Working Alongside Immigrant Children and Their Families
| MÓNICA RODRÍGUEZ DELGADO, PHD, LPC, NCC, RPT™ PEGGY CEBALLOS, PHD, NCC, LPC-A & ELIZABETH AGUILAR, PHD, LPC, NCC
T
he immigrant experience can include children born in the host country. However, for this article, we use Bolter’s parents who were not born in the U.S. with no distinction based on residency/citizenship status. According to Batalova (2024), in the year 2022, there were approximately 46 million immigrants in the U.S., with Mexico, India, and China being the three leading countries (Moslimani & Passel, 2024). Batalova (2024) calls attention to statistics that indicate a recent increase in asylum seekers due to political and economic deterioration in countries of origin, with the fastest growing groups being from Venezuela (grew 263 percent), Afghanistan (258 percent), Nepal (175 percent), Nigeria (104 percent), and Myanmar (94 percent).
10 | PLAYTHERAPY December 2024 |
www.a4pt.org
The immigrant community in the United States is comprised of individuals with diverse intersectionality of identities, including, but not limited to, various socio-demographic backgrounds, educational levels, races, ethnicities, religions, languages, Indigenous origins, ability status, gender identity, and sexual identity. Additionally, because the reasons for immigration are different, it is important for play therapists to guide their work through a framework of multicultural comfort level, attend to their client’s needs with cultural humility, and address cultural opportunities in the therapeutic relationship (Watkins et al., 2019). This article intends to highlight shared experiences among immigrant children and parents to enhance play therapists’ address trauma among immigrant populations, the intergenerational
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