural factors at the school level, considering the perspectives of both school staff and students regarding these factors. Our findings expand the research on immigration and education and are largely consistent with previous studies about school-based personnel and educator responses to immigrant youth needs and barriers (Lowenhaupt et al, 2021; Rodriguez, 2022; Rodriguez et al., 2020). We discuss the individual level factors of youth in more depth due to our questions about immigrant youth well-being. In the following discussion, we depict the factors at both the individual and structural levels that influence the well-being and sense of belonging of Latino immigrant youth. Our findings primarily highlight that youth attribute significant importance to relationships in shaping their well-being and sense of belonging. Additionally, we discovered that structural factors, both within the school environment and within society, were identified by youth as influential on their well-being. These same factors were also acknowledged by school-based personnel as affecting the youth and their ability to serve them equitably and effectively.

Structural Level Factors: School-Based Personnel’s Perceptions of Latino Immigrant Youth Belonging

School Climate

Our survey data set was largely white women in various roles, including English language teachers, counselors, and various administrative positions, such as assistant principals, superintendents, and other district level positions (N = 80). We descriptively report percentages here to provide an overall understanding of their perspectives of school climate and their role; we call these structural (school) factors impacting immigrant youth belonging.

One way that structural, school-level factors impact immigrant youth is through school routines and climate. Regular school routines require immigrant families to interact with school office personnel. While 64.6% of respondents reported that they interacted with language learners¹ who are not native-English speakers, 54.8% of respondents report that office staff speak only English. Regarding another aspect of the welcoming climate, school signage both outside and within the building is a common means of conveying necessary information. While 31.3% of respondents indicated their school environments had signage that is welcoming and inclusive to immigrants and refugees, 57.5% of respondents indicated no such signage. These aspects of the climate are important for understanding the level of welcome youth might feel or experience in schools, that is, inclusive signage, and signaling affirmation of culture (Lowenhaupt et al., 2021).

Secondly, knowledge and awareness of immigration policy and laws contribute to school personnel’s prioritization of immigrant student needs (Rodriguez & McCorkle, 2020), especially as adults are / can be institutional agents to support immigrants’ access to resources. Even though shifting immigration policies significantly affect students, 58.8% of respondents reported that school and district leaders either have no (18.8%) or unknown levels (40%) of understanding regarding immigration policy and laws that affect immigrant students. Furthermore, the discussion of immigration issues within the school community was not explicitly encouraged according to survey results. No respondents indicated that school leaders always encourage them to discuss immigration issues and 32.1% indicated that they were never encouraged to discuss these issues. 52.6% of respondents indicated they were sometimes encouraged to discuss immigration and only 15.4% (12) respondents indicated they were often encouraged to discuss issues around immigration. This can contribute to insecurity about who to trust in schools for youth (Dabach, 2015; Mangual Figueroa, 2017).

Thirdly, the relationships and interactions within schools significantly contribute to the welcoming atmosphere or climate in schools. Regular and consistent interaction with immigrant families also appeared to be minimal according to the survey with the largest percentage of respondents (57.7%) indicating they sometimes interact with families. Meanwhile, 17.9% of respondents interacted with families often and only 2.6% always interacted with families. However, 21.8% of respondents never interacted with immigrant families. This statistic, taken in account with nearly 60% of personnel having only occasional interaction, is indicative of a lack of communication and support to this family demographic.

Perceived Impact of Immigration Enforcement

The survey also asked about school personnel perceptions of the impact of immigration surveillance (Rodriguez, 2020; 2022). We name this as a structural factor at the societal level; perceived impact of immigration enforcement in nested contexts (Rodriguez et al., 2022). For instance, school personnel reported an increase in several worrisome behaviors for immigrant students. For example, 59.4% of personnel reported an increase in absenteeism for immigrant students and 46.4% reported an increase in depression, and increases in fears and uncertainty.

Anti-immigration policies and rhetoric have also had an impact as 44.9% of personnel report an increase in immigrant students’ fear of immigration enforcement and 65.2% indicated an increase in uncertainty for immigrant students about how immigrant policies will impact their family. Another area of the survey invited respondents to report about changes in behaviors of students or if they witnessed increased absenteeism, family separation, or other emotional challenges of youth. As such, 68.4% of school personnel have witnessed a number of family separations due to immigration enforcement over the last 5 years with 7.6% reporting 3 to 5 separations in the last year and another 6.3% reporting five or more separations in the last year.

The high percentage of school personnel who report troublesome increases in immigrant student mental health and absenteeism indicate that school personnel perceive immigrant students to experience isolation from the school community and negative mental health impacts due to immigration policy and laws.

