Part 2 of Charting New Paths: Understanding and Support for Migrant and Undocumented Youth, May 2024

Charting New Paths: Checking Our Capacity

This is our densest week in this newsletter series. Our best efforts are likely to be most helpful if and when we check our capacity to hear, respect, and support the dignity of young people with experiences of migration. Even when we mean well, we may be ineffective or altogether harmful because of the complex and controversial discussion around migrant youth.

With that in mind, let's lay out a path for how we can center migrant and undocumented youth.

Migrant youth have the same basic needs as youth born in the United States. 

All young people, regardless of where they were born, need reliable access to safe people, places, and food. Immigrant youth experience added pressure from acculturation or assimilation, and navigating the immigration legal system — a demanding process that can take years of paperwork, interviews, court hearings, and hundreds or thousands of dollars. 

Often, youth service programs are caught between providing the support they know how to offer and the delicate, high-stakes immigration legal system.

Our programs can play a pivotal role in supporting young people if and when they share their experiences of migration.

Many of us have or know someone who has moved to a new place. Reasons vary, but for many undocumented and migrant families, the reasoning follows a similar path of seeking somewhere safe to exist.

Finding a community and navigating networks in a foreign country can be intimidating and scary. To be most effective, we must have a good grasp over the impact of our biases, focus on building trust, and co-create a plan to identify and address barriers impacting the wellbeing of migrant and undocumented youth.

Start by checking your bias.

Biases are part of the human experience, serving as instinctual mechanisms for self-preservation. We as humans engage in our biases all the time. Biases stem from our brain's natural inclination to assess situations and individuals for potential threats.

While biases can be positively adaptive in certain contexts, unchecked, they can manifest as discrimination towards others. By acknowledging and addressing these biases, we enhance our capacity to serve others effectively and cultivate environments of genuine inclusion and understanding. Dig deeper with this self-directed online course.

Focus on building trust.

Trust forms the foundation of any meaningful relationship. By building trust, service providers can establish rapport with migrant populations, fostering a sense of mutual respect and understanding.

Navigating a new space can be challenging, especially with people who have migrated to a foreign country. The first thing one loses when leaving home is a community, and service providers can offer exactly that. We acknowledge this with an emphasis: building a community requires trust.

Co-creating case plans allows for unpredictable complexity.

When providing case management to any young person, programs may consider co-creating plans to increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. This allows for active engagement while exploring available resources and support by combining the expertise of program staff and the youth being served.

The immigration legal system in the United States is complicated and unyielding. Many of us who do not hold expertise in the intricacies of this system may unintentionally contribute to feelings of confusion and being overwhelmed. By co-creating case plans, migrant youth can support our ability to be responsive by filling the gaps that are discovered only as the immigration legal process unfolds. 

This toolkit was released as a newsletter series in May 2024. Learn more about new training and funding opportunities, news and policy updates, and how we can collectively strengthen outcomes for youth and young adults. Sign up for our newsletter to get this series and more delivered straight to your inbox.