Difference between revisions of "Introduction"

From Dissertation in Progress
Jump to: navigation, search
(Created page with "The activities of immigrant youth have always been and continue to be an essential part of the American experience. As a country made up of newcomers, the U.S. has been histor...")
 
Line 1: Line 1:
The activities of immigrant youth have always been and continue to be an essential part of the American experience. As a country made up of newcomers, the U.S. has been historically transformed by the incorporation of foreigners and their children. Immigrants have arrived, settled, and continue to arrive in the U.S. in search of better opportunities for them and their families. Social scientists, policy makers, and the public have constantly discussed the idea of assimilation, understood as the process of immigrant incorporation to the host society. In the 21st Century, however, the process of adaptation has become much more complex than the one sociologists theorized about previous generations. U.S. culture, economy, and society, on the one hand, are no longer as homogenous as they were once imagined. On the other, the relationships between different ethnic-racial groups have become considerably more complicated than what the melting pot metaphor and its harmonious ideal of common culture could describe. In the present context, with a society that is highly stratified and ethnically-racially heterogeneous; a post-industrial economy characterized by growing inequality; and a culture that is hyper-mediated by information communication technologies; immigrant processes of assimilation into United States have disparate outcomes, and not everyone is incorporated into the mainstream middle-class. Furthermore, in the present moment, immigrant youth are playing a more active role in the process of assimilation as they actively engage with digital tools and networks, and develop new media practices that shape their incorporation trajectories and the ones of their families.
+
On the Saturday morning of June 8, 2012, at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center, a multipurpose arena near downtown Austin, Inara, Antonio, and Sergio, three Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths with Mexican origins, were awarded a U.S. high school diploma. Along with other senior students (402 in total), school officers, faculty and staff, the band, and an audience of family and friends (approximately 1,500), they participated in the commencement ceremony of Freeway High School, a public school located on the north urban fringe of Austin. Wearing the traditional European academic dress of gown and cap, they walked across the graduation stage while members of the audience cheered, applauded, raised written signs with congratulatory messages, and took pictures with smartphones and other digital mobile devices. Following the graduation ritual protocol, they sang the "The Star-Spangled Banner" national anthem and the school song, listened to the speeches given by school administration officers and counselors, and to the salutatorian and valedictorian addresses delivered by the top ranking graduates. The ceremony marked a life milestone for these immigrant youths, the end of their K-12 educational journey in the country where their parents migrated years before in search of opportunities.
  
Due to the characteristics of the last massive wave of immigration that followed the "Immigration and Naturalization act of 1965," the face of the American population has changed.  The nation has become more ethnically and racially diverse. At the dawn of the 21st Century, the pan-ethnic Latino/Hispanic group (37 million) surpassed the size of the African American group (36.2 million) becoming for the first time in U.S. history the largest minority. (Clemetson 2003) According to more recent Census data, the Latino/Hispanic population reached 53 million in 2012, six times its size in 1970. (Brown 2014) The U.S. demographic shift is especially visible among the younger population. In public kindergartens, elementary and high schools across the country, Latino/Hispanic students make up nearly one-quarter (23.9%) of the enrollment, and in the most populous states, the share is even bigger, 50% in California and about 40% in Texas. (Fry and Lopez 2012) Although the majority of the Latino/Hispanic public school students (84%) are born in the U.S., most of them are children of immigrants from Mexico (69%), Puerto Rico (9%), Dominican Republic (3%), El Salvador (3%), and Cuba (2%). (Fry and Gonzales 2008) In such context of demographic transformation, researching the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth population, including both those who are native-born to immigrant parents and those who are foreign-born, is important for understanding the social, cultural, economic, and political transformations of the present and future U.S. How are these new immigrants navigating their assimilation to the host society? What kind of new media practices are shaping their process of incorporation to the U.S.? How are they leveraging new media tools and networks in order to find opportunities of participation across realms such as culture, education, and economy? Moreover, given the Latino/Hispanic group position of disadvantage across several U.S. structural divides, how are these young immigrants navigating U.S. evolving social inequalities? How do different kinds of access to new media technologies (motivational, material, skills, and usage) are affecting their assimilation trajectories? And what kind of identities are they constructing as they engage in new media practices across multiple contexts?
+
Together with Alex, another researcher from the Digital Edge project , I arrived at the commencement just in time for the initial procession that hundreds of Freeway High seniors, along with the school band, performed at the ground floor. It was the first time in my life attending a high school graduation ceremony in the United States. It was also my first time inside "The Superdrum," as it was also known the Frank Erwin Special Events Center due to its shape and huge size (6,400 Sq. Ft.). Although I had seen the building many times and wondered about its retro-futuristic architecture style, I never had the opportunity to go to any of the rock concerts, basketball games, professional wrestling combats, and other kinds of events that take place there. Inside, the building looked like an entertainment venue, it had two levels of seats organized in rings, several video screens and electric signs arranged on the ceilings and walls, a ground floor, and several corridors with food vendors. Half of the ground floor was filled with rows of chairs for the graduates. They were organized in front of a graduation stage located at one of the sides, which had a long rectangular table, chairs for school officers, and the flags of Texas and the U.S. The lower ring of seats was almost full, consisting of a diverse and intergenerational audience of family members and friends that reflected the demographics of Freeway High. The majority of the student population was minorities. Almost half (47.5%) were Latino/Hispanic, 24.2% African American, 13.3% Asian, and 11.2% were White.
  