Additional Challenges in Serving Immigrant Students

In addition to this descriptive and contextual information, we also analyzed open ended questions on the survey to further understand school-based personnel understanding of factors impacting immigrant youth belonging. Respondents were also asked to share any additional challenges they observe immigrant students face and how they support them. Lack of access to and knowledge of resources such as financial support, legal counsel, health insurance, and access to reliable internet were frequently mentioned. Language barriers and lack of resources available in multiple languages added to that challenge.

Another common response was mental health issues, trauma and struggles with “fear, isolation, and depression.” School personnel respondents cited that they perceived low self-esteem due to academic performance, interrupted formal education, familial obligations, difficulty connecting with peers, the political climate, cultural differences, and missing their home countries as factors that contributed to mental health challenges in their immigrant students.

Furthermore, 73% of school personnel reported insufficient tools from the district to support immigrant students and their families. The most common (and only) method of support from school-based personnel was connecting families to local community organizations for resources. However, respondents indicated that community support was often lacking and very limited. These data expand our understanding of school personnel perceptions of immigrant students’ well-being and belonging.

Taken together, the descriptive data and the open-ended responses from the school personnel survey paints a picture of what and how schools are struggling to manage the challenges facing immigrant students and families. This data also expands our understanding of the structural factors in school and perceptions of societal factors (i.e., macro policy, and immigration enforcement) on immigrant youth well-being.

Individual Level Factors That Impact Immigrant Youth Well-Being

In addition to the structural factors, we analyzed data from youth to comprehend their perceptions of factors influencing their sense of belonging. Although we label these as individual factors due to being the perspectives of youth on relationships and interactions within schools, they are interconnected. This is because the experiences of youth offer insights into their perceptions of dynamics at the school level. The major finding from all of the youth data, including our individual interviews, observations, and fieldwork shows how important relationships are for them.

The Importance of School Relationships on Latino Immigrant Youth Belonging

Individual level relationships with school personnel that are perceived as caring are integral to immigrant student belonging. In an interview, a youth describes the deep trust they enjoy with a school social worker, one youth said:

She’s [the social worker] like my favorite person um she’s kind of like a second mom to me [. . .] I trust her a lot because I could tell her anything and she’ll just listen and try to be the best on her advice. She’ll always really be on my side and she always looks after the best for me.”

The youth reports this trusted adult feels familial, and outlines actions and behaviors of this social worker that show care as being on the student’s “side.”

Another student described how easy access to a counselor provided her with regular support in the school setting, saying: “I used to talk to my favorite staff member [. . .]. I used to go to his office because it was right next [to] my class. So, [I] always used to go there and talk to him.” Even when students are hesitant to develop trusting relationships with teachers, some teachers will make efforts to reassure students that shared information is private as demonstrated by this other interviewee who said: “I know a lot of kids don’t want to ask for help because they want to do things on their own or they’re too scared. They’re scared teachers are telling other teachers.” Some youths shared that what they appreciate most about teachers is their approachability and that they are “comfortable.” In these examples, we observe youth reporting comfort, approachability, trust, feeling like a parental figure as key aspects of their relationships in the schools. Repeatedly, youth said they felt cared for when teachers “took the time” to make sure they were understanding context or understanding their perspectives on things in classes. These are important building blocks for understanding how schools are responding in caring ways from youth perspectives.

In addition to trusting adults, or feeling understood or heard, youth also highlighted specific aspects of their relationships with adults to emphasize the significance of these connections. For example, in discussing when the student felt they could “trust” an adult, a youth said:

I feel like they would look at things, the way—they will try to look at things the way a student will look at them or like, give them advice. But honestly, you can just talk with them, you can just say whatever with them. They’re really comfortable to be with.

Across the data, youth shared feelings of comfort, trust, and feeling heard and understood as part of the types of relationships that helped them feel a sense of belonging and welcome in their schools.

