ABSTRACT
In order to ensure educational quality for immigrant youth in a rapidly diversifying society, it is crucial to explore the ways in which they experience schooling, specifically from junior high school to high school. This chapter follows seven Filipina girls during junior high school and after graduation and examines their various trajectories as they envision their lives in a globalized world. This longitudinal ethnographic research that captures youths' inner perspectives and life paths seeks to shed light on the possibilities and limitations of Japanese education. While junior high school had special support for immigrant students such as providing Japanese language classes and supporting academic learning for Japanese language learners, high school rarely provided similar special treatment for these youth. Within this education system the Filipina youth faced multiple challenges and difficulties from entering a high school to obtaining required credits to advance to the next grade level and eventually led most of them to drop out of school.