In my dissertation project, “Crossing Many Worlds: New Media Practices, Identities and Assimilation Trajectories of Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youth in the U.S.”, I try to understand how Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth actively navigate the process of incorporation into a new society, constructing multiple identities and leveraging new media tools and networks. Through a series of case studies of five immigrant youths with Mexican origins (2 girls and 3 boys, ages 14-19), living in the Austin metropolitan area, working class socioeconomic background, and different generational status (1.5 and second-generation), I intend to examine the relationships between new media practices, identity construction, digital inequality, and the process of assimilation to the U.S. I use a transdisciplinary framework in order to understand these relationships. Drawing on sociocultural theory of identity (Holland et al. 1998; Alzaldua 1999; McCarthey & Moje 2002); media and cultural theories of new media practice and participation (Jenkins 2006a, 2006b; Ito et. Al. 2010; Couldry 2012; Carpentier 2010; Livingstone 2002; Varnelis 2008); theories of digital inequality (Warschauer 2002; DiMaggio et al. 2004; Selwyn 2004; van Dijk 2005; Chen and Wellman 2005; Hargittai 2008; Stern et al. 2009; Schradie 2011; Watkins 2012); and sociological theory of segmented assimilation (Portes & Zhou 1993; Rumbaut 1996; Portes & Rumbaut 2001; Portes et. Al. 2005), I will analyze how immigrant youth construct multiple identities as they engage in mediated activities across three different contexts (home, an after-school program, and the Internet). Through the diverse new media practices immigrant youth have within these contexts they create fluid identities, participate in different "figured worlds", and shape their assimilation trajectories.
+
While at my seat at the lower ring, surrounded by a mix of Asians, African Americans, Latino/Hispanics, and Whites adults and children, I was reminded of the demographic transformation that has unfolded in the U.S. as a result of the last wave of large-scale immigration that has happened since 1965.  The so-called "new immigrants" and their children were indeed changing the face of the United States and proof of this was the diversity of families and graduates present at the Freeway High School commencement ceremony. This mix of colors, ethnicities, and races, provided a glimpse of what social scientists have predicted for the future of U.S. population composition. The reality of the U.S. as a majority-minority country was perhaps arriving sooner than expected.
  
Despite the constraints that social, economic, educational, and technological inequalities in contemporary U.S. pose to Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth (macro processes), these young individuals exercise their agency and become resilient social actors (micro processes). As they engage in new media practices immigrant youth participate in several figured worlds and cross several sociocultural spaces, situating themselves sometimes in between contexts and producing fluid and hybrid identities. Even though sometimes Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth participation is peripheral as when they are situated in marginal positions of power, their activities and media practices are still significant in terms of identity work and assimilation. In each of the case studies elaborated, I try to demonstrate that immigrant youth with Mexican origins are resilient and hybrid social actors (although with different degrees and outcomes) capable of border-crossing and identity-shifting as they engage in diverse new media practices and enter/exit different contexts.
+
However, the past was also present at the commencement ceremony. During the presentation of the graduates by the superintendent of schools, I could not stop thinking about the longue durée historical processes that unfolded across Texas territories. More than a hundred of the graduates had Spanish names similar to the ones I could encounter in Latin America, Spain, or Colombia, my country of origin. Listening to first names like Alejandra, Maria, Gabriela, and Carlos, and last names like Martinez, Garcia, and Diaz, pronounced with an Anglo accent, reminded me of the history of the lands where the graduation ritual was taking place. Not that many years ago these territories were part of the Republic of Texas (1836-1846), the República de Mexico (1821-1836), and for almost two centuries, these lands belonged to Nueva España and the Spanish Empire (1690-1821). Before those multiple occupations, of course, these territories were the home of several Native Americans Indian tribes such as Comanches, Coahuiltecos, and Caddos. Spanish, however, was an European language that continued to be present in Texas not only in the names of rivers, towns, streets, foods, plants, and people, but also in the orality of many of its inhabitants. Among people grouped under the pan-ethnic term "Hispanic" or "Latino/a" in the U.S., Spanish was one of the languages they could use for communicating with each other, especially, intergenerationally.
  
