Like all children, immigrant-origin children’s experiences are a result of interactions between themselves, their experiences, and their environments. Put simply, all children grow up within contexts that will shape them into their future selves. So, how do settings matter for immigrant-origin children? Like all children their experiences are influenced by the more visible and obvious proximal contexts (like their families, schools, and neighborhoods) as well as more distal contexts like social, economic, and political, and economic contexts.

Let us begin by considering some of the most salient distal influences on immigrant origin children and youth’s lives before moving to proximal levels of influence. By superimposing an ecological framework (see Brofenbrenner & Morris, 2006) upon a risk and resilience perspective allows us to frame ways to understand how these systems interact and how we might seek to intervene. (see Suárez-Orozco, Frosso, Marks, & Kataskikas 2018).