Life Satisfaction Development in the Transition to Adulthood: Differences by Gender and Immigrant Background

Life satisfaction is crucial for healthy development into adulthood. However, it is yet largely unknown how life satisfaction develops in the transition to adulthood. This study examined life satisfaction development in this transition and paid special attention to differences between boys, girls, children of immigrants, and nonimmigrants. Unique longitudinal data of seven waves (2010–2018) of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey Germany were used. Respondents (N = 3757, 54% girls, 78% nonimmigrants, Mage weighted = 14.6, SD = 0.6 at wave 1) were followed between ages 14 and 23 and multi-level random effect models were applied. Life satisfaction developed in a nonlinear way in the transition to adulthood (M-shape), with overall decreases between age 17 and 18 and between age 20 and 23. Girls reported lower life satisfaction levels in adolescence and more unstable trajectories than boys, where girls with immigrant backgrounds represented the least advantageous life satisfaction trajectory. Differences in life satisfaction between groups decreased from age 19 onwards.

Immigrant Children in a Pol(ICE) State

Guided by the following questions: (1) What are the experiences of immigrant children attending schools in communities experiencing police brutality and anti-immigrant sentiments? (2) How do middle school children of immigrants visually represent their experiences with legal violence? and (3) What are children’s visions of freedom and community safety in this context?, this article highlights the understudied preadolescent children of immigrants through a 2-year study of a multidisciplinary theater class at a local elementary school in South Central Los Angeles. Data includes child interviews, class observations, artwork, and performance videos, from recently arrived Mexican and Central American children aged 10 to 13 years. Findings reveal how children come to understand policing, reinforcing concepts like “good cop/bad cop,” conflating local police and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, but also imagining alternatives for community safety outside of police systems. This work contributes to the fields of immigration, abolitionist education, and ethnic studies, among others, offering new ways of supporting immigrant children through the use of arts-based tools.

Mental Health in Children of Immigrants in Germany: The Role of Socio-Demographic and Immigration-Related Characteristics

Over the last decades, the number of immigrants in Germany has been rising steadily. One result of this is that currently, around 40% of children in the country have immigrant parents. Existing studies report rather mixed results concerning their mental health outcomes. The present study provides some insight into factors that affect the mental health of this population. We compared emotional and behavioral problems (assessed via the SOEP-SDQ) in 5- to 10- year-old children of immigrants and their native German peers (N = 2441). We considered socioeconomic status as well as immigration-related characteristics of parents (age at immigration, country of origin, perceived discrimination, host country language skills, and immigrant generation). We examined the mental health status of the parents as a possible mediator between these characteristics and the children’s mental health outcomes. We did not find a difference in emotional and behavioral problems between immigrant and native children living in Germany. Low socioeconomic status was associated with more emotional and behavioral problems in both immigrant and native German children. Younger age at immigration to Germany in fathers and poorer German language skills among mothers were found to be directly associated with poorer mental health in children of immigrants. Mothers’ mental health status mediated the effects of perceived discrimination and mothers’ German language skills. The results underline the urgent need for a more detailed examination of immigration-related characteristics in immigrants living in Germany in order to better understand and prevent possible mental health-related disadvantages among their children.

BRAZIL AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR: CIVIC DEMONSTRATIONS AND NATIONALIZATION

Background: During World War II (1939 - 1945), the National Defense League organized, in Porto Alegre, a series of commemorations with the objective of civic exaltation and patriotic mobilization. Aim: This work aimed to analyze civic solemnities of the week of the fatherland, highlighting how a campaign of patriotic exaltation was carried out, in addition to the mobilization for the nationalization of German and Italian immigrants and the acculturation of their children, the so-called coloninhos. Methods: Analysis of a work edited by the National Defense League, called Activities of 1943. Analysis of the mobilization of society around civic commemorations, organized by the National Defense League. Analysis of the speeches made by the state interventor at the time, General Cordeiro de Farias. Results and Discussion: The National Defense League made an intense mobilization of Brazilian society around the patriotic celebrations in the week of the Fatherland (September 1st to 7th), in 1943, when the Getúlio Vargas government was preparing troops to fight in Europe alongside the Allies and against the Axis countries during World War II. The images, photos, and speeches given at the festivities were edited and later published in a book. In Porto Alegre, there was a campaign for the population to participate in the celebrations actively. Parades were also held in Porto Alegre with children, sons, and daughters of German and Italian immigrants. Furthermore, the Defense League spoke about the acculturation of the children of immigrants (coloninhos), as they supposedly could become spies for enemy countries. Despite Brazil being under the dictatorial government of the Estado Novo, clearly fascist inspired and inaugurated by Getúlio Vargas in 1937, the Defense League defended that it was a democratic and receptive government. Conclusions: Due to the actions of the Defense League, it was necessary that it actively participate in activities, that it was willing to fight against Brazil s enemies. It would also be necessary to nationalize and acculturate the children of German and Italian immigrants, to demonstrate that Brazil was open to receiving them.

