Ethnic Studies Pedagogies for Newcomer Immigrant Youth: Tensions and Possibilities

Introduction by: Melissa Ortiz, New York University and Sophia Rodriguez, New York University

Guest Blogger: Rita Kamani-Renedo, PhD Candidate in Race, Inequality, and Language in Education, Stanford University

October 20, 2025

In this week’s blog, Rita Kamani-Renedo from Stanford University, draws from a year-long ethnographic study with newcomer youth in two California classrooms to examine how teachers sought to implement an Ethnic Studies course that is relevant and accessible to their students. Through these observations and interviews, readers will learn about the challenges and constraints teachers face in contextualizing an Ethnic Studies curriculum and making connections between race and immigration. Focusing on the experiences of students, this blog also sheds light on the opportunities Ethnic Studies has to offer newcomer youth in developing their own critical consciousness and in making sense of our current political moment.

We welcome additional comments and reflections, please email us at: sophia.rodriguez@nyu.edu or through the Immigrant Ed Next website.

By: Rita Kamani-Renedo

Recently arrived adolescent immigrant youth (often referred to as “newcomers”) are an underserved population in U.S. schools. Like any other group assigned a category in educational institutions, “newcomers” are not a monolith; they bring a variety of educational experiences, socioeconomic class backgrounds, immigration statuses, and language backgrounds. Nevertheless, newcomers, particularly those who are racially and linguistically minoritized, do not often encounter educational spaces that are responsive to their lived experiences, curiosities, concerns, and strengths.

While most states do not have mechanisms for identifying newcomers, tracking their educational progress, or supporting their teachers, recently arrived immigrant youth are a significant and growing population in schools across the country, and their educational futures are constantly caught in the crosshairs of immigration policy. Scholarly attention has primarily focused on their language learning, academic outcomes, and their sense of belonging. Yet, a growing number of researchers are paying attention to the racialized dimensions of their experiences as they navigate racial landscapes that are different, albeit interrelated, to those they may have grown up within. Classrooms can serve as important spaces where immigrant youth can think critically about their experiences and speak back to the dominant, deficit-oriented narratives about them.

The intersections of immigration, racialization, and education are the focus of my research. Scholars are more recently connecting notions of racialization and systemic racism with immigration studies. My current study examines the racial sense-making of primarily Latin American, recently arrived, multilingual immigrant youth learning in California Ethnic Studies classrooms. Ethnic Studies is an area of study that emerged out of social movements of the 1960s and centers the perspectives and histories of racially minoritized groups, focusing on Black/African American, Chicanx/o and Latine/x/a/o, Asian American, and Native American groups. After decades of advocacy from community members, students, and educators, in 2021, California became the first state to require Ethnic Studies as a high school graduation requirement. My research, then, emerges out of a unique crossroads: the education of recently arrived immigrant youth under Trump 2.0’s intensified anti-immigrant violence, the rocky implementation of a long-fought educational policy to center the voices of people of color and challenge race-evasiveness in schools, and intensifying efforts to silence critical educational approaches.

Important questions are emerging from this moment that scholars and educators must contend with: How can educators support immigrant youth in making sense of and understanding the roots of today’s attacks on racialized immigrant communities? How can understanding past struggles for the rights of marginalized groups help us to resist the violence we are witnessing today? What role might educational spaces play in developing that understanding? How do recently arrived immigrant youth make sense of their own racialization as they learn about the histories and struggles of other racialized groups?

These are a few of the questions that long guided my commitments as a former teacher of newcomers, and that guide my current research. Beginning in Summer 2024 and over the course of the 2024-2025 school year, I worked with a collaborative of California Ethnic Studies teachers and followed two of those teachers into their classrooms as they sought to implement an Ethnic Studies course that was both relevant and accessible to their recently arrived immigrant students. Below, I share a few insights that emerged from our work and from my observations in those newcomer-serving classrooms. I hope that these reflections will honor the challenging work that Ethnic Studies teachers are doing and point to the unique challenges that educators and scholars must tend to in order to meet the needs of immigrant youth.

Centering immigration while looking beyond the “immigrant” label

Several of the Ethnic Studies teachers I spoke with grappled with a tension as they develop Ethnic Studies curriculum for their newcomers: they want to center issues of immigration—especially in light of the attacks against immigrant communities—but also want to see their students as “more than immigrants.” For example, while teachers saw the roots of global migration as a clear entryway into talking about larger anti-imperialist struggles, they also worried that some students may not necessarily feel comfortable discussing the forms of intervention, colonization, war, and violence that pushed them to leave their countries.

In my conversations and interviews with students, I learned that some were grateful to learn about, for example, U.S. intervention in Guatemala, while others felt it was important to focus on more “traditional” “American” histories, which they felt they needed to learn as new immigrants. Ethnic Studies is precisely the space that can help students understand that U.S. intervention globally is US American history—but the linkages between these histories and the lives of students today must be made clear.

Teaching about race and racism across borders

The teachers I worked with understood that a critical analysis of racism is a central component of Ethnic Studies curriculum – and of any culturally responsive approach that seeks to develop students’ critical consciousness. Yet, teaching about race and racism with students who may be somewhat new to the U.S. racial landscape brings challenges. Some of the teachers expressed that the Ethnic Studies materials they had access to sometimes assumed knowledge of the U.S. racial hierarchy, but newcomers bring different understandings of racialization. Teachers didn’t always know how to translate these different understandings to an Ethnic Studies classroom. We need more robust, transnational lenses for thinking about race, racism, and oppression, while also honoring the specificity of the US racial hierarchy. Unfortunately, without dedicated funding and resources for training teachers and developing pedagogical resources, teachers are left unsupported in their efforts to meet the nuanced needs of their students.

Teaching about the connections between racism and immigration

In the classrooms where I spent several days a week between August 2024 and May 2025, I kept hearing a refrain that, while not surprising, was somewhat new to me: “los nacidos acá” (“those who were born here”). That phrase emerged many times in classroom conversations and casual exchanges, and made it clear that these youth were aware of the power and privilege granted to those who were born in the United States, even while we observed reignited attacks on birthright citizenship. While not everyone assigned the same meaning to this phrase, its circulation among the young people reminded me of how dominant discourses about immigrants, illegality, deportation, and citizenship can seep into the everyday talk of immigrant teens, and shape how they make sense of a racial hierarchy that is often reduced to a Black-White binary.

As we think about how to help immigrant youth make sense of the current political moment and its roots, we must draw connections between racialization, racism, and immigration in US history. We must also be intersectional in our understanding of racism, taking seriously the role of citizenship, language, class, and gender in shaping racial hierarchies.

Critical educational spaces—from Ethnic Studies classrooms, to after-school programs outside of school spaces, to civics and history courses—are increasingly necessary as immigrant youth confront intensifying anti-immigrant violence. These spaces offer an opportunity to contextualize today’s climate in a longer racial history—one that is constantly being silenced by efforts to whitewash history. Despite these efforts, educators, scholars, and youth will continue to cultivate spaces to both critically interrogate the world as it is and imagine towards new possibilities.