Please join us for a colloquium being given by Veronica Terriquez, Professor of Chicana and Chicano and Central American Studies and Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Learning to Lead: The Transformative Political Socialization of 2nd Generation Immigrant Youth
In the past decade, youth from modest Latinx, Asian-Pacific Islander, and Black backgrounds—many of them the children immigrants and refugees—have become active participants in voter mobilization and social movement efforts in California and beyond. The result is that many overcome challenges to becoming politically engaged. How does this happen? The young children of immigrants can experience a transformative political socialization through their involvement in non-partisan adolescent grassroots youth organizing groups, as this talk will demonstrate. To varying degrees, these volunteer associations develop their young members’ capacities to exercise political power. Drawing on multiple sources of data, I show how and the extent to which youth organizing groups encourage members’ political activity by offering them developmental supports, a critical civics education on the policies and systems that affect their diverse communities, and guidance in taking collective civic action. Findings from this research have implications for the equitable and inclusive functioning of democracy.