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==== Theoretical Sampling ====
 
==== Theoretical Sampling ====
  
Selection of the subjects for my dissertation is based on [[grounded theory and theoretical sampling]]. Hence, it is not a representative sample of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth population.  
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Selection of the subjects for my dissertation is based on [[theoretical sampling]]. Hence, it is not a representative sample of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth population.  
  
 
Participants of the study are from a minority-majority, economically diverse, and low performing public high school in the Austin metropolitan area. Among the group of 18 students that participated in the Digital Edge study, I have chosen a smaller sample of 5 that are first, first and half and second generation immigrants with Mexican origin. They are also from low and low middle class.  
 
Participants of the study are from a minority-majority, economically diverse, and low performing public high school in the Austin metropolitan area. Among the group of 18 students that participated in the Digital Edge study, I have chosen a smaller sample of 5 that are first, first and half and second generation immigrants with Mexican origin. They are also from low and low middle class.  

Revision as of 17:27, 5 October 2014

Working Titles

  • Crossing Many Worlds: New Media Practices, Identities, and Assimilation Trajectories of Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youth in the U.S.
  • Navigating Many Worlds: New Media Practices, Identities, and Sociocultural Trajectories of Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youth Growing-up in the U.S.

Abstract

In my dissertation project I try to understand how Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth growing up in the U.S in the early 21st Century, actively navigate the process of incorporation into a new society by constructing multiple identities, leveraging new media tools and networks, and learning to move across different sociocultural worlds. 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 examine the relationships between new media practices, identity construction, 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 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 sociocultural worlds, and navigate the cultural norms and expectations of specific spaces.


Introduction

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Primary research questions

  • How are new media practices shaping the assimilation process of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth to the U.S?
  • How do Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth construct multiple identities as they engage in new media practices within and across different contexts (home, an after-school program, and the Internet)?
  • How do different kinds of access to new media technologies (motivational, material, skills, and usage) affect the process of immigrant youth identity production as well as their assimilation trajectories?


Secondary questions

(to be narrowed and refined in order to limit the study to the relation between assimilation and new media practices)

  • How do Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth narrate the new media practices they have within the contexts of home, an after-school program, and the Internet? What are the differences between those practices? How do the cultural, social, human and financial resources of each context shape the new media practices? How are those practices shaped by gender differences?
  • What are the characteristics of the identities that immigrant youth with Mexican origins produce? How are those identities related to different assimilation trajectories? What are the cultural and ethnic traits of those identities?
  • How do new media tools and networks facilitate Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth access to resources and opportunities that help them to assimilate to the U.S? How do new media literacies help them to navigate their assimilation trajectories?

Objectives

(Will be narrowed in order to facilitate completion of the project)

  • To investigate what immigrant youth are doing with new media, their identity work, and their process of assimilation to the U.S.
  • To describe the assimilation trajectories of a group of young Mexican immigrants, the spaces/figured worlds they navigate, the borders they cross, and their agency in constructing their identities.
  • To understand how the evolving contours of digital inequality affect the process of assimilation in the U.S.
  • To contribute to (test and update) the theory of segmented assimilation by considering the role of new information communication technology (tools and networks) and new media practices in the process of immigrant incorporation into the U.S.
  • To develop a textured rich description of the diversity of new media practices that Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth develop in their everyday lives.

Methods

I use a multi-method approach combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies and data.

Qualitative Methodology

The Digital Edge Project (2011-2013) was an interdisciplinary research group led by S. Craig Watkins and funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of the Connected Learning Research Network (CLRN). The goal of The Digital Edge project was to understand youth media ecologies, learning environments, and new media practices in the varied contexts of social inequalities. As a member of the Digital Edge team, I spent the 2011-12 school year inside Freeway High School (FHS) pursuing ethnographic fieldwork, and continued during the following year with follow-up interviews with some of the study participants. Our team centered its interactions and observations around three spaces that have digital media technology orientations: one after-school program and two elective classrooms (a video production class and a video game design class). We spent a total of approximately 150 hours in each classroom and 70 hours in the after school space doing participant observation. Additionally, each member of our team was matched up with between two and five students (14-18 years old) across all grades (18 in total) that we followed for a year, having approximately 12 interviews each. Semi structured qualitative interviews were also conducted with teachers from the elective classes, mentors from the after school program, and parents (house visits). Furthermore, two focus groups were also conducted. Among the eighteen participants in our study, and not surprisingly given the demographics of the high school, 6 boys and 4 girls were Latino/Hispanic immigrants with Mexican origins.

