Using a theoretical model of communal coping to understand changes in language brokers’ coping patterns: Implications for Latina/o early adolescents’ brokering stress and efficacy

ABSTRACT

Language brokering occurs when immigrant youth linguistically and culturally mediate for family and members of U.S. mainstream culture. Under some circumstances, brokering can be stressful. Based on a theoretical model of communal coping, this study utilized two waves of survey data from 342 Latina/o sixth- to eighth-grade students to identify different types of copers: (a) communal copers, (b) tentative copers, and (c) declined-ownership copers. Communal copers reported greater brokering stress than tentative brokers in the middle of the year, but not by the end of the year. Communal copers reported greater brokering efficacy than tentative copers in the middle and end of the year. Declined-ownership copers consistently had the lowest brokering stress and moderate brokering efficacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Language brokering
• communal coping
• immigrant
• adolescents
• Latino
• latent class

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cinthia Chicas, Daisy Figueroa, Hannah Gunter, Lyndsi Ibarra, Celine Jeremiah, Roselia Mendez Murillo, and Debora Pérez Torres, who assisted in this study’s data collection and data entry. We are also grateful to the school administrators and students who contributed to this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Kam (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) conducts research on interpersonal resources that protect youth against adverse mental health outcomes, poor academic performance, and engaging in alcohol and other substance use, particularly when faced with stressors related to immigration, acculturation, and ethnic identification.

Rachyl Pines (M.A. University of California, Santa Barbara) conducts research in health communication in several areas; healthcare in emergency settings, and immigrant families and their children when they encounter language barriers in various settings including healthcar.

Quinten Bernhold (M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara) conducts research on various aspects of family communication, with a particular emphasis on intergenerational family communication.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by two internal grants that were awarded to the first author: the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Institute for Social, Behavioral and Economic Research Social Science Research Grant and the Academic Faculty Senate’s Pearl Chase Grant.