2 - Growing Up Ethnic in the United Kingdom and the United States: Comparative Contexts for Youth Development

Summary

Introduction

Understanding whether and how group membership influences adolescent behavior and a myriad of outcomes requires an appreciation of the social and economic arrangements in which youth forge their transition to adulthood. Because several chapters that follow involve paired comparisons of youth experiences in the United Kingdom and the United States, this chapter situates them in context by sketching a socio-demographic overview of youth in both countries. First, I provide the demographic sketch of both countries, focusing on how migration altered their ethnoracial landscapes. Subsequently, I characterize the current social and economic conditions of immigrant and minority youth, offering temporal perspectives as data permit.

This enterprise presumes the availability of comparable data over time, but this mere condition is seldom met. Not only do official classification systems evolve, but so also do the methods for collecting migration status and ethno-racial group membership. I briefly acknowledge these limitations and, perforce, limit cross-country comparisons to general overviews based on social and demographic indicators. To capitalize on the nuances of country-specific data, the social conditions of immigrant and minority youth are profiled separately, reserving for the conclusion a synthesis of key differences and similarities. My use of the phrase immigrant and minority youth is deliberate, to acknowledge that not all immigrant youth are members of minority populations and that groups designated as minorities are not necessarily foreign-born (although their parents or distant ancestors may be immigrants).