“Six organizations conducted research on the needs of immigrant youth in Ontario and the ways those needs were being met. Methods included extensive literature reviews, key informant interviews, focus groups of youth, family members, and service providers, psychological tests, and surveys. Findings of the six projects, amalgamated by the CERIS team into this report, show that language difficulties are one of the most pervasive sources of challenges for these youth in all the spheres of their lives: education, employment, health, and well-being. Moreover, difficulties faced by all adolescents in moving to adulthood become compounded by the immigration experience, and render the youth more vulnerable to outcomes of failure in a number of ways, linked to their age at migration, personal factors, the nature of their uprooting and migration experience, and tensions between them and their families and friends based on challenges posed by cultural differences. These are different across gender, religion and ethno-racial lines, but all can be painful for the youth and seriously impede the successful integration they desire. Facilitating this successful integration are supportive friends, extended family, and community institutions that offer well-designed, appropriate programs; militating against it are discrimination, harassment, and even violence in their communities and its institutions. Recommendations for public policy emerging from the research focus on ways to support not only the youth as individuals but also the families in which they are members, the peer groups to which they want to belong, and the larger community and its critical institutions.” – Publisher’s description