Conversely, the development of caring individual level relationships can also be hindered when staff are overworked, focused on management of classwork, or overwhelmed by a large student population. In these instances, students may not perceive them as approachable or to be trusted with sensitive information or youths’ needs. Youth also shared negative examples of relationships. These helped to understand how schools are not welcoming spaces. One youth talked about teachers who were “discouraging.” She said:

My teacher discouraged me so much. My mom went up to talk to her. The next day, she didn’t even say my name in attendance because of how mad she was. And, I guess, my mom asking her, you know, ‘What happened,’ and that put her in a bad mood, she was mean to me for the rest of the year, and she just never pushed. I never felt like she pushed me to do harder. Once I scored lower in a middle of the year test, and she said, ‘I’m not even gonna let you retake it because I think you’re gonna score even lower.’ Why would you say that? I never wanted to go her to class again, cried to my mom talking about how I didn’t want her to be my teacher. . ..Discouraging words have like really big impact. (Interview, 2023)

This example showed how little encouragement and acknowledgment coupled with low expectations of the student impacted her sense of belonging to this teacher. It was common for youth, especially given their Latinx immigrant backgrounds and in some cases language learning backgrounds to feel less confident in schools. Several talked about feeling shy, or lacking confidence in class. Yet, some individuals received negative messages that further diminished their confidence in their abilities and sense of self, or even reinforced these feelings.

In addition to their Latinx and language learning backgrounds, several youths were also dealing with immigration-related issues in their families. With immigration status variation comes additional challenges, so relationships and caring responses are critical. While most students in the study came from mixed-status families where at least one family member may be undocumented, some students who were undocumented or unaccompanied themselves expressed how discussion of immigration issues can make them nervous. One youth explained, “I know a lot of kids don’t want to ask for help because they are too scared.” Feeling uncertain about who they can trust, youth shared hesitancy in sharing some of the challenges with adults. One explained: “It is mostly when our teachers talk about immigration. I get worried sometimes we might get deported.” This young person expressed uncertainty about sharing her personal immigration experiences with teachers. She emphasized the need to feel secure and trusting in her relationship with an adult at school. Fortunately, she found this sense of trust with a school counselor.

The Importance of Shared Identity, Culture, or Language School Relationships

In addition to commenting on the types of relationships and their characteristics that they perceived as caring or supportive (or not), youth also discussed affinities related to racial and ethnic identity. Interviews demonstrated the importance of representation among staff in the promotion of immigrant student belonging and their perception of fair and equal treatment. One student said, “The principal, she’s American, but then the other [people] at the desk are Hispanic [. . .] So we get treated equally.” When asked if teachers say positive things about Latinos in her school, this same student stated, “Yeah, I agree they do because some of them are mixed (biracial/partially Hispanic).” Students felt that their (racial/ethnic and cultural) identities were affirmed and this contributed to a positive sense of belonging (Rodriguez, 2024). These sentiments can vary, however, depending on the racial/ethnic, or linguistic backgrounds of adults in schools.

Another student described how having a Hispanic counselor made relationship development much easier, “I felt because she was also Hispanic. So I felt like we connected because of that. But mostly because she actually talked to me even when I like was too shy to talk back. She kept on trying. And she didn’t give up so that’s one thing why I cared to talked to her.” These student responses underscore the importance of racial and ethnic representation amongst staff that reflects immigrant student demographics so that these students feel seen, understood, and valued as their authentic selves. Staff representation reflective of immigrant students is a crucial factor in the creation of a welcoming and inclusive school climate that effectively serves and normalizes experiences of immigrant youth.² Relatedly, the school personnel survey respondents noted the lack of linguistic diversity in schools as a structural factor potentially contributing to lower belonging. And youth receive these messages as part of the school climate. This underscores the significance of cultural representation and linguistic diversity in establishing a care-based healing system and promoting the well-being and sense of belonging of youth in schools.

Lastly youth shared how having Hispanic and Spanish speaking staff at school also helped their parents and caregivers feel welcomed. Because many parents are also involved in the CBO programming, youth observe how their parents are treated and how they equip and empower themselves within the CBO spaces despite exclusion they experience with schools. One youth described her mother’s experience. She reflected,

I just think of my mom. I feel like definitely being a Hispanic woman who has struggled with her English in certain places where she sees mainly English-speaking people, she has felt like she doesn’t belong, and I feel that definitely affects her mentally, because she starts losing confidence. (Interview, 2023)

Another youth talked about how her mom could be more involved at school if she felt welcome. Explaining this, she said:

Just having a Spanish-speaking person at the front desk would make students and especially parents more welcome. My mom would definitely have joined the PTO by now. I know my mom, if she has to call the school, she’ll make me call the school but she’s involved at my brother’s school because the main person speaks Spanish and also the parents honestly make her feel welcome as well, even if she’s speaking in English, even if she has to speak in English to them. She feels welcome because she knows there’s someone who can, uh, um, have her back in any moment. (Interview, 2023).

These examples that youth experience or that they observe their parents experience show how their individual perceptions of relationships matter for their belonging. Youth sharing their families’ experience of exclusion, connectedness, or struggles was part of their sense-making about their belonging to school. And because they were in a community-based organization that also held programs for parent advocacy, youth were talking with and observing their parents’ experiences with their schools. In addition, having a shared identity, culture, or language with some of the staff members’ affirmation, awareness, or shared identities/cultures contributed to their belonging.

