What happens when you use an outdated map? Perhaps you might get lucky and get where you are trying to go — that is, if nothing has changed. But if the landscape is now different, you will likely get lost. You might stumble into something unexpected or fail to find the place you were seeking.
A lot has changed in the United States and the rest of the world in the last two decades that has significantly affected the lives of children and adolescents. How can psychologists update the maps they use to understand youth experiencing marginalization?
In the new special issue "New Directions in Developmental Science With Youth Experiencing Marginalization" published in American Psychologist, guest editors José M. Causadias and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor present new conceptualizations and research directions to keep up with these changes. This special issue reflects on the legacy of García Coll and colleagues' (1996) integrative model, a conceptual framework that has informed our understanding of the development of ethnic-racial minority children in the last two decades.
However, changes within and beyond academia require greater innovation in the way marginalization is conceptualized and studied (Causadias & Umaña-Taylor, 2018). For example, some of these articles address how recent cultural and political changes have created hostile environments toward ethnic-racial minority, immigrant, and refugee youth, especially in countries, like the United States, that have seen an increase in racist and anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies.
This special issue showcases nine articles that discuss, for instance, new ways of approaching how children and adolescents cope with racism and segregation, and how families and communities create new cultural systems in response to them.
The articles in this special issue not only center on how youth and families deal with adversity, but also encourage psychologists to move from focusing only on risks to paying attention to positive youth development and purpose in life. Authors discuss how immigrant and refugee youth rely on close relationships with parents and peers to adapt to the challenges of migration.
This special issue also showcases articles that examine how broader social dynamics shape the experiences of youth. Collectively, the articles present how knowledge produced by and for ethnic-racial minority populations is often ignored, silenced, or dismissed, and how moral narratives shape the way we understand marginalization.
Together, the articles included in this special issue offer new and innovative maps for the changing territory of youth marginalization. Despite the fact that not all forms of marginalization are addressed in the special issue and that the articles focus mostly on the United States, psychologists will be able to use many ideas presented in this collection to improve the lives of youth.
Citations
- Causadias, J. M., & Umaña-Taylor, A. J. (2018). Reframing marginalization and youth development: Introduction to the special issue. American Psychologist, 73(6), 707–712. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000336
- García Coll, C., Lamberty, G., Jenkins, R., McAdoo, H. P., Crnic, K., Wasik, B. H., & Vázquez García, H. (1996). An integrative model for the study of developmental competencies in minority children. Child Development, 67, 1891–1914. https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1131600
Note: This article is in the Developmental Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Developmental Psychology topic area.