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Why and When is Ethnic Harassment a Risk for Immigrant Adolescents’ School Adjustment? Understanding the Processes and Conditions
- Source :
- Journal of Youth and Adolescence. 43:1252-1265
- Publication Year :
- 2013
- Publisher :
- Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2013.
-
Abstract
- Ethnically harassed immigrant youth are at risk for experiencing a wide range of school adjustment problems. However, it is still unclear why and under what conditions experiencing ethnic harassment leads to school adjustment difficulties. To address this limitation in the literature, we examined two important questions. First, we investigated whether self-esteem and/or depressive symptoms would mediate the associations between ethnic harassment and poor school adjustment among immigrant youth. Second, we examined whether immigrant youths' perception of school context would play a buffering role in the pathways between ethnic harassment and school adjustment difficulties. The sample (n = 330; M age = 14.07, SD = .90; 49% girls at T1) was drawn from a longitudinal study in Sweden. The results revealed that experiencing ethnic harassment led to a decrease in immigrant youths' self-esteem over time, and that youths' expectations of academic failure increased. Further, youths' relationships with their teachers and their perceptions of school democracy moderated the mediation processes. Specifically, when youth had poor relationships with their teachers or perceived their school context as less democratic, being exposed to ethnic harassment led to a decrease in their self-esteem. In turn, they reported low school satisfaction and perceived themselves as being unsuccessful in school. Such indirect effects were not observed when youth had high positive relationships with their teachers or perceived their school as offering a democratic environment. These findings highlight the importance of understanding underlying processes and conditions in the examination of the effects of ethnic devaluation experiences in order to reach a more comprehensive understanding of immigrant youths' school adjustment.
- Subjects :
- Male
Adolescent
Social Psychology
media_common.quotation_subject
Psychology, Adolescent
education
Self-concept
Ethnic group
Emigrants and Immigrants
Poison control
Context (language use)
Models, Psychological
Education
Racism
Risk Factors
Adaptation, Psychological
Ethnicity
Developmental and Educational Psychology
Humans
Longitudinal Studies
media_common
Sweden
Depression
Mediation (Marxist theory and media studies)
Self-esteem
Bullying
Achievement
Self Concept
Self Efficacy
Health psychology
Logistic Models
Adolescent Behavior
Harassment
Female
Psychology
Social Adjustment
Social psychology
Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15736601 and 00472891
- Volume :
- 43
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Youth and Adolescence
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e75290c4f323bc001dc89b3798b9e884