Discussion

Our findings addressed the research questions about how schools respond to the needs of Latino immigrant youth needs and how the youth perceive their sense of belonging, well-being and the factors that inhibit it or contribute to it. We found a convergence of findings as we compared the data in this mixed-methods study.

Factors Impacting Latino Youth Belonging and Well-Being

We revealed the structural factors that impact immigrant youth belonging by drawing on survey data from school-based personnel. This data revealed the contextual, school climate, and role restrictions that personnel perceive to impact youth. Our Figure 2 attempted to show these factors visually. We noted that structural, or school personnel perceptions of structural factors, could refer to structures at the macro-societal level such as the impact of immigration enforcement and surveillance that youth deal within their everyday lives as immigrants and children of immigrants.

Structural also referred to the meso-organizational school level. In schools, climate, role boundaries of educators and personnel, racial attitudes and educator awareness of immigrant youths’ needs highly impacts youth perceptions of belonging and well-being (Rodriguez et al., 2020; Dabach, 2015). Climate indicators included the lack of racial/ethnic diversity and linguistic diversity of staff and educators in the schools. Survey data showed how personnel feel a need for more supports to serve immigrant students. It is important to highlight that the majority of respondents to the survey were white teachers, who indicated needing more resources to care for their immigrant students, however, the responses did not reveal specificity about what types of supports. Thus, we turned to our data from youth to ground potential empirically-based ways to build caring educational systems.

We found individual factors from youth data that impacted their belonging. Youth reported that relationships mattered, specifically relationships with adults. Youth reported specific behaviors and characteristics of caring adult actions such as being approachable, on their “side” and building trusting spaces. Several youths reported not feeling confident and needing to feel safe in classrooms and in some cases, educators cultivate this sense of safety while others did not and only reinforced fears and lack of confidence of the youth. Youth also shared examples of feeling connected to school when staff or educators shared or understood aspects of their ethnicity, language, or culture. This was especially poignant when youth shared instances when their parents felt a sense of belonging or did not due to the overall welcoming climate of the school.

Convergent Findings

In this mixed-methods study, we examined two data sets alongside each other (See example, Appendix B). To integrate and compare our findings from the survey and the longitudinal qualitative data, we reflect upon convergent findings. For example, school personnel reported instances of increased absenteeism and fear among immigrant families and mental health challenges from immigration trauma in the survey data. while youth shared instances of they or their family members feeling “scared” to ask for help. Youth shared that they had fears of family separation and deportation and if they disclosed immigration issues to teachers that teachers would tell other teachers in one example we provided.

In another example, we highlight that personnel shared the lack of bilingual, ethnically/racially diverse staff in their schools. From youth perspectives, we learned aspects and attributes of caring adults, relationships, educational systems that contribute to their positive sense of self and overall mental health. From both staff and youth, it was evident that well-being is at stake for Latino immigrant youth as they live and navigate immigration policies and societal discrimination as well as nested educational contexts that are not always welcoming. Their experiences provide the groundwork for building such racialized caring and healing systems in nested educational settings and community-based spaces.

Implications for How Schools Respond to Latino Immigrant Youth and Families’ Needs

The implications of our findings expand the educational and social science literature about how to improve nested contexts of reception in the spaces of schools as well as deepen the understanding of race-conscious care-based healing responses. We began with a vision for how nested educational systems ought to be caring and incorporate what we term race-conscious care-based healing in educational systems (Figure 1). We leveraged past educational research on “care” and healing, multi-dimensional relationships within a larger ecosystem (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2009, 2010), social emotional learning and trauma-based practices, and student-teacher relationships of care that are also reciprocal and received by youth as caring (Valenzuela, 1999) and relationships that affirm and center racialized experiences of immigrant youth (Rodriguez, 2020). In our data from youth, we heard the ways that families were deeply impacted by immigration systems while schools and after-school spaces could be affirming or contribute further to trauma and further unbelonging or negative belonging. To prevent or mitigate this, we expand this race-conscious care-based healing model by centering the lived realities of the youth we studied. Using youth experiences, we anchor their voices as starting points for acknowledging their immigration-status, and racialized positioning as Latino immigrants as potential sites of trauma they have experienced (Alvarez & Tulino, 2022). To heal and care, we must acknowledge the hidden and explicit traumas and injuries these young people encounter as well as the families they are a part of that also experience exclusion or separation. The larger macro and meso structural systems, which is made up of politics, policies, practices, and organizational routines and racial attitudes, are intertwined with everyday relationships and interactions in schools (Abrego, 2019; Ee & Gándara, 2020; Lowenhaupt et al., 2021; Ray, 2019; Rodriguez, 2021).