All of the young immigrants from Mexico that participate in this study are assimilating to the U.S. However, they are following different pathways of incorporation and constructing different identities according to a complex interaction between individual and structural factors. In my analysis I acknowledge both macro and micro processes, and use a middle range theoretical approach where both immigrant youth individual agency and the social structural constraints are interrelated. Because of this approach, I analyze both qualitative data collected during ethnographic work, as well as quantitative data produced by governmental agencies, research centers, and academic institutions.
+
"¡Felicitaciones mijo!" [Congratulations my son!] said Mr. Chapa to his son Antonio after the ceremony while walking through the open public space outside of the Erwin Center. Navigating through a crowd of parents, children, and recent graduates the five members of the Chapa family moved through the public space trying to find a spot for a picture. Minutes later, with a view of the Capitol building, Antonio, his old sister, younger brother, and dad, all dressed up in formal clothes, posed for a photograph that Ms. Chapa took with her smartphone. In the background, new buildings and construction cranes emerged as symbols of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Twenty years before, Mr. and Ms. Chapa migrated from a small town in the state of San Luis Potosi, northern Mexico, escaping from extreme rural poverty. In the middle of one of the biggest economic crisis that affected agriculture in Mexico, Antonio's parents decided to move north of the Rio Grande in search of better opportunities. As many other immigrants from Mexico, they came to the U.S. in order to become part of the labor force. Given their low levels of formal education (none of them completed middle school) and few economic resources, Mr. and Ms. Chapa started to work in construction and housekeeping jobs. More than two decades later, posing with Antonio, the second child that had completed high school in the U.S., they had reason to celebrate and be proud of their accomplishments. Mr. Chapa had already become a U.S. citizen, Ms. Chapa was a U.S resident, they owned an old suburban house equipped with media technologies and Internet connectivity, had two sport utility vehicles, and both continued to have working class jobs. Although their income was low and their occupations low-skilled, they still were able to raise a family and send their children to public school. Antonio (17), for instance, was born in Austin, proficient in English, completed twelve grades of schooling, passed the Texas standardized tests, and was becoming a high school graduate. "Vamos a tener una comida de mole de olla y enchiladas potosinas esta tarde en nuestra casa" [We are going to have a dinner of mole de olla y enchiladas potosinas this afternoon in our house] Ms. Chapa told me when I asked her about their plans after the ceremony. Their dream of finding better opportunities in the U.S. seemed to be happening as they were able to participate in several social domains in their new country.
  
This research study emerges from the Digital Edge project, a three-year research initiative I participated in, led by S. Craig Watkins at the University of Texas at Austin, and funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of the Connected Learning Research Network (CLRN). I draw on the qualitative data collected by the Digital Edge team during a longitudinal ethnography (2011-2012) conducted at Freeway High School, a large, ethnically diverse, and economically disadvantaged public high school in the Austin Metropolitan Area.
+
However, anti-immigrant discourse abounded at the dawn of the twenty-first century in the United States, and some opinion leaders, politicians, and scholars questioned the assimilation of the newcomers. Due to the sustained large-scale migration of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America since 1965, and the rapid growth of the Latino/Hispanic population (they became the largest minority in the country in 2001), some sectors of the U.S. public expressed their anxieties about their incorporation into society. As the anti-immigration debate gained force, fears of the demographic shift became easier to propagate, especially given the changes in the economy, and the way in which racial and social stratification were interlaced in the U.S. Hence, Latino/Hispanics, and especially Mexicans as the dominant group (64.6% of the total share) (Lopez, Gonzalez-Barrera, Cuddington 2013), became the target of several concerns. Political scientist Samuel Huntington, for instance, articulated one of the most controversial arguments in "The Hispanic Challenge" (2004). In this essay Huntington claimed that Latino/Hispanics did not assimilate into U.S. mainstream culture but instead formed linguistic and political enclaves rejecting the white Anglo-Protestant values. Warning the public about the dangers of immigration, Huntington wrote, "the possibility of a de facto split between a predominantly Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States (…) is a major potential threat to the country's cultural and political integrity" (Huntington, 2004). Emphasizing cultural factors, and especially language and educational attainment, Huntington sketched an alarming picture of the U.S as divided by two cultures and two languages, complementing other anti-immigration arguments that focused on economic costs. According to Huntington, the Latino/Hispanics, and in particular the ones with Mexican origins, were becoming a threat to U.S. national identity.
 +
 
