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.One of her main complaints was that the detention facility staffom wwwwould not give her a roommate.She said she was “going crazy” because she did not want to sleep alone.Unfortunately, because cultural specificity was not taken into consideration in this case, the system was actually doing more harm than good.Anthropologists note different family styles of social distance (Sault 1996).In theyright material frUnited States, sleeping alone is considered desirable and necessary for privacy.ButCopin many cultures around the world, privacy and familial warmth are configured such that co-sleeping arrangements in which several people share the same rooms, beds, or sleeping mats is a desired and expected norm.When visiting relatives or friends arrive, they may join others of the same gender in sleeping in rooms together (Sault 1996).In these cultural contexts, sleeping alone is considered lonely and unpleasant.The young woman whose father had died missed her sisters, aunts, and the comfort of cousins and family members to help her in her grieving.10.1057/9780230101470 - Behind Bars, Edited by Suzanne Obolerpal-oboler-05.indd 123pal-oboler-05.indd 1239/15/09 1:22 PM9/15/09 1:22 PM124 LAURIE SCHAFFNERLanguage and Family Ideals as Survival ToolsGovernmental bureaucracies such as juvenile court authorities are not required by law to provide bilingual services at all times when minors are in their custody.Latinas in secure juvenile facilities may specifically experience the English-only government mandates.In confined juvenile settings, for example, monolingual Spanish-speaking youth in an English-speaking dominant system can be doubly harmed.Not only do girls form a minority in majority-male institutions, if a girl speaks only Spanish or prefers Spanish as her first language, there may be no one on the staff in any given shift in that facility who is bilingual in Spanish and English.Quite literally, then, monolingual detainees may not have a conversation for eight hours, until shift change, as evidenced by the quote above from an interview with the sixteen-year-old Mexican girl concerned because she did not even know where her baby was.veConnect - 2011-05-06Another unique challenge for some Latinas in the United States is the stigmaalgraof speaking nonstandard English or English with an accent.Not understanding what is happening around them due to language and communication challengestium - Pcan be a frightening experience.As one young journalist framed it, for first or second generation immigrant youth of Latino/a descent, the journey of immigration is not only a journey of nation but also a journey of language: coming to the United States was “a journey from Español to Spanglish” (Jimenez 1998; see also Colgrove 1998, New American Youth Initiative 2001).This is compounded in aaiwan eBook ConsorTjuvenile legal setting where language is tied to security issues.As the quotes cited earlier reveal, young court-involved Latinas reported using language skills to accomplish various tasks, including signaling support for each other, helping each other out by translating questions, concerns, and key terms in order to avoid punitive attention of juvenile authorities, as well as through feign-ing limited English proficiency (see also Olmedo 2003).For some Latinas, being proficient in both Spanish and English, having “good”veconnect.com - licensed toaccents in both, and familiarity with slang in both Spanish and English was an.palgraasset.“On the outs,” these Latina adolescents understood the unwritten social and cultural rules in both the barrio and the mall.In terms of navigating the juve-om wwwnile court system, for the young women in this sample, bilingualism, in their case, made them outsiders, within in the most beneficial sense of the term, in both the barrio and the courtroom.Dislocation resulting from immigration and forced migration form anotheryright material frset of experiences framed by mainstream sociological scholarship as challengesCopto Latino/a youth (Yans-McLaughlin 1990; Marin 1993).The intense experience of transnational relocation during childhood may stimulate adverse social, educational, and health outcomes.Traditionally, forced immigration has been linked to psychological disjuncture in identity development for children (Burnham et al.1987; Rumbaut 1994, 1997).Disruptive international mobility was found to be detrimental in educational attainment among U.S.adolescents (Gibson and Ogbu 1991), a factor closely correlated with court involvement.Girls in detention expressed longing for familiar customs such as wanting more culturally sensitive approaches, as evidenced by examples such as the comments 10.1057/9780230101470 - Behind Bars, Edited by Suzanne Obolerpal-oboler-05.indd 124pal-oboler-05.indd 1249/15/09 1:22 PM9/15/09 1:22 PMCAUGHT IN THE NET 125made by the young woman grieving the passing of her father.One of the experiences brought up in many of the accounts of the young women in this samplewas a sense of dislocation from being “from” somewhere else and moving to the United States at early ages.Other studies of young Latinos who found themselves involved with juvenile legal authorities struggled with such cultural disconnection (Lutton 2001).Girls and women experience the relocation and resettlement of their families differently than boys and men: processes of transnational dislocation are gendered (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1996; George 2005).Acculturating to the particulars of the gender-sex hierarchy in the United States may present challenges to teenaged immigrant Latinas.For example, one study found that psychosocial stress may arise for some young women as they work to acculturate to a dominant culture that presents definitions of women’s roles that differ from those familiar to theveConnect - 2011-05-06immigrant Latina mother (Zayas and Solari 1994).In other research with adolescent Latina females, young women expressedalgrathat there were moments when they felt they could not turn to their mothers fortium - Padvice about navigating an “American” adolescence (Hurtado 2003).According to one study, acculturation for Latina girls can signal imperatives to adopt attitudes and beliefs that actually bring them harm, such as early sexual behavior or dropping out of school (National Coalition of Hispanic Health and HumanServices Organizations 1999; Harker 2001).Research finds that having parentsaiwan eBook Consorwho were born in Spanish-language nations, or who speak a primary language atThome other than English, may diminish the imperative for respect towards parental authority among children now living in English-speaking nations (National Coalition of Hispanic Health and Human Services Organizations 1999).Thesekinds of research results—feeling disconnected from school and not being able to turn to mothers for family support—are represented in the accounts of the court-involved young women in this sample as well, such as Esmeralda, who, sit-veconnect [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]