Does Selective Migration Matter? Explaining Ethnic Disparities in Educational Attainment among Immigrants' Children

Suicidality in first-generation, second-generation and non-immigrant youth in Canada

Background

The number of people migrating globally has drastically increased in the last two decades and continues to rise. Although adult migrants are typically in better health than the population they migrate to, the evidence regarding migrant children's health, and especially their mental health, is mixed.

Objectives

To assess whether the prevalence of suicidal ideation and suicide attempt differs between first- and second-generation immigrant youth, compared to non-immigrants, and whether other sociodemographic factors moderate any associations.

Methods

We analyzed a subsample of youth aged 15-17 years from the 2019 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth - a national, representative, cross-sectional survey. We conducted multivariable logistic regression analysis, with past-year suicidal ideation and suicide attempt as outcomes and migrant status as exposure. We also investigated whether sociodemographic factors (including sex, family income, parental divorce) moderated these associations using interaction terms.

Results

Second-generation immigrants had almost twice the risk of first-generation immigrants and non-immigrants of having attempted suicide (OR 1.68, 95%CI: 1.07, 2.63). The association between second-generation immigrant status and suicide attempt was stronger among those not from low-income households (OR 2.04, 95%CI: 1.30, 3.21) and those with divorced parents (OR 5.19, 95%CI: 1.41, 19.12). The association between second-generation immigrant status and suicidal ideation was stronger among males (OR 1.78, 95% CI: 1.04, 3.07) and those with divorced parents (OR 4.13, 95%CI 1.40, 12.14). Additionally, some effects among first-generation immigrants varied by time since arrival.

Relevance

The healthy immigrant effect with respect to suicidality does not appear to pass from the first-generation to the second-generation. The magnitude of effect among second generation immigrant youth varies according to other sociodemographic factors.

Explaining the attainment of the second-generation: When does parental relative education matter?

How can we understand unexplained variation in the educational outcomes of the children of immigrants? A growing literature posits that standard educational transmission models fail to explain national origin differences in attainment because they ignore immigrant selectivity - the degree to which immigrants differ from non-migrants in their sending countries. The immigrant selectivity hypothesis is usually tested using indicators of parents' relative or "contextual" educational attainment, measuring their rank in the educational attainment distribution of their country of origin. However, using this proxy, current support for the hypothesis is mixed. We outline three conditions for the use of educational selectivity as a proxy for relative social positioning among the children of immigrants. We test our conditions using an adult and a youth sample from a large household panel survey in the UK. We supplement our analyses by exploring relative education data from prior research on Italy, France and the United States. Triangulating these varied sources, we illustrate cases when our three conditions do and do not hold, providing evidence from the UK and other contexts. We provide guidelines on the use of relative education as a measure of relative social standing in cross-national research as well as an assessment of the immigrant selectivity hypothesis in explaining second-generation educational outcomes.

Fertility and immigration: Do immigrant mothers hand down their fertility pattern to the next generation? Evidence from Norway

We examined whether the fertility pattern of immigrant mothers is handed down to the next generation. Our analyses were carried out on population register data. These data contained information on all immigrants to Norway from 123 countries during the period 1935-1995. We examined whether there was a relationship between the fertility rate in the country of origin and the number of children for generations 1.5 and 2 in Norway. We estimated three models: fixed effects for country of origin, fixed effects for region, and no fixed effects. The three specifications yielded estimates with overlapping confidence intervals. We interpret the estimates from the models with fixed effects for region, and the model with no fixed effects as upper-bound estimates. They show that an increase of 1.00 in the fertility rate in the country of origin leads to an average increase in the number of children of 0.12 (no fixed effects) or 0.14 (fixed effects for region) for immigrant women in generations 1.5 and 2. The estimate from the model with fixed effects for country of origin was small and not statistically significant at the conventional level. We interpret this as a lower-bound estimate. Our upper-bound estimates for generations 1.5 and 2 are smaller than the estimates for generation 1, i.e. there has been a decrease in the fertility rate from the first to the second generation. As a result, if the proportion of the population with an immigrant background continues to increase, it may increase at a slower rate in the future.

Horizontal Advantage: Choice of Postsecondary Field of Study Among Children of Immigrants

Educational expansion has raised the influence of sorting across postsecondary educational fields on children's future life chances. Yet, little is known about horizontal ethnic stratification in the choice of field of study among children of immigrant parents, whose parents often have moderate absolute levels of education relative to native-born parents but tend to be positively selected on education relative to nonmigrants in the origin country. Using rich administrative data from Norway, we study the educational careers of immigrant descendants relative to the careers of children of native-born parents. Our results show that children of immigrants from non-European countries have a higher likelihood of entering higher education and enrolling in high-paying fields of study compared with children of natives, despite having poorer school grades and disadvantaged family backgrounds. However, immigrant parents' positive selectivity provides limited insight into why children of immigrants exhibit high ambitions later in their postsecondary educational careers. These findings document a persistent pattern of horizontal ethnic advantage in postsecondary education in which ambitious children of immigrants are more likely to enter into more prestigious and economically rewarding fields of study than their fellow students with native-born parents.

