Working paper: please do not cite or distribute without the expressed permission of the author.

Segmented assimilation theory proposes immigrant children and children of immigrants must retain collectivistic orientations to their family and co-ethnic community to be buffered from downward assimilation. This framework assumes children migrate as members of an intact family unit and that individualism threatens adaptation and socioeconomic mobility, as it impedes community collectivism. My research prompts a re-examination of segmented assimilation by investigating the social adaptation of unauthorized Guatemalan Maya youth who arrive to the US as unaccompanied minors to work while their families remain in the country of origin. Youth struggle with poverty, fear of discrimination, and social isolation as they live and work in the US and maintain collectivist orientations to their families from afar. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with unauthorized Guatemalan Maya youngadult participants of a Los Angeles support group, this study suggests that although they lack the traditional supportive institutions of family and school, alternative resources for adaptation exist. I find that participation in psychotherapeutic culture equips youth growing up without parents or supportive social institutions with the rhetoric and behaviors of self-responsibility necessary for emotional, psychological, and financial stability, and aspirations for socioeconomic mobility. As youth become expressive individuals, their social commitments are not severed but move from the transnational family to the local community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]