Early migration-youth studies framed children as pathologically caught between cultures

Evidence

Much of the early work on race and youth saw the children of migrants as somehow locked in a vice-like grip between two incommensurable cultural blocks, namely, the host society and the culture of the parental home. This literature tended to reinforce a pathological view of minority youth as “caught between” or, equally, somehow on the brink of an impending crisis. What was lost in this approach was an appreciation of what was happening in the interstices of social life where young people themselves were writing their own history of negotiation and exclusion. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2980

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘caught between two cultures’ trope is a classic of assimilation theory; relates to work on second-generation Muslim youth and to debates the reader has tracked on identity formation.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2980