Educational Expectation Gaps Between Second-Generation Immigrant and Ethnic Majority Students in a Comparative Perspective: The Moderating Role of Educational Tracking

This paper investigates the influence of educational tracking on immigrant educational expectation gaps in Sweden, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. To account for heterogeneity in immigrant children's origin countries, this paper additionally focuses on the educational selectivity of immigrant parents. The article argues that with a greater degree of tracking, students receive stronger track signals about their ability and their future opportunities, which should reduce the influence of immigrant parents’ aspirations and mitigate immigrant students’ lower responsiveness to school ability. As a result, immigrant students in countries with a high degree of tracking should have less inflated expectations that are more similar to ethnic majority students. Additionally, the moderating effect that tracking can have on the influence of parental aspirations on immigrant students’ educational expectations should mitigate the beneficial effect of immigrant parents’ selectivity in highly versus lowly tracked countries. Findings based on two waves of the CILS4EU data reveal that second-generation immigrant students have higher educational expectations than ethnic majority students in all countries except Germany. No significant differences are found relating to parents’ educational selectivity. The results support the assumption that stronger track signals in countries with a higher degree of tracking lead to higher responsiveness to school ability among second-generation immigrant students. No support is found for a reduced influence of parental aspirations on the immigrant expectation gap in countries with a higher tracking degree. This study contributes to research on immigrant expectation gaps by highlighting the specific mechanisms through which tracking influences operate.

Is Migration a Way Out from Ascription? The Status Attainment Process of Romanians in Western Europe

This article assesses the role of social origin for Romanian migrants in Western Europe, compared to stayers in their origin country. We propose a novel theoretical model of status attainment to account for the migration process, including the self-selection to migration on the basis of individual characteristics and the effect of the area/context on social mobility. Our sample (elaborated from the EUCROSS 2012 survey) includes 1772 working-age Romanian citizens who completed their education in Romania. Our results show that self-selection played a role in not only the Romanians’ decision to migrate but also the choice of destination (either Southern Europe or Central-Northern Europe), being migrants in Southern Europe negatively self-selected with respect to both social origin (men) and education (both men and, especially, women). We also found that the disadvantage of Romanian migrants (measured through the International Socio-Economic Index), compared to stayers, was reinforced by a higher influence of social origin for women, who, in addition, got even lower returns to education abroad. Contrary to the expectations of both academic scholars and the institutions supporting EU free movement, migration to Western Europe (at least in the case of Romanians) was not a way out, but rather reinforced ascription.

The role of recent refugees' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany

This paper uses the example of newly arrived refugees to examine the role of recent migrants' educational selectivity in their children's educational decisions in Germany. Building on a theoretical model that understands participation in the educational system as the sum of investment decisions of rational individuals, we assume that positively selected parents are more ambitious about having their children admitted to higher-level secondary schools. The role of parental educational selectivity should be particularly pronounced in federal states in which school administrations allow for greater parental involvement. We use data from the first and second face-to-face interviews of the Refugees in the German Educational System (ReGES) project, with an analytical sample of 1,437 adolescents who came to Germany from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran between 2014 and 2017. To generate a household-level index of educational selectivity, we furthermore rely on various country-of-origin-specific data that we aggregate as reference educational distributions. We run linear probability regression models to analyze the role of parents' educational selectivity in adolescents' school placement. Our findings suggest that parental educational selectivity is beneficial beyond parents' absolute educational levels for adolescents' higher-level school placement. Among the five German federal states represented in our analytical sample, the role of parental selectivity is particularly pronounced in two federal states in which parents are provided with greater possibilities to become involved in their children's educational decisions.

A "Win-Win Exercise"? The Effect of Westward Migration on Educational Outcomes of Eastern European Children

Since the end of the Cold War, millions of migrants from Eastern Europe have sought better opportunities in Western European countries, yet few studies have assessed the impact of such moves on these migrants' children. In the aim of isolating a "treatment effect" of migration on educational outcomes, this study analyzes Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores from 2012, 2015, and 2018 for adolescents born in twelve Eastern European countries and living in eight Western European countries. It employs propensity-score matching within a homeland dissimilation framework, comparing immigrants' outcomes on reading, math, and science assessments to similar stay-at-homes in their countries of origin. In unadjusted comparisons to their counterparts who remained behind, migrant children attain lower scores across all three subjects. Once immigrant children are matched to non-immigrants with similar propensities to migrate, the disparity for math scores disappears, while those for reading and science remain. Disparities are wider for adolescents who come from within the EU, migrate at older ages, or speak a foreign language at home. This paper indicates the need for policymakers and educational administrators to better handle the negative academic effects that migration can have on children from within Europe.

