Hirokazu Yoshikawa: Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children

Excerpt

In Immigrants Raising Citizens, Hirokazu Yoshikawa seeks to examine how the simple distinction of having undocumented immigrants as parents can have a profound impact on the early healthy development of their citizen children. Yoshikawa argues that coming to this country illegally significantly influences the everyday interactions of immigrant parents, from their use of public organizations, to the jobs they are able to obtain, and their behavior with their own children. The dissonance in these parents’ lives, due to their lack of a pathway to citizenship, ultimately has devastating effects on their children’s growth. Although its effects need not be entirely negative, immigration clearly has important effects on children and youth, and it is a domain of growing importance in the study of adolescence (Kiang et al. 2011; Rivas-Drake 2011). Noting that there are four million children of undocumented immigrants in the United States born with US citizenship, the equivalent of one child per classroom in the United States, Yoshikawa recognizes the potential developmental dangers to some of our nation’s youngest citizens. By focusing on undocumented immigrants as the parents of citizens of this nation instead of as criminals, Yoshikawa reveals the causes of tension in these unique households and how this tension affects the lives of these vulnerable citizens and their families. …