Summer Fellow Christine Marsico Co-Authors BU Today Op-Ed on Immigration-Based Harassment in Schools

Christine Marsico, a 2020 Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow and a PhD candidate at BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, recently co-authored an op-ed in BU Today on the impacts of xenophobic rhetoric and immigration-based harassment on stress and anxiety levels in schools.

Research shows that harassment based on immigration status has been increasing in recent years. Marsico’s research team and the New England Anti-Defamation League (ADL) surveyed over 5,000 New England public high school students, finding that 2 percent of all students—and 8.3 percent of students identifying as Hispanic and Latinx—experienced harassment in the past 30 days. In addition, 39 percent of students reported hearing negative comments about immigration during the same timeframe.

Students reporting harassment based on immigration or perceived immigration status reported significantly more anxiety and depression than their peers (32 percent vs. 6 percent), and even students who reported hearing negative comments reported more anxiety and depression than those who did not (11 percent vs. 4 percent).

“Taken together, findings highlight how all students in school have the potential to be negatively affected by the presence of xenophobia, which counters dialogue that often occurs around immigration that implies the issue is one occurring primarily at the borders and is not affecting the lives of a wide range of people,” the authors write.

Read the full article here.

As a Pardee Center Graduate Summer Fellow, Marsico is using this survey data to further explore the frequency and impacts of immigration-based harassment and bullying in schools. Learn more about the 2020 Fellows and the Graduate Summer Fellows program.