Immigrant Status and the Social Returns to Academic Achievement in Adolescence

Social scientists have long debated whether high-achieving students of color are socially sanctioned. This discussion has rarely focused on immigrant students, who are exceptionally diverse in their educational performance and face challenges in social integration at school. This article assesses whether the effect of academic achievement on U.S. adolescents' popularity among peers varies by immigrant status. Further, we investigate whether the same pattern holds for immigrant students across racial/ethnic groups. While theoretical frameworks led us to expect that some immigrant groups would be socially punished for their school achievement, we did not find evidence for a negative effect of achievement (GPA) on popularity (number of alters nominating ego as a friend) for any group. Instead, the effect of achievement on popularity is positive but smaller among second-generation and foreign-born students than among white students from native-born families. This social penalty is observed across Black and most Hispanic immigrant subgroups, applies to some Asian immigrant subgroups, and does not apply to white immigrant students.

Aging into disadvantage: Disability crossover among Mexican immigrants in America

The "Hispanic paradox" refers to the accepted finding that Mexican immigrants have lower mortality compared to the US-born population, despite having lower levels of income, educational attainment, and health insurance coverage. However, Mexican immigrants' mortality advantage is not matched by lower disability rates, particularly later in the life course. Past studies have identified a crossover in disability rates for Mexican immigrants using age-specific disability rates but confound the effects of aging and duration of residence. By using the synthetic cohort method, I extend prior work on the disability crossover by tracing immigrant cohorts across the life course and disentangling newly arrived immigrants from those already established in the U.S. I use American Community Survey (ACS) 2015-2019 data to test whether the acculturation or cumulative disadvantage hypotheses account for the disability crossover. I find that, contrary to the expected finding of a socioeconomic health gradient in disability rates, Mexican immigrants' high disability rates converge regardless of education level or immigrant cohort. In addition, Mexican female immigrants are doubly disadvantaged, living in a protracted period of disability compared to males of the same education level. My findings support the negative health acculturation hypothesis as the dominant pathway for Mexican immigrants' later-life disability trajectories and consequently the explanation behind the disability crossover.

The Role of Skin Color in Latino Social Networks: Color Homophily in Sending and Receiving Societies

How does skin color shape the social networks and integration pathways of phenotypically diverse immigrant groups? Focusing on Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, groups with considerable diversity across the Black-White color line, we explore whether migrants to the United States have greater color homophily in their primary social networks than non-migrants in the sending societies. We analyze egocentric network data, including unique skin color measures for both 114 respondents and 1,702 alters. We test hypotheses derived from ethnic unifier theory and color line racialization theory. The data show evidence of color homophily among Dominicans, but suggest that these patterns may be imported from the sending society rather than fostered by the U.S. context. Further, we find that migrants' skin color is associated with having ties to White or Black Americans, but with different patterns for each ethnic group. We discuss the implications of these findings for economic mobility and U.S. racial hierarchies.

Entrenched Inequalities? Class, Gender and Ethnic Differences in Educational and Occupational Attainment in England

Research in social stratification tends to focus on class differences in educational and occupational attainment, with particular attention to primary and secondary effects in the former, and class reproduction in the latter, domain. Research in ethnic studies tends to focus, however, on ethnic penalty or premium. Many studies have been conducted in each tradition on specific issues but little research is available that examines class, gender and ethnic effects simultaneously or in tandem with contextual effects, let alone on the whole trajectory from compulsory schooling, through further and higher education, to labor market position. Using data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, this paper shows pronounced class differences but remarkable gender progress in each of the educational domains. With regard to ethnicity, people from minority ethnic heritages had lower GCSE scores due to poorer family conditions but achieved higher transition rates to A-Level study, higher university enrollment and, for some groups, greater attendance at elite universities, resulting in an overall higher rate of degree-level attainment than did whites. One might expect members of ethnic minority backgrounds to fare equally well in their earlier careers in the labor market, but only to find them more vulnerable to unemployment, less likely to have earnings, and more disadvantaged in terms of disposable incomes.

Differences in educational attainment by country of origin: Evidence from Australia

This study investigates native–migrant differences in engagement in post-school education. Using a longitudinal survey of youth in Australia, we find that immigrants originating from non-English-speaking countries are significantly more likely to continue with further study between the ages of 18 and 23 years. On the other hand, there are no significant differences between immigrants from English-speaking countries and native youth. We find several important factors influencing study decisions, including parents and family background, academic ability, aspirations and age at migration; however, accounting for these factors does not fully explain the higher probability of pursuing higher education for immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. Exploring the country of origin effect, we find that immigrants from countries with low tertiary education levels are more likely to study in Australia, while differences in parental attitudes in their origin countries do not have a significant effect. The results show the importance of country of origin on the study decisions of youth, underlining the impact of migration settings on education of next generation.

