Second Generation Immigrants

Russ Rymer, distinguished author and freelance journalist, describes in his article Vanishing Voices the threat of a dominant culture in a region eliminating minority cultures and languages through the rapid rise of globalization and technology (Rymer, 2012, pg. 6). The minority population of second generation children in Canada and the United States also face a bicultural identity crisis as a result of being submerged in a different dominant culture in which their old heritage culture (HC) world and new Western world clash. Although there are socioeconomic factors that affect the degree of assimilation, many second generation immigrants experience an awkward situation where they either feel like a foreigner in a dominant Western culture or a Westerner who looks like a foreigner. The American immigration and education policies, where language and culture homogenize, contribute to this identity crisis and impact the psyche of especially second generation youth striving to fit in. The Canadian …show more content…
Seong Man Park explains that, besides the aforementioned marginalization within North American education systems, the exclusive use of the dominant language, the longing to have a sense of belonging among peers through assimilation, language shyness among one’s co-ethnics and discrimination were all factors that pressured assimilation among second-generation immigrant youth and accelerated their HL loss (Park, 2012, pg. 45-46). He cites Dr. Ratna Ghosh, William c. MacDonald Professor of Education at McGill University, and Ali. A. Abdi, Head of the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia, and their report on multicultural education policies, which found