 +
Given the reality of a public school system in which Latino/Hispanic children became the majority in states such as in Texas and California, the problem of immigrant youth assimilation in the U.S. intrigued me.  Many second- and third-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant children were at the cusp of U.S. demographic shift and were the subject of moral concerns that could exacerbate negative stereotypes and disempower them.  Were Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth really a threat to the national identity? Were they dividing the country into two cultures and two languages? After living in the U.S. for more than six years and having spent several months doing ethnographic work at Freeway High School as a member of the Digital Edge project, it was difficult for me to imagine such a split. In contrast, what I observed was that many Latino/Hispanics adults, particularly from Mexican origins, were working hard holding down multiple jobs, making efforts to earn a living and sustain their families. Meanwhile, their children were going to public schools, using digital media technologies, speaking English and sometimes, with less proficiency, Spanish. Some Latino/Hispanic youth were also enrolled in colleges, and I had the opportunity to meet, work, and befriend several of them at U.T., especially while working at the Division of Student Affairs. It troubled me that the presence of Latino/Hispanics generated so much anxiety especially in a state like Texas, which such deep cultural and historical ties to Spain and Mexico.  Moreover, in the U.S. context of increasing socioeconomic inequalities and stratification, it was problematic to see the Latino/Hispanic population, with all its diversity, being positioned at the "wrong" side of many divides and many times studied from a perspective that emphasized a pathological narrative of social ill and cultural deficit. As a result, I became interested in researching Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, and, particularly, how they were navigating their process of assimilation in the U.S while using digital tools and networks.
 +
 
 +
In this dissertation, my main objective is to investigate the assimilation process of five second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth growing up in Austin, Texas, in a context of networked communication, a hyper-mediated culture, and structural inequalities.  The problem of immigrant assimilation, allows me to inquire from a rarely explored perspective, the critical issue of digital inequalities and youth agency. Immigrant youth are playing a more active role in the process of assimilation that their families undertake as they actively engage with digital tools and networks and develop new media practices that shape not only their adaptation to the U.S. but also the one of their parents. As an interdisciplinary researcher and designer working in the field of media studies, I am interested in understanding the characteristics of the new media practices and skills Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths are developing as they communicate and socialize in a networked communication environment. My analysis focuses on three particular contexts of everyday activity: the home, an after-school program, and the multi-setting of social media networked spaces. For each of these contexts, I intend to elaborate a series of case studies of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth in which I analyze how they exercise their agency, develop digitally mediated practices, and acquire
 +
new media skills. The main questions I try to answer are:
 +
 
 +
<blockquote>
 +
What are the new media practices and skills Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth develop in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces? How do those practices and skills help them to navigate their assimilation process?
 +
</blockquote>
 +
 
 +
Understanding Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths as social actors and creative agents, I examine how their use of digital tools and networks can help them assimilate into multiple social domains. Particularly, I focus on how they assimilate into linguistic, cultural, educational, and social dimensions, but in some cases also into the economic and civic ones. Since according to U.S. official quantitative data the Latino/Hispanic population is situated on the "wrong" side of several structural divides (educational attainment, income, occupation, and health), analyzing the new media practices of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth is useful for revealing the diversity of these population and the complex ways in which digital inequalities and participation gaps are evolving. Although the position of these youths is one of disadvantage given the working class and immigrant status of their families, my approach tries to understand them in terms of their resilience and normative growth, their agency and creativity, and not in terms of their deficit or poverty.  By doing so, I intend to untangle some of the paradoxes that appear as these youths, despite their fewer economic, social, and technological resources, can leverage the affordances of the new networked communication environment in a particular manner. Despite structural forces and inequalities, Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth exercise their agency and can shape the direction of their process of incorporation into the U.S., participating, or not, in multiple social domains. One of my goals in this dissertation is to demonstrate how the rapid evolution of the networked communication environment and the increasing structural inequalities determine different forms of participation and incorporation, with different qualities, and disparate outcomes.
 +
 
 +
=== Assimilation Trajectories ===
 +
 
 +
In a nation of immigrants such as the United States, the term assimilation has been used to describe the process of incorporation of newcomers into the host country. Although the term is contested, it remains useful today for researching and understanding the experiences of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth and their families in the U.S. Drawing on contemporary sociological theories I conceptualize assimilation as a complex process that is uneven, segmented, and multidimensional. It may or may not happen according to different individual and structural factors. In this dissertation, I understand assimilation as the process of incorporation into the culture, economy, education, and other social domains that immigrants and their children undertake, at least during three generations, as they settle in a new country. Assimilation, therefore, is a multidimensional process closely related to social inclusion. It involves issues of participation, access to opportunity structures, and socioeconomic mobility.
 +
 