A key intervention and potential way to cultivate what we call race-conscious care-based healing in educational systems is to strive to hire and employ educators and mental-health professionals that reflect and are aware of the needs of the communities they serve. One example noted in prior scholarship is to hire diverse teachers and revamp relevant curriculum. Teachers, educators, school personnel who speak the same language as their students, have similar backgrounds, and sometimes similar immigration statuses can use these similarities to foster relationships with their students and between the school and community. It is important for students to see themselves reflected in their teachers so that they can begin to imagine themselves as professionals and watch as their teachers navigate U.S. and home culture (Garcia & Bartlett, 2007).

In addition, recognizing the trauma that comes with being an immigrant or child of an immigrant, and specifically experiencing hostile, discriminatory structural barriers during the migration journey and process is essential to building successful relationships with students. Recognizing trauma, not through a deficit-based lens, is part of a caring response. Schools should focus on professional development that will add to teachers’ and additional school-based personnel knowledge of student’s cultures and communities but also the way trauma affects learning (Bajaj & Suresh, 2018, Rodriguez et al., 2020; Rodriguez, 2021). Schools must strengthen social-emotional services with daily/weekly advisor check-ins, wellness centers, and partnering with organizations or individuals who can address the students’ needs with cultural and linguistic competency.

Further, community partnerships can help schools provide holistic wrap-around services (Martin & Suárez-Orozco, 2018). Youth in our fieldwork in an immigrant-serving community-based organization largely reported higher belonging in community-based settings when compared to schools (Rodriguez & Wy, 2024). Through community partnerships, schools can provide legal service information sessions, internship opportunities, mental health services, and recreational activities. Schools are also able to engage families through these same services plus food drives, and even community gardens (Bajaj & Suresh, 2018). With this community model (Figure 1), the school becomes a welcoming environment for all and the bedrock of the community. This holistic approach to schooling is imperative to support Latino and Latino immigrant youth who otherwise face uncertain paths, mistreatment, and inhuman policies. With these local school practices, we can begin building a community of care for immigrant students. Future research will ideally continue building key interventions, policies, and practices that can add to our understanding of the individual and structural factors that promote immigrant youth belonging and well-being, and expand notions of race-conscious care-based healing in nested contexts of schools and community-based spaces.

Conclusion

We aimed in this paper to chart a path toward a race-conscious care-based healing in nested educational systems as contexts of reception. We hoped to develop analytic clarity of what care-based and healing might mean if we ground it in youth experiences and built potential educational systems around their experience. In doing so, we honor and affirm their identities and cultures, acknowledge their racialized and immigration-status based trauma and view it as an asset and an invitation to improve educator practice. As the Latino student population continues to grow and the number of Latino immigrant students rise across the U.S., the well-being of these students will be a persistent challenge for educators. Future research ought to continue to build upon youth voices to improve their well-being and belonging.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix B.

Sample Joint Display of Data in Convergent Mixed Methods Design about Factors Impacting Immigrant Youth Belonging and Well-being.

Overarching theoretical /conceptual construct	Quantitative survey findings (school and district personnel; N = 80)	Qualitative findings (youth; N = 41)
School climate	Relationships w/ youth and families; Limited welcoming signage; Educator awareness and attitudes toward immigrant students; 58.8% of respondents indicated that school and district leaders have no (18.8%) or unknown levels (40%) of working knowledge of immigration policy and laws that impact immigrant student	Negative relationships and interactions; Lack of understanding by educators and trust; Positive relationships with approachable and trusting educators
Shared identity, culture, or language	Limited bilingual and racial/ethnically diverse staff / Mostly English-speaking staff	Connections with staff/educators that are of similar ethnic/linguistic backgrounds
Perceived impact of immigration enforcement	Increased observations of absenteeism and fear among families	Feeling scared to talk to teachers or school personnel about immigration related barriers in families

Source. Fetters, 2019.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the youth and school personnel for their participation in the project. The authors also wish to thank graduate student research assistants from Dr. Sophia Rodriguez’s ImmigrantEdNext Research Lab, specifically Katya Murillo and Gisell Ramirez and the William T. Grant Foundation for funding this research. The authors also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback on the manusript.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported by the William T. Grant Foundation.

ORCID iD

Sophia Rodriguez

Notes

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