This document summarizes the experiences of two groups of youth who are often at risk of alienation from mainstream schooling: youth from low-income families and immigrant/refugee youth. It discusses how poverty, lack of social and cultural capital, economic barriers, and trauma from situations like war can negatively impact these youths' academic performance and social integration in school. It also examines how schools often perpetuate this alienation through practices that do not address the systemic issues facing these marginalized groups and instead view them through a deficit model that locates problems within the individual.

1. EDU6373 Final Synthesis Paper:
Youth “At-Risk” and Alienation From Mainstream Schooling
For: Richard Maclure (EDU6373)
By: Andrea Lagalisse (2992863)
4/15/2014

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EDU6373 Final Synthesis Paper:
Youth “At-Risk” and Alienation from Mainstream Schooling
Two categories of youth who tend to be at risk of alienation from mainstream schooling
up to the present include youth from low-income families, and youth immigrants, especially
Refugees from Africa and the Middle East in the past 30 years . As Wotherspoon and Schissel
remind us, the “benefits and hazards of being young are not equally distributed” (2001, p. 326),
and that poverty, social and economic marginalization are most evident in aboriginal youth,
immigrant youth, and those living in the inner cities and remote rural areas (Ibid.). Education is
supposed to act as a “vehicle for social mobility” available to anyone who worked hard, but in
reality opportunities and outcomes remained “unequal, according to such background
characteristics as social class, ethnicity and gender” (te Riele, K. 2006, p. 129).
Common conceptualizations of youth deemed “at risk” locate the dysfunction within the
individual or their families, rather than on the wider sociological framework (Ibid., p. 132). In
spite of significant difficulties and resistance from those who would maintain the status quo, it is
essential for educators to work towards schools that are inclusive, community oriented centres
for addressing social, cultural and economic factors that prevent marginalized youth from
succeeding in becoming active, healthy members of their communities.
The Alienating Experience of Youth from Low-Income Families
A major group of youth that tends to be at risk of alienation from mainstream schooling
in Canada are those who come from low-income families. Wotherspoon and Schissel (2001) note
that “school-related risks are most heavily concentrated among visible minorities, the poor,
residents of inner city and poorer regions, and individuals who are not fluent in the language
employed at the school” (p. 324). These young people are having a harder time achieving

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success in the academics of school, but also in the social aspects of developing social and
cultural capital.
On area where this exclusion is particularly evident is in the division between the
material status of the haves and have-nots. In western society, the prevalence of material objects
as markers of identity and status and extreme commercialism lead to youth cultures that are
exclusionary of those who cannot afford the popular brand of clothing or expensive toys. “Fitting
in” becomes a matter of having or obtaining the “right resources” and “thus, not having money
made young people increasingly subject to the ascription of a negative identity, with all its
attendant negative assumptions” (Croghan, R., Griffin, C., Hunter, J., & Phoenix, A., 2006, p.
473). This contributes to a lack of social capital as young people are excluded from participating
in activities with others or in forming relationships that could be of use to them.
Youth who are marginalized due to economic poverty can to also tend lack in social
capital. For various reasons, they are not receiving the support from families and their
communities that they need to thrive as individuals. One effect of this is that they miss out on
important “bonding” forms of social capital where they build on the relationships, trust and
forms of reciprocity that enable youth to then “bridge out” and form new friendships (Holland,
J., Reynolds, T., and Weller, S., 2007, p. 102). Alternately, the support they receive reinforces
and perpetuates the stereotypes that they are trying to escape. For example young people will
often be enticed into joining gangs with promises of material objects, shelter, food, and other
forms of support they are not getting. Bottrell notes how school truancy and gang membership
becomes forms of resistance to dominant, white, middle-class values and ideologies that are both
a cause and an effect of marginalization. Holland, Reynolds, and Weller comment on the
importance of community in identity construction, and how children’s independence can be

