Immigration and School Safety (Routledge Studies in Crime and Society)

Immigration and School Safety utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to expose the complex relationship between immigration and school safety in the United States. It addresses not only individual, intrapersonal, and environmental factors but also distant-level conditions that are relevant to the experiences of immigrant children and connected to school safety. Twenty-five percent of all youth in U.S. schools have at least one immigrant parent, and that percentage is expected to increase to 33 percent by 2040.

A wide array of factors, including but not limited to laws, public and political discourses, educational policies, interpersonal relationships, socioeconomic status, English language proficiency, citizenship, legal status, family characteristics, race and ethnicity, generational status, nationality, religion, and gender, contribute to the marginalizing experiences of children of immigrants at school. With the rapid growth of students in immigrant families in U.S. schools, any effort to address school violence and implement school safety policies must consider barriers associated with the unique educational experiences of that segment. This book highlights the often overlooked importance of immigration as a mediating factor in explaining both violence and victimization and provides a blueprint for integrating immigration and criminology theories into evidence-based efforts toward ensuring safety for all students.

The authors demonstrate that immigration matters significantly in school violence and safety concerns and illustrate why research that integrates immigration with criminology theories is needed to understand the causes and correlates of school violence. The book will appeal to a wide array of individuals, including academics, educators, policymakers, practitioners, social workers, parents, and stakeholders who are committed to addressing educational disparities and inequities associated with immigration and school safety.

Dr. Anthony A. Peguero is Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Dr. Peguero’s research focuses on youth violence, socialization and marginalization, education, and the adaptation of the children of immigrants. Overarching themes in Dr. Peguero’s research include the barriers and challenges faced by the children of immigrants; how social inequality is central to sociological and criminological theories toward understanding and addressing youth violence; the intersection of race/ethnicity, immigration, and gender in relationship to youth marginalization, particularly within schools; and policies intended to promote safety and equity for youth. Dr. Peguero serves as the Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice, Research Fellow at the Institute for Society, Culture and Environment, and Research Affiliate of the Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention at Virginia Tech. He is also a member of the Racial Democracy, Crime, and Justice Network and co-founder of Latina/o/x Criminology, which both hold the goals of advancing research on the intersection of race, crime, and justice and promoting racial democracy within the study of these issues by supporting junior scholars from underrepresented groups.

Dr. Jennifer M. Bondy is Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on three interrelated lines of inquiry: 1) Latina youth citizenship formations, 2) school socialization of the children of immigrants, and 3) the intersections of teacher education and documentation status. Dr. Bondy is Co-Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Youth Inequality and Justice. She also serves as Co-Chair for Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education, Section IV: Marginality, Equity, and Justice in PK–16 settings for the American Educational Research Association. Dr. Bondy is currently an editorial board member for the American Educational Research Journal; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education; and the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Prior to becoming an academic, Dr. Bondy taught high school for four years.