Migrants' Fertility in Italy: A Comparison Between Origin and Destination

Previous research has analyzed the effect of migration on fertility, and a number of hypotheses have been developed: namely adaptation, socialization, selection, disruption and interrelation of events. Comparison among stayers in the origin countries, migrants and non-migrants in the destination country is essential to gain better understanding of the effects of migration on fertility. However, this joint comparison has been rarely conducted. We sought to fill this gap and analyze migrants' fertility in Italy. By merging different data sources for the first time, we were able to compare our target group of migrant women, respectively, born in Albania, Morocco and Ukraine with both Italian non-migrants and stayers in the country of origin. Considering the first three orders of births, multi-process hazard models were estimated in order to provide a more exhaustive and diversified scenario and to test the existing hypotheses. The results show that there is no single model of fertility for migrants in Italy. In addition, some hypotheses provide a better explanation of the fertility behavior than others do. Among women from Morocco, the socialization hypothesis tends to prevail, whereas Albanians' fertility is mostly explained in terms of adaptation. Disruption emerged as the main mechanism able to explain the fertility of migrants from Ukraine, and a clear interrelation between fertility and migration is apparent for women from Albania and Morocco, but only for the first birth.

Warriors Wanted: The Performance of Immigrants in the US Army

The US Army offers English-language instruction and socio-cultural training to foreign-born personnel, and current US law allows some immigrants to apply for expedited citizenship through military service. The US Army, thus, offers a compelling context in which to explore how such institutional factors might facilitate immigrant incorporation, yet we know little about the experience of foreign-born soldiers because most surveys exclude active-duty personnel. Using novel data obtained from the US Department of Defense that are not available to the public, this research note describes the integrative nature of the US Army, and contrasts foreign-born and native-born soldiers in relation to what we know about selectivity and immigrant job outcomes elsewhere. We examine rank, promotion likelihood, and retention of newly enlisted citizen and noncitizen immigrant soldiers compared to their native-born counterparts who joined the US Army between 2002 and 2009. We show that immigrants perform equally well or better than native-born soldiers.

The Higher Educational Trajectories of Undocumented Youth in the United States

Despite growth in the number of Latino students enrolled in U.S. colleges, foreign-born Latinos are less likely than both native-born Latinos and other immigrant groups to graduate. However, it is difficult to understand the lower educational attainment of Latino immigrants without considering variation in enrollment by legal status. After all, until recently, undocumented immigrants have been blocked from higher education in the United States. Drawing upon the education and immigrant illegality literature, as well as longitudinal administrative data on 35,400 college students, we examine the association between students' legal status and their educational achievement, or GPA-an important predictor of educational attainment. We find that, despite high achievement in high school and upon first enrolling in college, undocumented students do not experience upward achievement over time, otherwise known in the education literature as educational progression. Rather, their growth is flat, and their level of achievement declines slightly, what we call an educational regression, relative to their documented and foreign-born citizen Latino peers. We identify several individual- and structural-level factors that help explain the pattern and timing of undocumented student regression. The results have implications for studies of immigrant inequality, incorporation, and immigration law in the U.S. and globally.

Making the Invisible Visible: Identifying and Interrogating Ethnic Differences in English Learner Reclassification

This study explores disparities in reclassification outcomes between Chinese and Latinx English learner (EL) students in one large school district, along with possible mechanisms that drive these differences. Using mixed methods including discretetime hazard modeling of longitudinal administrative data and analysis of in-depth interviews with veteran EL educators and administrators, we find large and persistent ethnic differences in reclassification outcomes across grade levels. Drawing on prior research on inequalities among immigrant students, we find evidence that individual background characteristics, social capital, school and instructional contexts, and stereotypes and bias all contribute to variation in reclassification patterns. Importantly, reclassification processes may be sensitive to racial and ethnic biases, disproportionately limiting Latinx EL students' reclassification.

New evidence of generational progress for Mexican Americans

U.S.-born Mexican Americans suffer a large schooling deficit relative to other Americans, and standard data sources suggest that this deficit does not shrink between the 2nd and later generations. Standard data sources lack information on grandparents' countries of birth, however, which creates potentially serious issues for tracking the progress of later-generation Mexican Americans. Exploiting unique NLSY97 data that address these measurement issues, we find substantial educational progress between the 2nd and 3rd generations for a recent cohort of Mexican Americans. Such progress is obscured when we instead mimic the limitations inherent in standard data sources. Similar patterns emerge for cognitive test scores and for annual earnings.

