Communicating Values about Education across Generations of Haitian Immigrants

Fabienne Doucet

I will use my tenure as a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral fellow to write a book manuscript based on a comparative study of Haiti- and U.S.-born Haitian youth and their families, which draws from the Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation (L.I.S.A.) study of Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (1998; 2001). The comparative study addresses how the experiences of U.S.-born Haitian youth, their adaptation to U.S. culture, and U.S. schools in particular, are similar to or different from that of their Haiti-born counterparts, an area which has only begun to be investigated (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001; Zéphir, 2001). The children of immigrants today are among those most likely to attend Ivy League universities and among the most likely to end up in jail (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). Haitian immigrant children deal with particular issues in navigating their educational experiences, in part because of their race, and in part because of the negative stereotypes attached to being Haitian, such as being AIDS carriers, practicing witchcraft, and arriving in boats, unwanted and unwelcome (Stepick, 1986; 1998). It has been established that in immigrant families education is often perceived as the key to “making it” in the United States (Louie, 2001; Portes & MacLeod, 1996; Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2001). However for many immigrant parents and children, exactly how to navigate the educational system and to make the most of what it can potentially offer is a mystery (Louie, 2001; Suárez-Orozco, 2001). This suggests that it is also important to assess what immigrant parents and children know about the practices related to academic success. The current study aims to unpack the complex relationship between ethnic identification and the educational practices in which children engage in such a way that illuminates the intricate interaction between parental values and cultural pulls from various segments of society.

About Fabienne Doucet

Fabienne Doucet received her Ph.D. in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on parent-child relationships, with an interest in how race, class, gender, and other structural factors impact upon parenting values, beliefs, and practices. In September 2000, she began her two-year tenure as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. There she joined the Harvard Immigration Projects’ Longitudinal Immigrant Student Adaptation study, under the direction of Dr. Carola Suárez-Orozco and Dr. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, and initiated a parallel, comparative study of U.S.-born Haitian youth. She has recently been awarded the prestigious National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship for the year 2002-2003, which will permit her to work on a book manuscript about the values Haitian immigrant parents communicate to their children about education, and how their children negotiate these values into practices.