Adolescent Arrivals: Navigating Fear and Belonging in New Beginnings

“This stellar book sheds light on the profound diversity of people from Latin America and people of Latin American descent—and how these two factions are oftentimes at odds with each other. A must-read for anyone interested in migration, race, and ethnicity.”—Jerry Flores, author of Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance, and Wraparound Incarceration “Liliana Rodriguez’s pathbreaking theoretical contributions of ‘constrained agency’ and ‘immigrant youth vitality’ will spark a new generation of scholarship on adolescent migrants. Her work offers an unprecedented and revelatory view of one of the most important and vulnerable migrant populations in the United States, powerfully showcasing both their trials and their many forms of resilience.”—G. Cristina Mora, Chancellor’s Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit to learn more. Unfamiliar with both the English language and the cultural norms of their new host country, immigrant teenagers in the United States face unique challenges as they adapt to the simultaneous physical and emotional changes associated with adolescence. These intersections impose specific constraints upon their agency but also provide them with a distinctive vantage point, setting their experiences apart from those of both younger and older immigrants. Drawing on two years of ethnographic data with adolescent arrivals, who began learning in educational settings during highly contested political times, Liliana V Rodriguez theorizes the overlapping dynamics of their experiences. Through their voices and narratives, Rodriguez shows how these youth create vibrant spaces of belonging through joy and humor as they craft their identities, find reasons to laugh, and build communities on their own terms. Adolescent Arrivals reveals that for immigrant teenagers, survival is not just passive adaptation but an active and creative process of world-making.