The Fertility of Immigrants From Low-Fertility Settings: Adaptation in the Quantum and Tempo of Childbearing?

Immigrant women who have lived longer in a destination often have relatively low levels of fertility, which is sometimes taken as evidence of the adaptation of behavior. This evidence is almost exclusively based on studies of immigrants from high-fertility settings, while the fertility of immigrants from low-fertility settings has been largely overlooked. Research has also rarely studied the fertility of immigrants who migrated as children, despite the methodological advantages of applying such an approach. This study focuses on women who grew up in Sweden with a migration background from low-fertility origins. We expect that Sweden's welfare regime makes it easier for women to combine childbearing and working life, regardless of migration background, thereby facilitating an adaptation of fertility behavior toward that prevailing in Sweden. We find evidence of adaptation in terms of birth timing for at least half of the country-origin groups that we study, but very little evidence of adaptation in terms of completed fertility. Further, we find that, in comparison with ancestral Swedes, completed fertility differentials are larger for second-generation individuals than for immigrants who arrived during childhood. This is evidence against the notion of “straight-line” adaptation for immigrants and the children of immigrants who are born in Sweden.

Variation in disease in children according to immigrant background

Background: A growing proportion of children born in Europe are born to immigrant parents. Knowledge about their health is essential for preventive and curative medicine and health services planning. Objective: To investigate differences in diagnoses given in secondary and tertiary healthcare between Norwegian-born children to immigrant and non-immigrant parents. Methods: Data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, the Norwegian Patient Registry and Statistics Norway were linked by the national personal identification number. The study population included children born in Norway aged 0–10 years between 2008 and 2018 ( N=1,015,267). Diagnostic categories from three main domains of physical health, given in secondary or tertiary care; infections, non-infectious medical conditions and non-infectious neurological conditions were included from 2008 onwards. Hazards of diagnoses by immigrant background were assessed by Cox regressions adjusted for sex and birth year. Results: Children of immigrants generally had higher hazards than children with Norwegian background of some types of infections, obesity, nutrition-related disorders, skin diseases, blood disease and genital disease. Children of immigrants from Africa also had higher hazards of cerebral palsy, cerebrovascular diseases and epilepsy. Conversely, most groups of children of immigrants had lower hazards of acute lower respiratory tract infections, infections of the musculoskeletal system, infections of the central nervous system, diseases of the circulatory system, hearing impairment, immune system disorders, chronic lower respiratory disease and headache conditions. Conclusions: Children of immigrants did not present with overall worse health than children without immigrant background, but the distribution of health problems varied between groups.

Bolognina gym

This article describes the social organization of the ‘Tranvieri’ boxing gym in Bolognina, a working class Bologna neighbourhood that has seen rapid change over the last 20 years due to the closure of factories and arrival of immigrants, especially from the Maghreb. The population of the gym has changed accordingly: currently, about two-thirds of those attending the gym as a leisure centre are children of immigrants. I have studied the practices of everyday life, the ‘techniques of the body’ of these young boxers born in Italy but without citizenship, who frequent the gym daily after vocational school or work and attending to family responsibilities. For these young men, boxing is not a solution to the frustrations inflicted by a social world they perceive as indifferent, if not hostile, towards them; rather, it offers them a chance to be represented within that world as something other than merely excluded. As scholars have shown, boxing is a male world: women are perceived as extraneous to the gym and, although two or three women practise boxing at Tranvieri, female boxing is generally met with disapproval. The tension between the boxing world and the world of women is also exhibited in the conflict between trainers, who wish to strictly control the athletes in terms of diet, schedules and sexual practices, and the boxers’ mothers, wives and girlfriends.