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constrained by their lived experiences of violence and fear and discrimination in their
communities (2007, p. 111). Becoming part of a youth network can provide the feeling of safety,
inclusion and identity that many youth are immediately lacking, but often at great risk and
expense in the long term.
The African Refugee Youth Experience and Alienation
A second group that faces significant risk of alienation from mainstream schooling are
youths from the immigrant populations. This is especially true where the young person has come
from a background of violence, instability, or civil war. Discussing the influx of African refugee
students to schools in Alberta, Kanu points out that although there has been an “unprecedented”
increase in the number of refugee students, the increase “…has generally not been accompanied
by appropriate education and other specialized support” (p. 916). Refugee students often
encounter a multitude of academic challenges, including lack of support at home, cultural
dissonance, limited language proficiency, and fear and distrust of authority figures and
inappropriate grade level placements that did not reflect academic ability (Kanu, Y., 2008, p.
923-24). Often in schools, students from ESL programs are segregated from the rest of the
school population and miss out on important social experiences and opportunities to learn
through scaffolding from their peers.
Academic barriers are often compounded by psychosocial challenges, such as
overcoming past trauma, acquiring a “sense of safety and a sense of self” and balancing new
cultural expectations with the desire to maintain the values of the homeland (Kanu, Y., 2008, p.
931). Kanu notes that African refugee students are more likely to come from war-affected and
disrupted schooling backgrounds, are more likely to have been forced into traumatic situations,
and more likely to have spent long periods of time in refugee camps (2008, p. 917). It is not hard

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to understand why refugee students can have an exceptionally hard time adapting to their new
school and community and cultural expectations.
A third area where refugee youths often face constraints is in severe economic difficulty.
Many refugee families left with little or nothing from their homes. Many youth must work part
or full time to supplement their family income and help repay the loans that the Canadian
government had spent to bring them to Canada and resettle them (Kanu, Y., 2008, p. 930). If a
young person has to work for eight hours and go to school for eight hours of every day, it is not
surprising that they would encounter difficulties in concentrating or keeping up. Not only are
these young people physically exhausted, they do not have the time to take advantage of the few
existing programs or groups designed to help them adjust.
Kanu points out that since the 1990’s, most refugees trying to escape violence have been
unlikely to have the “high levels of education or skills valued by host families” (2008, p.918).
Parents (in some cases the refugee youth does not even have any) often face language barriers
and don’t always understand what is expected of them in their new culture or where to get help.
This can exacerbate difficulties in communication between students, educators, administrators
and families. It can also make it much more difficult for students who are struggling to catch up,
since they lack support in doing homework, navigating projects and assignments and in acquiring
literacy skills outside of the classroom.
School alienation as a recurring theme for low-income and refugee students
School alienation has been a recurrence among these youth in part because the social
systems in place in Canadian culture are entrenched and self-perpetuating. Bottrell highlights the
cognitive dissonance between traditional social structures and identities being posited as “less
significant in the determinance of individual trajectories”, and the lived experience of social

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differentiation that suggest that “although the collective foundations of social life have become
more obscure, they continue to provide powerful frameworks which constrain young peoples’
experiences and life chances” (2007, p. 597). This dissonance is compounded by the climate of
rapid change, a world that is economically uncertain, with increasing levels of inequality, high
rates of youth unemployment, and youth suicide, as well as erosions to public health and welfare
systems (Wotherspoon, T, and Schissel, B., 2001, p. 325-26). Within this framework, schools
tend to “produce rather than ameliorate risk…in the cultural assumptions, classroom practices,
and organizational and fiscal arrangements they adopt” (Wotherspoon, T., & Schissel, B., 2001,
p. 331). The reinforcement of the status-quo in schools and in local communities makes it hard
for many marginalized youth to avoid becoming “self-fulfilling prophecies” and reduces
concepts of success to avoidance of problems rather than “positive intellectual and social
development” (Ibid.).
A further reason why school alienation has be recurrent among youth “at-risk” is the
traditional approach to “problem” youth in viewing them through the lens of a deficit model
versus a strength model. Deficit models are problematic because they locate the ‘problem’ in the
individual and ignore the wider, systemic problems. For example, the child who falls asleep in
class regularly is labelled as lazy, or disinterested, instead of recognizing the fact that they are
tired because they have to work a full time job on top of going to school and other
responsibilities. This creates problems of perception and attitudes, both in the way youth see
themselves and their ability to succeed, and in how adults see youth and their place in the
community.
Viewing youth as the source of the problem leads to and perpetuates social and economic
inequality. Wotherspoon and Schissel argue further that media accounts present a myth of