Spousal migration and married adults' psychological distress in rural China: The roles of intimacy, autonomy and responsibility

Spousal separation due to migration is a prevalent phenomenon in the developing world, but its psychological consequences for left-behind partners are largely understudied. Using data from 2010, 2012 and 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this paper first examined whether spousal migration causes rural married adults any psychological distress; this finding was then advanced by testing the mechanisms that could potentially explain the linkage between these two variables. Inverse Probability Weighting (IPW) for multivalued treatment effect models and paired Propensity Score Matching (PSM) have been used to correct the potential selection bias of spousal migration. The results show that prolonged spousal separation through migration increases the depressive symptoms of married adults in rural China, and the detrimental effects on left-behind spouses' psychological well-being can be explained by the reduced level of emotional intimacy between husband and wife, and partially by women becoming the master of the household. Considering that being the master of the household is accompanied by elevated stress levels associated with increasing family responsibilities, further examination showed that economic resources can buffer the negative effect associated with being the master of the household when the spouse migrates. However, we did not find that time use is an effective mechanism to link spousal migration and left-behind spouses' well-being.

Status Loss: The Burden of Positively Selected Immigrants

Immigrants experience an ambiguous social position: on the one hand, they tend to be positively selected on resources from the origin country; on the other, they often occupy the lower rungs of the status ladder in receiving countries. This study explores the implications of this ambiguity for two important individual outcomes: subjective social status and perceived financial situation. We study the diverse sample of immigrants in the European Social Survey and use the fact that, due to country differences in educational distributions, a given education level can entail a very different rank in the sending and receiving countries. We document a robust relationship whereby immigrants who ranked higher in the origin than in the destination country see themselves as being comparatively worse off. This finding suggests that the social position before migration provides an important reference point by which immigrants judge their success in the new country.

Educational Selectivity and Language Acquisition among Recently Arrived Immigrants

This article investigates destination language proficiency upon arrival and subsequent proficiency growth among recently arrived immigrants in Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. We introduce selectivity considerations to a model of language acquisition, arguing that positively selected individuals should display higher levels of language skills upon arrival and faster growth in destination language proficiency thereafter. The results show that upon arrival, positively selected immigrants are less proficient, holding absolute levels of educational attainment constant. In terms of language proficiency growth, however, our longitudinal findings suggest that positively selected immigrants, net of differences in pre-migration investments, post-migration exposure, and incentives, acquire the destination language faster. The findings add to a growing body of literature demonstrating the benefits of using novel measurement approaches to migrant selectivity.

The Immigrant Advantage in Adolescent Educational Expectations

Previous research has shown uniquely high expectations among children of immigrants. However, existing studies have not focused on why children of immigrants have an expectations advantage over their native-born counterparts or if this has changed over time. This study shows that an immigrant advantage in graduate school expectations persists among adolescent children of immigrants today. Regression analyses reveal that this advantage is largely explained by higher parental expectations, greater interest in school, and foreign language use in early childhood. We argue that these factors can be conceptualized as forms of cultural capital stemming from unique aspects of the immigrant experience that are common across immigrant families.

Race and School Enrollment among the Children of African Immigrants in the United States

This study examines whether previous findings of an immigrant schooling advantage among Blacks in the United States reflect a declining significance of race in the enrollment patterns of immigrants’ children. Using data from the 2000 US census, the study finds that, despite their advantage within the Black population, the children of Black Africans are collectively disadvantaged relative to the children of White Africans. Disparate enrollment trajectories are found among children in Black and White African families. Specifically, between the first and second generations, enrollment outcomes improved among the children of White Africans but declined among Black Africans’ children. The results also suggest that among immigrants from African multi-racial societies, pre-migration racial schooling disparities do not necessarily disappear after immigration to the United States. Additionally, the children of Black Africans from these contexts have worse outcomes than the children of other Black African immigrants and their relative disadvantage persists even after other factors are controlled.

Academic Performance of Young Children in Immigrant Families: The Significance of Race, Ethnicity, and National Origins

Children of immigrants come from diverse backgrounds and enter school with different family migration experiences and resources. This paper addresses two basic questions: (1) to what extent does generation status exert an independent effect on early school performance net of race/panethnicity, language proficiency, and the family resources available to children as they enter formal schooling? and (2) to what extent do these broad conceptualizations of children in immigrant families mask variation by national origins? We take advantage of longitudinal data on a kindergarten cohort from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to examine children from diverse backgrounds. Considerable variation in academic performance persists across racial/panethnic groups as well as by country-of-origin background and linguistic ability even when adjusting for family background, resources, and previous academic performance. We find some intriguing evidence of early “segmentation” among children from various groups, suggesting some convergence within race and ethnicity for some children. However, this conclusion should not be overstated, because the results also point to the great diversity by national origins that are masked by reliance on racial/panethnic groupings.

