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.