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“increasing risk and danger” from ‘problem’ youth, appropriating the “language and voices of
scientists” to maintain their credibility. This has political consequences because it “equates or at
least associates issues of inherent or acquired physical and mental deficiencies with stereotypical
race, class, gender, or geographic categories”, which subverts the role of structural disadvantage
in the formation of youth who become “at-risk” (2001, p. 328).
A reason why school alienation has been a recurrence among refugee youth in particular
can be seen through the lens of the sociology of immigration and adaption as outlined by Portes
and Zhou in Kanu, suggesting that adaption into a new society can follow different paths; either
upward mobility and assimilation into the middle-class majority; upward mobility marked by
ethnic solidarity; or unsuccessful “assimilation into poverty” (2008, p. 919). Kanu believes that
this third pattern is the one that is affecting refugee youth in Canadian schools the most, and that
this is because they lack the “significant” social and economic support needed to counter the
realities of acculturation (Ibid.). Attempts at integration have focussed on assimilation and have
mostly ignored the underlying economic, social, emotional, and psychological difficulties many
refugee youth are encountering as they try to adapt to their new lives.
Strategies for reducing alienation and enhancing inclusive practices in schools.
Strategies for reducing alienation and enhancing an environment and feeling of inclusion
can help youth to succeed in schools. It is essential, as Kanu notes, to actively seek to improve at
the micro and macro levels. For example, at the micro level, educators, administrators and policy
makers need to focus on initiatives like supporting inclusive practices in schools that validate and
affirm cultural diversity, developing programs to assist refugee youth and families adapt and
heal, professional development training to improve teachers’ and administrators’ knowledge and
attitudes. At the macro level, for example, Kanu calls for better coordination of refugee services,

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forgiving refugee debt, and changes to curriculum as some areas for improvement (2008, p. 935-
37).
In schools, youth have proposed interventions directed at “improving the school contexts
and assisting youth from war-affected backgrounds” through changes including; pace and
curriculum adjustments, culturally appropriate sports and recreation programs, access to
culturally appropriate counselling, patience and coaching from teachers, less racism from
teachers, administrators and Canadian-born students (Kanu, Y., 2008, p.934). Wider reform
could include professional training to better inform educators and administrators about cultural
and social differences and to cultivate tolerance and understanding, push for changes in
curriculum, policy and legislation that restricts access or doesn’t reflect or “connect with the
lives and worlds of the learners they are meant to serve” (Wotherspoon, T., & Schissel, B., 2001,
p.331).
The reality of cultural difference and cultivating tolerance. Most African and middle
Eastern refugee students are either black Africans with “diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds”
or Moslem, a religion that many in the west “fear and despise, associating it with violence and
terrorism” (Kanu, 2008. P. 918). Cultural misunderstanding has the tendency to breed intolerance
and hostility. An important role for educators is to support the development of youth into
responsible, compassionate members of both their local and global community. Supporting
students in developing their skills and accessing resources to help them better adapt rather than
focussing on their faults can counter the tendency to equate youth “at risk” with the “old concept
of youth as culturally deficiency and even deviant” (Te Riele, K., 2006, p. 140.)
As Te Riele notes, emphasis on the ‘problems’ with youth generally lead to “alarmist
stereotypes and moral panic about the threat posed by these youth to society” (Ibid.). Another