Age at Immigration and the Educational Attainment of Foreign-Born Children in the United States

A substantial empirical literature confirms an educational disadvantage for foreign-born children that arrive in their host countries at older ages. In the presence of a negative correlation between parental education and age at immigration, estimates of the educational attainment age at immigration gradient, neglecting controls for parental education, will tend to overestimate this disadvantage. The results indicate a considerable overestimation (up to almost 28%) of the disadvantage for immigrant children that arrive at older ages. Moreover, a considerable portion (69%) of the total bias associated with omitted controls for parental education reflects the non-random educational selection of immigrant parents across the age at immigration distribution.

Selectivity of Migration and the Educational Disadvantages of Second-Generation Immigrants in Ten Host Societies

Selectivity of migration varies significantly between ethnic/origin country groups, and between the destination countries which these groups have migrated to. Yet, little comparative research has measured empirically how selective different migrant groups are in multiple destination countries, nor has research studied whether the selectivity of migration is related to the magnitude of ethnic inequalities among the children of migrants in Western societies. We present an empirical measure of educational selectivity of migrants from many different origin countries having migrated to ten different destination countries. We examine whether selective migration of a particular ethnic group in a particular destination country is related to the gap between their children’s and native children’s educational outcomes. We find that the disadvantage in educational outcomes between the second generation and their peers from majority populations is smaller for ethnic groups that are more positively selected in terms of educational attainment. We also find some evidence that the effect of selective migration is moderated by the integration policies or tracking arrangements in the educational system in the destination country.

Second-Generation Outcomes of the Great Migration

The mass migration of African Americans out of the South during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century represents one of the most significant internal migration flows in U.S.

HISTORY

Those undertaking the Great Migration left the South in search of a better life, and their move transformed the cultural, social, and political dynamics of African American life specifically and U.S. society more generally. Recent research offers conflicting evidence regarding the migrants' success in translating their geographic mobility into economic mobility. Due in part to the lack of a large body of longitudinal data, almost all studies of the Great Migration have focused on the migrants themselves, usually over short periods of their working lives. Using longitudinally linked census data, we take a broader view, investigating the long-term economic and social effects of the Great Migration on the migrants' children. Our results reveal modest but statistically significant advantages in education, income, and poverty status for the African American children of the Great Migration relative to the children of southerners who remained in the South. In contrast, second-generation white migrants experienced few benefits from migrating relative to southern or northern stayers.

The optimism trap: Migrants' educational choices in stratified education systems

Immigrant children's ambitious educational choices have often been linked to their families' high level of optimism and motivation for upward mobility. However, previous research has mostly neglected alternative explanations such as information asymmetries or anticipated discrimination. Moreover, immigrant children's higher dropout rates at the higher secondary and university level suggest that low performing migrant students could have benefitted more from pursuing less ambitious tracks, especially in countries that offer viable vocational alternatives. We examine ethnic minority's educational choices using a sample of academically low performing, lower secondary school students in Germany's highly stratified education system. We find that their families' optimism diverts migrant students from viable vocational alternatives. Information asymmetries and anticipated discrimination do not explain their high educational ambitions. While our findings further support the immigrant optimism hypothesis, we discuss how its effect may have different implications depending on the education system.

Access to occupational networks and ethnic variation of depressive symptoms in young adults in Sweden

Social capital research has recognized the relevance of occupational network contacts for individuals' life chances and status attainment, and found distinct associations dependent on ethnic background. A still fairly unexplored area is the health implications of occupational networks. The current approach thus seeks to study the relationship between access to occupational social capital and depressive symptoms in early adulthood, and to examine whether the associations differ between persons with native Swedish parents and those with parents born in Iran and the former Yugoslavia. The two-wave panel comprised 19- and 23-year-old Swedish citizens whose parents were born in either Sweden, Iran or the former Yugoslavia. The composition of respondents' occupational networks contacts was measured with a so-called position generator. Depressive symptoms were assessed with a two-item depression screener. A population-averaged model was used to estimate the associations between depressive symptoms and access to occupational contact networks. Similar levels of depressive symptoms in respondents with parents born in Sweden and Yugoslavia were contrasted by a notably higher prevalence of these conditions in those with an Iranian background. After socioeconomic conditions were adjusted for, regression analysis showed that the propensity for depressive symptoms in women with an Iranian background increased with a higher number of manual class contacts, and decreased for men and women with Iranian parents with a higher number of prestigious occupational connections. The respective associations in persons with native Swedish parents and parents from the former Yugoslavia are partly reversed. Access to occupational contact networks, but also perceived ethnic identity, explained a large portion of the ethnic variation in depression. Mainly the group with an Iranian background seems to benefit from prestigious occupational contacts. Among those with an Iranian background, social status concerns and expected marginalization in manual class occupations may have contributed to their propensity for depressive symptoms.

