Immigrant Youth Who Excel: Globalization’s Uncelebrated Heroes

This book adopts an asset-based view of immigrant youth, focusing on their potentialities rather than on their disadvantages. It is based on a decade and a half of anthropological and phenomenological research on adaptation styles of young immigrants from the Former Soviet Union in Israel. It claims that compared to local youth in host societies, high achieving immigrant youth are better endowed to face the challenges of increased globalization. They are multilingual; have a built-in comparative perspective; as a result, are more reflective and critical; naturally develop the ability for situational use of identity; mostly adhere to their ethnic identity which is de-territorialized, and, in general, have acquired skills to handle change. These characteristics render them less context bound and more mobility prone.

Rivka A. Eisikovits
Information Age Publishing