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important role for educators, then, is to think about the terms like “at-risk” and recognize the
historical and culturally significant implications of their construction in order to “pose questions
about who benefits from these ideologies and which aspects of reality are ignored”
(Wotherspoon, T, and Schissel, B., 2001, p. 325). This should contribute to a slow change in
attitudes and values that will lead to changes towards inclusivity and authentic diversity in
practice and eventually in policy.
Resilience. Building individual resilience is another way to counteract the constraints and
barriers faced by marginalized youths of all kinds. Kanu notes that a key component of healthy
development is the “cultivation of psycho-social resilience which is a combination of two
factors: personal resources and social resources” such as self-reliance and self-understanding,
positive thinking and the ability to form positive relationships (2008, p. 920). Ways to build
resilience include supporting student successes, enabling youth to have agency and
responsibility, and encouraging youth to engage in their communities and build positive
relationships. It also involves actively recognizing how identity and socialization is structured
and finding ways to push back at traditional expectations, aiming to “break open dichotomies of
problem and resilient youth and resistance and resilience, to recognize the resources of marginal
culture and to reassert the problems of domination and privilege” (Bottrell, D., 2007, p. 600).
Pushing for change. Another way in which schools can help to counteract the alienation
of its ‘at-risk’ students is through cultivating relationships within the local community to support
youth and help them to access services they may require. Kanu notes that lack of funding and
resources available to schools along with isolations among service providers severely impairs
their ability to support war-affected refugee students (2008, p. 935). Cultivating coalitions
among the various service providers could help make these services more accessible by

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centralizing access. This might mean re-envisioning the use of school space and property and
opening it up to include important resources like social workers, psychologists or psychiatrists,
health-care professionals, employment resources, links to local law enforcement, or other social
services to help disadvantaged and refugee youth to navigate the many parts of their selves and
their experiences.
As Holland, Reynolds and Weller argue, social capital must continuously be worked for,
a product of “investment strategies….aimed at establishing or reproducing social relationships
that are directly usable” (2007, p. 101). They suggest policy reform that moves away from a
notion of “getting out in order to get on” in favour of policies that genuinely use social capital to
build community cohesion and social integration (Holland, J., Reynolds, T., & Weller, S., 2007,
p. 113). This is similar to the social justice orientation Wotherspoon and Schissel suggest that
schools should adopt, where the concern is to “locate and transform the sources of inequality”
(2001, p. 331). This involves a re-evaluating the goal of schools from simple education of
children to also supporting and facilitating delivery of “appropriate social, health, recreation,
culture, [and] justice” services for children and their families (Ibid., p. 332-33). This involves
moving away from educational models that are one-size-fits-all to ones that privilege authentic
diversity, youth agency, and learning for its own sake.
Conclusion
We must recognize that there significant and overlapping obstacles and constraints that
reduce the success of the strategies suggested above. The types of changes that are envisioned
take a long time and involve many trials and setbacks. Attempts to reform curriculum and policy
are met with resistance from a variety of actors with different intentions and motivations.
Resources are not abundant and are not evenly distributed. Dominant cultural and social forms

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are entrenched and hard to change. Those who resist change are generally those who are well
served by the status quo and have significantly more economic, social and cultural capital. Those
who want change often have a hard time mobilizing and maintaining lasting change.
In spite of these difficulties and unavoidable obstacles, it is important to actively counter
the tendency to locate the problem within the individual rather than the system, to cultivate
resilience, cultural understanding and multi-ethnic tolerance in young people. The more we offer
youth the opportunities to grow and succeed, the more they will take them up. Every student who
succeeds in spite of adversity can then go on to help the next generation in the turning the tide
towards inclusivity, authentic diversity and true community in our schools and in society.

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Resources
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the problem of schooling. Journal of Youth Studies, 10(8), 597-616. doi
10.1080/13676260701602662
Croghan, R., Griffin, C., Hunter, J., & Phoenix, A. (2006). Style failure: consumption, identity,
and social exclusion. Journal of Youth Studies, 9(4), 463-478. doi
10/1080/13676260600914481
Holland, J., Reynolds, T., & Weller, S. (2007). Transitions, networks and communities: the
significance of social capital in the lives of children and young people. Journal of Youth
Studies, 10(1), 97-116. doi 10.1080/13676260600881474
Kanu, Y. (2008). Educational needs and barriers for African refugee students in Manitoba.
Canadian Journal of Education, 31(4), 915-940. ISSN 03802361
te Riele, K. (2006). Youth ‘at risk’: further marginalizing the marginalized? Journal of
Educational Policy, 21(2), 129-145. doi 10.1080/02680930500499968
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“at-risk”. Canadian Journal of Education, Revue canadienne de l’education, 26(3), 321-
339. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1602211