Ethnography

The qualitative method used by the Digital Edge project was mainly classical ethnography. (Emerson, Fretz & Snow 1995; Rubin & Rubin 2005; Spradley 1979; Foley 2002) We conducted extensive interviews, and participant observations with students, mentors and teachers from Freeway High School. In addition to casual hanging out, we standardized 12 interview protocols across all researchers and participants addressing subjects such as social media use or civic engagement. Our goal was to document the nuances of student's learning ecologies and new media practices over a long period of time, and to create a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of the elective classes and the afterschool program. All members of the research team wrote field notes immediately after each observation or interview, reviewed, and produced analytical reports that we shared through a private and secured online blog. Furthermore, we also tried “collaborative ethnography” (Lassiter, 2005; Foley and Valenzuela, 2005) by actively involving the participants in research process. We provided our participants with cameras to document their everyday lives, invited them to keep a journal of their social media usage, encourage them to map their home media environments, invited them to give us tours of their Facebook activities, helped teachers in curriculum design, and collaborated in the creation of a summer digital media design camp in which the students produced interactive media.

Theoretical Sampling

Selection of the subjects for my dissertation is based on theoretical sampling. Hence, it is not a representative sample of the Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth population.

Participants of the study are from a minority-majority, economically diverse, and low performing public high school in the Austin metropolitan area. Among the group of 18 students that participated in the Digital Edge study, I have chosen a smaller sample of 5 that are first, first and half and second generation immigrants with Mexican origin. They are also from low and low middle class.

The segmentation of social class and ethnicity matters for this study.

Qualitative Data

1. Narrative Data

For my dissertation project, I draw upon interviews with only five of the eighteen focal students and their parents (home visits), including the two participants that I closely followed during the academic year. Furthermore I draw upon the participant observations I conducted at the after school space (which included approximately 40 students), the fieldnotes I wrote, as well as several formal and informal interviews with the mentors and teachers associated with this space. Although this data is rich in students references to the home/family, and the Internet, one significant limitation is that all of my observations, with the exception of the parents' interview that included a home visit, and the social media "tours" that participants gave us, were done in the after-school space. However, due to the longitudinal character of the ethnographic work and the amount of in-depth interviews where activities from the contexts of the family and the Internet where frequently discussed and narrated, it is possible to use this data in my analysis. Among the twelve interview protocols we used in our fieldwork, in my dissertation project I intend to analyze eight of them: Civic engagement, Social Media, Cinematic Arts Project, Pop Culture & Media, Home Life & Routines, Mobile Technologies, Online Information Seeking & Practices, and Home Visit. Further, I will also analyze the follow-up interviews and the focus group we did with some of the study participants and with the after school program supervisor.

2. Texts, Still Images, Videos, and Sounds

Besides drawing on narrative data from the semi-structured interviews and focus groups, I also use other kind of data that was created, consumed, and circulated by the study participants. Texts from the Social Media Journal entries, comments and status updates in SNSs, and multimodal content from the Cinematic Arts Project website; still images such as disposable camera photographs, home media maps, visual memes and digital pictures (published in Flickr, Instagram, and 9Gag web platforms); videos such as the ones produced within the after school program (published in the Vimeo web platform); and sounds such as the songs from participants’ favorite bands have been collected and will be analyzed.

3. Data Analysis

Qualitative data analysis is an ongoing and iterative process. Although all of the interview and focus group recordings have been transcribed and coded by the Digital Edge team, I will continue with an interim analysis of the data. The coding of the interviews has been done using Dedoose software, a mixed methods data management and analysis tool, that facilitates collaborative work. Members of the research team have read the transcribed data and identified meaningful analytical segments that we have marked with colors and code names. The team has developed a list of analytical codes (with 2 levels of hierarchy: categories and sub-categories) that help us to identify and organize all the meaningful segments. The codes correspond to several themes and topics including, for example, media production, social class, future orientation, family, learning, ethnicity and race, and participatory cultures. In my analysis for this dissertation project I will use the same codes created by the research team, but will explore the topics specific to my research study deeply. For this purpose I plan to use some of analytical tools that Dedoose have such as the quantification of coded data, exploration of all the corpus of the interviews according to codes and demographic information of the participants, and visualization of the relationships between different codes and their frequency of repetition.


Quantitative Data

Although in this research project I mainly use qualitative research methods, I also draw on secondary quantitative data about immigrant and native Latino/Hispanic population collected by governmental, academic, and independent organizations such as the U.S. Census Bureau, the Civic Rights Data Collection, the Pew Hispanic Center, and the Kaiser Family Foundation. By analyzing both relevant statistical secondary data (macro) and textured qualitative data (micro), I intend to establish a middle range theoretical perspective that reveals the interaction between individual and structural level factors in the process of Latino/Hispanic immigrant youth assimilation.

Core Themes

The theoretical framework that constitutes this project is composed of 7 major concepts:

Prospectus

Journal

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