 +
In the twenty-first century, however, this process has become much more complex than the one that sociologists theorized about for previous generations in which there was a straight line trajectory into an Anglo and white mainstream middle class. U.S. society, on the one hand, is no longer as homogenous as it was once imagined. On the other hand, the relationships between different ethnic-racial groups have become considerably more complicated than what the melting pot metaphor and its harmonious ideal of common culture could describe. In the present context, with a society that is highly stratified and ethnically-racially heterogeneous; a post-industrial economy characterized by growing inequality and a bifurcated labor market; and a vibrant culture that is networked and hyper-mediated by information communication technologies, processes of assimilation in United States have disparate and uneven outcomes. For instance, not all immigrants in the U.S. are being incorporated into the same socioeconomic segments. As researchers from the segmented assimilation paradigm have argued, depending on individual and structural factors, immigrants may assimilate into the working class and not necessarily to a mainstream middle class. As a matter of fact, since the U.S. middle class has been shrinking consistently over the past half-century, assimilation into the working class has become part of the trajectory of many immigrants in this country. Especially for the labor immigrants with low levels of education, becoming part of the expanding U.S. working class of service and less-skilled workers has allowed them to adapt to the host country, gain some fair socioeconomic mobility, and participate in some of the social domains, although from a disadvantaged position of power.
 +
 
 +
In my analysis of the assimilation process of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, I draw on the segmented assimilation model that Alejandro Portes, Min Zhou, and Ruben Rumbaut have been elaborating and testing since the 1990s. Particularly, I rely on their understanding of assimilation trajectories as an intergenerational process of socioeconomic mobility, access to opportunity, and cultural adaptation. According to the segmented assimilation model, two trajectories are characterized by upward mobility and incorporation into the working and middle classes, while one follows a downward trajectory towards the underclass and exclusion. Each trajectory is correlated with a specific type of intergenerational cultural adaptation. While the upward mobility and integration into the middle class goes together with the consonant acculturation (parents and children adopt mainstream culture), the one of upward mobility and incorporation into the working class is correlated with selective acculturation (parents and children adopt certain mainstream cultural practices). In contrast, the downward socioeconomic trajectory is correlated to what researchers call "dissonant acculturation." That is, acculturation gaps between parents and children that create conflicts within the family, risky behaviors among youth, and marginalization (Portes & Rumbaut 2001). Although this model does not take into account all the messiness and unevenness of the assimilation process, and I do not completely agree with it, I found it useful for analyzing the intergenerational trajectories that immigrants follow in a highly stratified society.
 +
 
 +
Using the segmented assimilation model, I intend to describe the trajectories of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths focusing on specific indicators of their process of adaptation such as language, education (school performance), media consumption/production/circulation (ethnic, U.S.), and cultural tastes. When analyzing the new media practices and skills in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces, I focus on these indicators in order to measure the outcomes of the assimilation process and describe the trajectories that each of Latino/Hispanic youth are following. Although I recognize that this theoretical model has limitations, I found it useful for analyzing the incorporation of immigrant youth in culture, education, and other social domains. Recognizing the trajectories of assimilation allows me to reveal that in a highly stratified capitalist society, participation and inclusion may happen in a segmented way, and that socioeconomic mobility can still occur, even within the working class. By describing the immigrant trajectories of assimilation, I will try to answer some of the secondary questions of this dissertation project:
 +
<blockquote>
 +
In which direction are their trajectories moving? In relation to their parents, are they adapting to the cultural, linguistic, and educational dimensions of the U.S.?
 +
</blockquote>

Revision as of 15:16, 19 May 2015

On the Saturday morning of June 8, 2012, at the Frank Erwin Special Events Center, a multipurpose arena near downtown Austin, Inara, Antonio, and Sergio, three Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths with Mexican origins, were awarded a U.S. high school diploma. Along with other senior students (402 in total), school officers, faculty and staff, the band, and an audience of family and friends (approximately 1,500), they participated in the commencement ceremony of Freeway High School, a public school located on the north urban fringe of Austin. Wearing the traditional European academic dress of gown and cap, they walked across the graduation stage while members of the audience cheered, applauded, raised written signs with congratulatory messages, and took pictures with smartphones and other digital mobile devices. Following the graduation ritual protocol, they sang the "The Star-Spangled Banner" national anthem and the school song, listened to the speeches given by school administration officers and counselors, and to the salutatorian and valedictorian addresses delivered by the top ranking graduates. The ceremony marked a life milestone for these immigrant youths, the end of their K-12 educational journey in the country where their parents migrated years before in search of opportunities.

