Synopses & Reviews
Complicating the common view that immigrant incorporation is a top-down process, determined largely by parents, Vikki Katz explores how children actively broker connections that enable their families to become woven into the fabric of American life. Childrenandrsquo;s immersion in the U.S. school system and contact with mainstream popular culture enables them more quickly to become fluent in English and familiar with the conventions of everyday life in the United States. These skills become an important factor in how families interact with their local environments.
Kids in the Middle explores childrenandrsquo;s contributions to the family strategies that improve communication between their parents and U.S. schools, healthcare facilities, and social services, from the perspectives of children, parents, and the English-speaking service providers that interact with these families via childrenandrsquo;s assistance. Katz also considers how childrenandrsquo;s brokering affects their developmental trajectories. While their help is critical to addressing short-term family needs, childrenandrsquo;s responsibilities can constrain their access to educational resources and have consequences for their long-term goals.
Kids in the Middle explores the complicated interweaving of family responsibility and individual attainment in these immigrant families.
Through a unique interdisciplinary approach that combines elements of sociology and communication approaches, Katz investigates not only how immigrant children connect their families with local institutional networks, but also how they engage different media forms to bridge gaps between their homes and mainstream American culture. Drawing from extensive firsthand research, Katz takes us inside an urban community in Southern California and the experiences of a specific community of Latino immigrant families there. In addition to documenting the often-overlooked contributions that children of immigrants make to their familiesandrsquo; community encounters, the book provides a critical set of recommendations for how service providers and local institutions might better assist these children in fulfilling their family responsibilities. The story told in Kids in the Middle reveals an essential part of the immigrant experience that transcends both geographic and ethnic boundaries.
Review
andquot;Kids in the Middle is a timely, informative, and methodologically well-designed study. Katz impressively approaches the topic of children brokers with a multi-methodological design that will fill a gap in current scholarship.andquot;
Review
andquot;Vikki Katzandrsquo;s nuanced ethnography offers a fascinating analysis ofand#160;how brokering performed by children of immigrantsand#160;can both promote and undermine the larger immigrant bargain.andquot;
Review
andquot;With richly painted portraits of children and families working together in a variety of contexts, this book deepens our understanding of the complex work involved in immigrant family language brokering, as well as ways to support that work. Katz shows the critical role that youth play in giving families access to new media technologies as well as to health and wellness.andquot;
Review
"Orellana tracks immigrant children in Los Angeles, Chicago, and a Chicago suburb to explore the work children do translating for others. From the author's introspection, one once more appreciates that immigrant children are not the burden they are often portrayed."
Review
"I highly recommend
Translating Childhoods for an array of courses in language and literacy. Despite the book's strong research base, it reads more like a novel."
Review
"Orellana paints a powerful portrait of the complicated lives of America's immigrant youth."
Review
"Translating Childhoods, an important and pathbreaking contribution to the new sociology of childhood, provides lucid analysis and vivid ethnographic portraits of children as powerful social actors engaged in the invisible work of language brokering at home, in schools and in public spaces across an array of institutional domains where their skills matter."
Review
"Translating Childhoods should be required reading for educators and future teachers. It provides a refreshing and important view of children as active contributors to communities and society."
Review
"This is one of the most important works on learning and development among immigrant children in the last decade. Orellana integrates a cognitive and developmental focus with deeply personal portraits that expand fundamentally our understanding of what counts as generative knowledge for academic learning."
Synopsis
and#160;
Kids in the Middle explores how children of immigrants use their language capabilities, knowledge of American culture, and facility with media content and devices to help their parents forge connections with local schools, healthcare facilities, and social services as they adjust to life in the United States. Through in-depth inquiry in one Southern California community, Vikki S. Katz explores the important contributions children make to the functioning of their immigrant families and considers what social workers and parents in diverseand#160;community can do to support them. and#160;
Synopsis
Though the dynamics of immigrant family life has gained attention from scholars, little is known about the younger generation, often considered "invisible."
Translating Childhoods, a unique contribution to the study of immigrant youth, brings children to the forefront by exploring the "work" they perform as language and culture brokers, and the impact of this largely unseen contribution.
Skilled in two vernaculars, children shoulder basic and more complicated verbal exchanges for non-English speaking adults. Readers hear, through children's own words, what it means be "in the middle" or the "keys to communication" that adults otherwise would lack. Drawing from ethnographic data and research in three immigrant communities, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana's study expands the definition of child labor by assessing children's roles as translators as part of a cost equation in an era of global restructuring and considers how sociocultural learning and development is shaped as a result of children's contributions as translators.
About the Author
and#160;VIKKI S. KATZ is an assistant professor of communication at Rutgers University. Her research explores the communication challenges immigrant Latino families face as they integrate into U.S. society. She is also co-author of
Understanding Ethnic Media: Producers, Consumers, and Societies (2011).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Translating Frames
Landscapes of Childhood
Home Work
Public Para-Phrasing
Transculturations
Transformations
Translating Childhoods
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Notes
Bibliography
Index