Latino Students in New Destinations: Immigration, Extracurricular Activities, and Bullying Victimization

As a growing population of students in the U.S. education system, it is important to study the extent to which Latino students experience bullying victimization. In this study, a nationally representative sample of Latino high school students is analyzed for this purpose.

Data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 including students’ family immigration, participation in extracurricular activities, and reports of bullying victimization are analyzed. In order to make comparisons within the sample of Latino students, the sample is disaggregated between students attending school in new Latino immigrant destinations and traditional Latino immigrant destinations. Poisson regression is used in all multivariate analyses.

In new Latino destinations, Latino students are just as likely to report being bullied as white students. In addition, in new destinations Latino students are bullied in connection with participating inhumanities-related extracurricular activities. Further, they are more likely to be bullied for this participation in comparison to students of other races/ethnicities. Finally, these relationships are significant even after accounting for the fact that third generation, more established students are more likely to report being bullied.

Teachers, school administrators, parents, and researchers should be aware that Latino students can be bullied based on status-conferring activities such as extracurricular activities. This appears to be most pronounced in new Latino immigrant destinations where there is recent influx of Latinos. Efforts to prevent bullying in these areas can be combined with programs that seek to promote cross-ethnic understanding and academic/extracurricular enrichment.

This study provides valuable information on the experience of Latino students and bullying victimization.