CMEI Colloquium
Longfellow Hall, Harvard Graduate School of Education
September 15, 2011
There are now nearly four million children born in the United States who have undocumented immigrant parents. In the current debates around immigration reform, policymakers often view immigrants as an economic or labor market problem to be solved, but the issue has a very real human dimension. Immigrant parents without legal status are raising their citizen children under stressful work and financial conditions, with the constant threat of discovery and deportation that may narrow social contacts and limit full engagement in civic life and institutions that might benefit their children. The book Immigrants Raising Citizens (Russell Sage, 2011) offers rich description of the everyday experiences of these parents, their very young children, and the consequences these experiences have on their children's development.
Speaker Biography: Hirokazu Yoshikawa is the Courtney Sale Ross Professor of Globalization and Education at NYU Steinhardt and a University Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the Global TIES for Children center at NYU (for current research projects, click on Research below). He is a core faculty member of the the Psychology of Social Intervention program, and a faculty affiliate of the Metropolitan Center for Equity and the Transformation of Schools and the Institute on Human Development and Social Change at NYU. He is a community and developmental psychologist who studies the effects of public policies and programs related to immigration, early childhood, and poverty reduction on children’s development. He has also conducted research on culture, sexuality and youth and young adult development in the contexts of HIV / AIDS risk and prevention and is currently conducting research on gay / straight alliances. He conducts research in the United States and in low- and middle-income countries. Previously he served as the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and as its Academic Dean. He currently serves on the Leadership Council and as the Co-Chair of the early childhood development and education workgroup of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the research and technical group advising the Secretary-General on the 2015-2030 global development goals. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, and several foundations. His recent books include Immigrants Raising Citizens: Undocumented Parents and Their Young Children (2011, Russell Sage, sole authored),and Improving the Odds for America's Children: Future Directions in Policy and Practice (2014, Harvard Education Press, with Kathleen McCartney and Laurie Forcier, a volume dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Children's Defense Fund with a foreword by Congressman George Miller and an afterword by Marian Wright Edelman), and Cradle to Kindergarten: A New Plan to Combat Inequality (with Ajay Chaudry, Taryn Morrissey, and Christina Weiland, 2017, Russell Sage). He serves on the Boards of the Russell Sage Foundation and the Foundation for Child Development, and on the Advisory Boards for the Open Society Foundations Early Childhood Program and the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report. In 2014 he was elected to the National Academy of Education. He has received two awards for mentorship of ethnic minority students from the American Psychological Association. He obtained his PhD in clinical psychology from NYU.