The Civic Education and Engagement of Latina/o Immigrant Youth: Challenging Boundaries and Creating Safe Spaces. Research Paper Series on Latino Immigrant Civic and Political Participation. Number 5

As demographics shift and immigration is a hotly contested area of US civic life, the civic preparation and participation of Latin American immigrant youth is becoming increasingly important. The author examines the growing literature on this topic, inquiring into the political and demographic changes that have stimulated this area of inquiry, the challenges of studying this population, and what individuals currently know and what they still need to know about immigrant youth civic engagement and activism. At a time when the struggle for immigrant rights in the US is caught in the crossfire of severe recession and racism, young immigrant activists offer a ray of hope through their modest yet noteworthy successes. Scholarship on their civic engagement sheds light on ways that young people who live on the fault line between nation-states are creatively forging civic identities, claiming political voices, and making an impact. (Contains 144 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD), UC Berkeley's Center for Latino Policy Research, UC MEXUS, and the University of Illinois at Springfield.]