Immigrants in the one percent: The national origin of top wealth owners

BACKGROUND

Economic inequality in the United States is extreme, but little is known about the national origin of affluent households. Households in the top one percent by total wealth own vastly disproportionate quantities of household assets and have correspondingly high levels of economic, social, and political influence. The overrepresentation of white natives (i.e., those born in the U.S.) among high-wealth households is well-documented, but changing migration dynamics suggest that a growing portion of top households may be immigrants.

METHODS

Because no single survey dataset contains top wealth holders and data about country of origin, this paper uses two publicly-available data sets: the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Multiple imputation is used to impute country of birth from the SIPP into the SCF. Descriptive statistics are used to demonstrate reliability of the method, to estimate the prevalence of immigrants among top wealth holders, and to document patterns of asset ownership among affluent immigrants.

RESULTS

Significant numbers of top wealth holders who are usually classified as white natives may be immigrants. Many top wealth holders appear to be European and Canadian immigrants, and increasing numbers of top wealth holders are likely from Asia and Latin America as well. Results suggest that of those in the top one percent of wealth holders, approximately 3% are European and Canadian immigrants, .5% are from Mexico or Cuban, and 1.7% are from Asia (especially Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, and India). Ownership of key assets varies considerably across affluent immigrant groups.

CONCLUSION

Although the percentage of top wealth holders who are immigrants is relatively small, these percentages represent large numbers of households with considerable resources and corresponding social and political influence. Evidence that the propensity to allocate wealth to real and financial assets varies across immigrant groups suggests that wealth ownership is more global than previous research suggests and that immigrant groups are likely to become more prevalent in top wealth positions in the U.S. As the representation of immigrants in top wealth positions grows, their economic, social, and political influence is likely to increase as well.

Is Social Mobility Spatial? Characteristics of Immigrant Metros and Second Generation Outcomes: 1940-1970 and 1970-2000

Research on immigrant and second generation outcomes has often examined their locations, following ideas that geographic dispersion facilitates social mobility, and that characteristics of the ethnic environment enable or constrain progress. I contend that second generation socioeconomic outcomes depend in part on the location choices and characteristics of a previous immigrant generation. Further, I suggest that this relationship reflects the changing geography of immigrants and labour markets, rather than geographically unfolding assimilation. Using the 1940, 1970, and 2000 Integrated Public Use Microdata Series files from the US Census, I regress second and 1.5 generation wage and educational outcomes in 1970 and 2000 on metro-area characteristics of a previous generation (1940 and 1970, respectively). Current labour market and second generation characteristics are included as controls and to facilitate interpretation. Characteristics of a previous immigrant generation's location were more important for second generation outcomes in the 1940-1970 period, while current place characteristics become more significant by 2000. There is evidence of selection operating through the positive intergenerational effects of places where immigrants' educational levels were high a generation ago. Metro-level immigrant concentration and manufacturing employment also have generally positive effects, although variations across generations and by nationality suggest their significance for social mobility is inadequately understood. The historical immigrant geographies of the US, and the ways in which metro labour market conditions intersect with immigrants' locational choices, both within and between generations, are thus a critical piece of the economic and spatial assimilation puzzle.

From Parent to Child? Transmission of Educational Attainment Within Immigrant Families: Methodological Considerations

One in five U.S. residents under the age of 18 has at least one foreign-born parent. Given the large proportion of immigrants with very low levels of schooling, the strength of the intergenerational transmission of education between immigrant parent and child has important repercussions for the future of social stratification in the United States. We find that the educational transmission process between parent and child is much weaker in immigrant families than in native families and, among immigrants, differs significantly across national origins. We demonstrate how this variation causes a substantial overestimation of the importance of parental education in immigrant families in studies that use aggregate data. We also show that the common practice of “controlling” for family human capital using parental years of schooling is problematic when comparing families from different origin countries and especially when comparing native and immigrant families. We link these findings to analytical and empirical distinctions between group- and individual-level processes in intergenerational transmission.

Mexican American Mobility: Early Life Processes and Adult Wealth Ownership

Mexican Americans are a large group whose mobility patterns can provide important insight into immigrant assimilation processes. It is well known that Mexicans have not attained economic parity with whites, but there is considerable debate about the degree to which Mexican immigrants and their American-born children experience mobility over their lives. We contribute to this literature by studying Mexican American wealth ownership, focusing on three interrelated processes. First, we examine childhood poverty and inheritances to establish financial starting points and to identify the degree to which resources from prior generations affect wealth ownership. Second, we study impediments to mobility in young adulthood to understand how childhood conditions create early adult obstacles to wellbeing. Third, we study midlife net worth and homeownership to better understand whether childhood and young adult impediments necessarily reduce adult wealth ownership. We find high levels of early life disadvantage among Mexican Americans, but these disadvantages are least pronounced in the second and third generations compared to the first generation. Consistent with prior research, we also find high levels of young adult impediments to mobility for Mexican Americans. However, we find that these early roadblocks do not necessarily translate into lower adult wealth: we show that Mexican Americans have less total wealth than whites but more than African Americans, even when early life impediments are controlled. Our results suggest that Mexican Americans are establishing a solid financial foundation that is likely to lead to long-term class stability.

