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Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students

BACKGROUND: In French-language secondary schools in Quebec, among all immigrant-origin students, those originating from South Asia have the highest dropout rate. However, girls belonging to this group consistently outperform their male peers of similar ethnic background. This stirs questions about t...

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Autores principales: Bakhshaei, Mahsa, Henderson, Rita Isabel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964263/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27465110
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-016-0328-0
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author Bakhshaei, Mahsa
Henderson, Rita Isabel
author_facet Bakhshaei, Mahsa
Henderson, Rita Isabel
author_sort Bakhshaei, Mahsa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In French-language secondary schools in Quebec, among all immigrant-origin students, those originating from South Asia have the highest dropout rate. However, girls belonging to this group consistently outperform their male peers of similar ethnic background. This stirs questions about the reasons for this relative outperformance and its linkage with overall wellbeing among these girls. METHODS: A mixed methods approach guided data collection. It involved in-depth interviews with female and male students of South Asian origin (n = 19) and with individuals holding educational roles in the lives of youth (n = 25). An additional anonymous questionnaire aggregated parent perspectives (n = 36), though this article focuses primarily on qualitative lessons. RESULTS: This article shows three main reasons for why South Asian female adolescents in Quebec French-language secondary schools outperform their male counterparts in schooling attainment: parental expectations after migration, socialization at home, and relationships at school. According to our findings, academic perseverance among these girls does not necessarily translate into their improved wellbeing or their involvement in an advantageous process of acculturation. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that although gender, ethnicity, and class can create an interlocking system of oppression in certain social spheres for a specific group of women, it can emerge as advantageous in other contexts for the same group. This provides educational policy makers, as well as school and community workers, with guidance and avenues for action that can promote the wellbeing of immigrant-origin girls through involvement in beneficial processes of acculturation aligned with their improved academic performance. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12905-016-0328-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-49642632016-07-29 Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students Bakhshaei, Mahsa Henderson, Rita Isabel BMC Womens Health Research Article BACKGROUND: In French-language secondary schools in Quebec, among all immigrant-origin students, those originating from South Asia have the highest dropout rate. However, girls belonging to this group consistently outperform their male peers of similar ethnic background. This stirs questions about the reasons for this relative outperformance and its linkage with overall wellbeing among these girls. METHODS: A mixed methods approach guided data collection. It involved in-depth interviews with female and male students of South Asian origin (n = 19) and with individuals holding educational roles in the lives of youth (n = 25). An additional anonymous questionnaire aggregated parent perspectives (n = 36), though this article focuses primarily on qualitative lessons. RESULTS: This article shows three main reasons for why South Asian female adolescents in Quebec French-language secondary schools outperform their male counterparts in schooling attainment: parental expectations after migration, socialization at home, and relationships at school. According to our findings, academic perseverance among these girls does not necessarily translate into their improved wellbeing or their involvement in an advantageous process of acculturation. CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights that although gender, ethnicity, and class can create an interlocking system of oppression in certain social spheres for a specific group of women, it can emerge as advantageous in other contexts for the same group. This provides educational policy makers, as well as school and community workers, with guidance and avenues for action that can promote the wellbeing of immigrant-origin girls through involvement in beneficial processes of acculturation aligned with their improved academic performance. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12905-016-0328-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2016-07-28 /pmc/articles/PMC4964263/ /pubmed/27465110 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-016-0328-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2016 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Bakhshaei, Mahsa
Henderson, Rita Isabel
Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title_full Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title_fullStr Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title_full_unstemmed Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title_short Gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
title_sort gender at the intersection with race and class in the schooling and wellbeing of immigrant-origin students
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964263/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27465110
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12905-016-0328-0
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