Together with Alex, another researcher from the Digital Edge project , I arrived at the commencement just in time for the initial procession that hundreds of Freeway High seniors, along with the school band, performed at the ground floor. It was the first time in my life attending a high school graduation ceremony in the United States. It was also my first time inside "The Superdrum," as it was also known the Frank Erwin Special Events Center due to its shape and huge size (6,400 Sq. Ft.). Although I had seen the building many times and wondered about its retro-futuristic architecture style, I never had the opportunity to go to any of the rock concerts, basketball games, professional wrestling combats, and other kinds of events that take place there. Inside, the building looked like an entertainment venue, it had two levels of seats organized in rings, several video screens and electric signs arranged on the ceilings and walls, a ground floor, and several corridors with food vendors. Half of the ground floor was filled with rows of chairs for the graduates. They were organized in front of a graduation stage located at one of the sides, which had a long rectangular table, chairs for school officers, and the flags of Texas and the U.S. The lower ring of seats was almost full, consisting of a diverse and intergenerational audience of family members and friends that reflected the demographics of Freeway High. The majority of the student population was minorities. Almost half (47.5%) were Latino/Hispanic, 24.2% African American, 13.3% Asian, and 11.2% were White.

While at my seat at the lower ring, surrounded by a mix of Asians, African Americans, Latino/Hispanics, and Whites adults and children, I was reminded of the demographic transformation that has unfolded in the U.S. as a result of the last wave of large-scale immigration that has happened since 1965. The so-called "new immigrants" and their children were indeed changing the face of the United States and proof of this was the diversity of families and graduates present at the Freeway High School commencement ceremony. This mix of colors, ethnicities, and races, provided a glimpse of what social scientists have predicted for the future of U.S. population composition. The reality of the U.S. as a majority-minority country was perhaps arriving sooner than expected.

However, the past was also present at the commencement ceremony. During the presentation of the graduates by the superintendent of schools, I could not stop thinking about the longue durée historical processes that unfolded across Texas territories. More than a hundred of the graduates had Spanish names similar to the ones I could encounter in Latin America, Spain, or Colombia, my country of origin. Listening to first names like Alejandra, Maria, Gabriela, and Carlos, and last names like Martinez, Garcia, and Diaz, pronounced with an Anglo accent, reminded me of the history of the lands where the graduation ritual was taking place. Not that many years ago these territories were part of the Republic of Texas (1836-1846), the República de Mexico (1821-1836), and for almost two centuries, these lands belonged to Nueva España and the Spanish Empire (1690-1821). Before those multiple occupations, of course, these territories were the home of several Native Americans Indian tribes such as Comanches, Coahuiltecos, and Caddos. Spanish, however, was an European language that continued to be present in Texas not only in the names of rivers, towns, streets, foods, plants, and people, but also in the orality of many of its inhabitants. Among people grouped under the pan-ethnic term "Hispanic" or "Latino/a" in the U.S., Spanish was one of the languages they could use for communicating with each other, especially, intergenerationally.

"¡Felicitaciones mijo!" [Congratulations my son!] said Mr. Chapa to his son Antonio after the ceremony while walking through the open public space outside of the Erwin Center. Navigating through a crowd of parents, children, and recent graduates the five members of the Chapa family moved through the public space trying to find a spot for a picture. Minutes later, with a view of the Capitol building, Antonio, his old sister, younger brother, and dad, all dressed up in formal clothes, posed for a photograph that Ms. Chapa took with her smartphone. In the background, new buildings and construction cranes emerged as symbols of one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Twenty years before, Mr. and Ms. Chapa migrated from a small town in the state of San Luis Potosi, northern Mexico, escaping from extreme rural poverty. In the middle of one of the biggest economic crisis that affected agriculture in Mexico, Antonio's parents decided to move north of the Rio Grande in search of better opportunities. As many other immigrants from Mexico, they came to the U.S. in order to become part of the labor force. Given their low levels of formal education (none of them completed middle school) and few economic resources, Mr. and Ms. Chapa started to work in construction and housekeeping jobs. More than two decades later, posing with Antonio, the second child that had completed high school in the U.S., they had reason to celebrate and be proud of their accomplishments. Mr. Chapa had already become a U.S. citizen, Ms. Chapa was a U.S resident, they owned an old suburban house equipped with media technologies and Internet connectivity, had two sport utility vehicles, and both continued to have working class jobs. Although their income was low and their occupations low-skilled, they still were able to raise a family and send their children to public school. Antonio (17), for instance, was born in Austin, proficient in English, completed twelve grades of schooling, passed the Texas standardized tests, and was becoming a high school graduate. "Vamos a tener una comida de mole de olla y enchiladas potosinas esta tarde en nuestra casa" [We are going to have a dinner of mole de olla y enchiladas potosinas this afternoon in our house] Ms. Chapa told me when I asked her about their plans after the ceremony. Their dream of finding better opportunities in the U.S. seemed to be happening as they were able to participate in several social domains in their new country.

