Inclusive schooling practices that support immigrant students with low language-of-schooling proficiency to actively participate in learning within mainstream contexts is crucial during the newly-arrived phase. The concept of reciprocal integration and its more recent evolution through the inclusive education movement, reframes school-community relationships as negotiable and re-positions young migrants as empowered navigators of new routes into school integration processes. This study conducted between 2017 and 2019 examines how four immigrant teenagers ('late arrivers' aged between 13 and 15) navigated mainstream learning in two schools during the newly-arrived phase, in two different educational contexts - France and New Zealand. A key aim is to see where educational conditions and individual learning behaviours intersect, as a way of highlighting how students respond to differing integration variables within these two school systems. Four case studies explore similarities and differences, comparing effects on students' experiences of integration. Findings identify, describe and explain a set of common best practices for newly-arrived immigrant teenagers in mainstream learning, with implications for teacher education in language-adapted approaches.