A Qualitative Exploration of Parental Separation and Coping: Attachment Disruptions Among Newcomer Immigrant Adolescents

Qualitative interview data were used to explore parental separation and coping strategies among newcomer immigrant adolescents. Participants included 58 newcomer immigrant adolescents from 21 countries of origin. Authors used archival data from students enrolled in two public high schools in a large northeastern city in the United States that exclusively serve international students. The qualitative data were collected from an in-depth semi-structured interview. Interviews were analyzed using a directed content analysis approach with Lazarus and Folkman's model of coping as the initial framework to identify key themes. Qualitative analysis explored two themes of coping strategies, emotion-focused and problem-focused; subtheme analysis identified six distinct emotion-focused and four distinct problem-focused strategies. A chi-square test of independence showed no significant difference in use of coping strategies between participants who had been separated from their families compared with those who had not. Findings suggest that the types of coping strategies newcomer immigrant adolescents use may be highly influenced by a multitude of individual and environmental factors. Results support the need for interventions that bolster culturally congruent coping strategies such as social support and activity engagement.