However, anti-immigrant discourse abounded at the dawn of the twenty-first century in the United States, and some opinion leaders, politicians, and scholars questioned the assimilation of the newcomers. Due to the sustained large-scale migration of immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America since 1965, and the rapid growth of the Latino/Hispanic population (they became the largest minority in the country in 2001), some sectors of the U.S. public expressed their anxieties about their incorporation into society. As the anti-immigration debate gained force, fears of the demographic shift became easier to propagate, especially given the changes in the economy, and the way in which racial and social stratification were interlaced in the U.S. Hence, Latino/Hispanics, and especially Mexicans as the dominant group (64.6% of the total share) (Lopez, Gonzalez-Barrera, Cuddington 2013), became the target of several concerns. Political scientist Samuel Huntington, for instance, articulated one of the most controversial arguments in "The Hispanic Challenge" (2004). In this essay Huntington claimed that Latino/Hispanics did not assimilate into U.S. mainstream culture but instead formed linguistic and political enclaves rejecting the white Anglo-Protestant values. Warning the public about the dangers of immigration, Huntington wrote, "the possibility of a de facto split between a predominantly Spanish-speaking United States and an English-speaking United States (…) is a major potential threat to the country's cultural and political integrity" (Huntington, 2004). Emphasizing cultural factors, and especially language and educational attainment, Huntington sketched an alarming picture of the U.S as divided by two cultures and two languages, complementing other anti-immigration arguments that focused on economic costs. According to Huntington, the Latino/Hispanics, and in particular the ones with Mexican origins, were becoming a threat to U.S. national identity.

Given the reality of a public school system in which Latino/Hispanic children became the majority in states such as in Texas and California, the problem of immigrant youth assimilation in the U.S. intrigued me. Many second- and third-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant children were at the cusp of U.S. demographic shift and were the subject of moral concerns that could exacerbate negative stereotypes and disempower them. Were Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth really a threat to the national identity? Were they dividing the country into two cultures and two languages? After living in the U.S. for more than six years and having spent several months doing ethnographic work at Freeway High School as a member of the Digital Edge project, it was difficult for me to imagine such a split. In contrast, what I observed was that many Latino/Hispanics adults, particularly from Mexican origins, were working hard holding down multiple jobs, making efforts to earn a living and sustain their families. Meanwhile, their children were going to public schools, using digital media technologies, speaking English and sometimes, with less proficiency, Spanish. Some Latino/Hispanic youth were also enrolled in colleges, and I had the opportunity to meet, work, and befriend several of them at U.T., especially while working at the Division of Student Affairs. It troubled me that the presence of Latino/Hispanics generated so much anxiety especially in a state like Texas, which such deep cultural and historical ties to Spain and Mexico. Moreover, in the U.S. context of increasing socioeconomic inequalities and stratification, it was problematic to see the Latino/Hispanic population, with all its diversity, being positioned at the "wrong" side of many divides and many times studied from a perspective that emphasized a pathological narrative of social ill and cultural deficit. As a result, I became interested in researching Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, and, particularly, how they were navigating their process of assimilation in the U.S while using digital tools and networks.

In this dissertation, my main objective is to investigate the assimilation process of five second- and 1.5-generation Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth growing up in Austin, Texas, in a context of networked communication, a hyper-mediated culture, and structural inequalities. The problem of immigrant assimilation, allows me to inquire from a rarely explored perspective, the critical issue of digital inequalities and youth agency. Immigrant youth are playing a more active role in the process of assimilation that their families undertake as they actively engage with digital tools and networks and develop new media practices that shape not only their adaptation to the U.S. but also the one of their parents. As an interdisciplinary researcher and designer working in the field of media studies, I am interested in understanding the characteristics of the new media practices and skills Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths are developing as they communicate and socialize in a networked communication environment. My analysis focuses on three particular contexts of everyday activity: the home, an after-school program, and the multi-setting of social media networked spaces. For each of these contexts, I intend to elaborate a series of case studies of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth in which I analyze how they exercise their agency, develop digitally mediated practices, and acquire new media skills. The main questions I try to answer are:

What are the new media practices and skills Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth develop in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces? How do those practices and skills help them to navigate their assimilation process?

Understanding Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths as social actors and creative agents, I examine how their use of digital tools and networks can help them assimilate into multiple social domains. Particularly, I focus on how they assimilate into linguistic, cultural, educational, and social dimensions, but in some cases also into the economic and civic ones. Since according to U.S. official quantitative data the Latino/Hispanic population is situated on the "wrong" side of several structural divides (educational attainment, income, occupation, and health), analyzing the new media practices of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth is useful for revealing the diversity of these population and the complex ways in which digital inequalities and participation gaps are evolving. Although the position of these youths is one of disadvantage given the working class and immigrant status of their families, my approach tries to understand them in terms of their resilience and normative growth, their agency and creativity, and not in terms of their deficit or poverty. By doing so, I intend to untangle some of the paradoxes that appear as these youths, despite their fewer economic, social, and technological resources, can leverage the affordances of the new networked communication environment in a particular manner. Despite structural forces and inequalities, Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth exercise their agency and can shape the direction of their process of incorporation into the U.S., participating, or not, in multiple social domains. One of my goals in this dissertation is to demonstrate how the rapid evolution of the networked communication environment and the increasing structural inequalities determine different forms of participation and incorporation, with different qualities, and disparate outcomes.

