ABSTRACT
The process of growing up American oscillates between smooth acceptance and traumatic confrontation depending on the characteristics that immigrants and their children bring along and the social context that receives them. There are three features of the social contexts encountered by newcomers that create vulnerability to downward assimilation. The first is color, the second is location, and the third is the absence of mobility ladders. Field High School is located in a small coastal community of central California whose economy has long been tied to agricultural production and immigrant farm labor. In terms of the typology of vulnerability and resources, well-sheltered Cuban American teenagers lack any extensive exposure to outside discrimination, they have little contact with youths from disadvantaged minorities, and the development of an enclave creates economic opportunities beyond the narrowing industrial and tourist sectors on which most other immigrant groups in the area depend.