Assimilation Trajectories

In a nation of immigrants such as the United States, the term assimilation has been used to describe the process of incorporation of newcomers into the host country. Although the term is contested, it remains useful today for researching and understanding the experiences of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth and their families in the U.S. Drawing on contemporary sociological theories I conceptualize assimilation as a complex process that is uneven, segmented, and multidimensional. It may or may not happen according to different individual and structural factors. In this dissertation, I understand assimilation as the process of incorporation into the culture, economy, education, and other social domains that immigrants and their children undertake, at least during three generations, as they settle in a new country. Assimilation, therefore, is a multidimensional process closely related to social inclusion. It involves issues of participation, access to opportunity structures, and socioeconomic mobility.

In the twenty-first century, however, this process has become much more complex than the one that sociologists theorized about for previous generations in which there was a straight line trajectory into an Anglo and white mainstream middle class. U.S. society, on the one hand, is no longer as homogenous as it was once imagined. On the other hand, the relationships between different ethnic-racial groups have become considerably more complicated than what the melting pot metaphor and its harmonious ideal of common culture could describe. In the present context, with a society that is highly stratified and ethnically-racially heterogeneous; a post-industrial economy characterized by growing inequality and a bifurcated labor market; and a vibrant culture that is networked and hyper-mediated by information communication technologies, processes of assimilation in United States have disparate and uneven outcomes. For instance, not all immigrants in the U.S. are being incorporated into the same socioeconomic segments. As researchers from the segmented assimilation paradigm have argued, depending on individual and structural factors, immigrants may assimilate into the working class and not necessarily to a mainstream middle class. As a matter of fact, since the U.S. middle class has been shrinking consistently over the past half-century, assimilation into the working class has become part of the trajectory of many immigrants in this country. Especially for the labor immigrants with low levels of education, becoming part of the expanding U.S. working class of service and less-skilled workers has allowed them to adapt to the host country, gain some fair socioeconomic mobility, and participate in some of the social domains, although from a disadvantaged position of power.

In my analysis of the assimilation process of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth, I draw on the segmented assimilation model that Alejandro Portes, Min Zhou, and Ruben Rumbaut have been elaborating and testing since the 1990s. Particularly, I rely on their understanding of assimilation trajectories as an intergenerational process of socioeconomic mobility, access to opportunity, and cultural adaptation. According to the segmented assimilation model, two trajectories are characterized by upward mobility and incorporation into the working and middle classes, while one follows a downward trajectory towards the underclass and exclusion. Each trajectory is correlated with a specific type of intergenerational cultural adaptation. While the upward mobility and integration into the middle class goes together with the consonant acculturation (parents and children adopt mainstream culture), the one of upward mobility and incorporation into the working class is correlated with selective acculturation (parents and children adopt certain mainstream cultural practices). In contrast, the downward socioeconomic trajectory is correlated to what researchers call "dissonant acculturation." That is, acculturation gaps between parents and children that create conflicts within the family, risky behaviors among youth, and marginalization (Portes & Rumbaut 2001). Although this model does not take into account all the messiness and unevenness of the assimilation process, and I do not completely agree with it, I found it useful for analyzing the intergenerational trajectories that immigrants follow in a highly stratified society.

Using the segmented assimilation model, I intend to describe the trajectories of the five Latino/Hispanic immigrant youths focusing on specific indicators of their process of adaptation such as language, education (school performance), media consumption/production/circulation (ethnic, U.S.), and cultural tastes. When analyzing the new media practices and skills in the contexts of family/home, after-school, and social media networked spaces, I focus on these indicators in order to measure the outcomes of the assimilation process and describe the trajectories that each of Latino/Hispanic youth are following. Although I recognize that this theoretical model has limitations, I found it useful for analyzing the incorporation of immigrant youth in culture, education, and other social domains. Recognizing the trajectories of assimilation allows me to reveal that in a highly stratified capitalist society, participation and inclusion may happen in a segmented way, and that socioeconomic mobility can still occur, even within the working class. By describing the immigrant trajectories of assimilation, I will try to answer some of the secondary questions of this dissertation project:

In which direction are their trajectories moving? In relation to their parents, are they adapting to the cultural, linguistic, and educational dimensions of the U.S.?