Short-term Mobility and Increased Partnership Concurrency among Men in Zimbabwe

BACKGROUND

Migration has long been understood as an underlying factor for HIV transmission, and sexual partner concurrency has been increasingly studied as an important component of HIV transmission dynamics. However, less work has examined the role of short-term mobility in sexual partner concurrency using a network approach. Short-term mobility may be a risk for HIV for the migrant's partner as well either through the partner's risk behaviors while the migrant is away, such as the partner having additional partners, or via exposure to the return migrant.

METHODS

Using data from the 2010-11 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, weighted generalized linear regression models were used to investigate the associations between short-term mobility and partnership concurrency at the individual and partnership levels.

RESULTS

At the individual level, we find strong evidence of an association between short-term mobility and concurrency. Men who traveled were more likely to have concurrent partnerships compared to men who did not travel and the relationship was non-linear: each trip was associated with a 2% higher probability of concurrency, with a diminishing risk at 60 trips (p<0.001). At the partnership level, short-term mobility by the male only or both partners was associated with male concurrency. Couples in which the female only traveled exhibited less male concurrency.

CONCLUSIONS

Short-term mobility has the ability to impact population-level transmission dynamics by facilitating partnership concurrency and thus onward HIV transmission. Short-term migrants may be an important population to target for HIV testing, treatment, or social and behavioral interventions to prevent the spread of HIV.

A comparative study on the health and well-being of adolescent immigrants in Spain and Portugal

The terms on which the integration of new generations of immigrants into Portuguese and Spanish societies happens will have a decisive influence in the future of both countries. Therefore, promoting their health, well-being, and psychosocial adaptation is a matter of strategic interest. This paper analyses psychosocial factors associated with well-being and psychological adjustment on a sample of 108 adolescents (55 males and 53 females), children of immigrants from Huelva (Spain) and Algarve (Portugal), aged between 10 and 17 years. Adolescents were assessed for demographic characteristics and perceived well-being. We used the "KIDSCREEN-5", a self-report questionnaire that yields detailed profile information for children aged 8 to 18 years for the following ten dimensions: Physical well-being, Psychological well-being, Moods and emotions, Self-perception, Autonomy, Parental relationships and home life, Financial resources, Social support and peers, School environment, and Social acceptance (Bullying). Overall, significant differences were found between the Spanish and Portuguese samples on physical well-being, psychological well-being, mood, financial resources and social acceptance (bullying). Boys perceived themselves as having a better physical well-being than girls. Mothers' educational level was associated with psychological well-being and mood. Also, results suggested that residence location and other socio-demographical variables were not associated with the adolescents' well-being and psychological adjustment.

Linguistic isolation in the home and community: Protection or risk for young children?

Studies of immigrant adaptation in the United States emphasize the importance of duration of residence, language use, location of schooling and other factors related to the migration process in determining outcomes for immigrants. Research also points to the variability of socioeconomic mobility among immigrants and their descendants across receiving contexts encountered in the United States. This paper extends this model to young children and examines how the linguistic environment of the family and the community interact to produce differential developmental outcomes. The analyses rely on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) and 2000 US Census. Children's cognitive scores vary considerably by mothers' nativity and household linguistic isolation; a result that is largely influenced by the greater likelihood of living in poverty for children in linguistically isolated homes. The level of linguistic isolation in the community is also associated with cognitive scores but the greatest variation in scores across communities occurs among children of US born mothers.

Academic achievement of legal immigrants' children: the roles of parents' pre- and postmigration characteristics in origin-group differences

Using data from the New Immigrant Survey, a study based on a nationally representative sample of legal immigrants, the present study extends prior research on the academic outcomes of immigrants' children by examining the roles of pre- and postmigration parental characteristics and the home environment. An analysis of 2,147 children aged 6-12 shows that parents' premigration education is more strongly associated with children's academic achievement than any other pre- or postmigration attribute. Premigration parental attributes account for the test score disadvantage of Mexican-origin children of legal immigrants, relative to their non-Latino counterparts. The findings reveal continuities and discontinuities in parental socioeconomic status and demonstrate that what parents bring to the United States and their experiences after arrival influence children's academic achievement.

Educational Achievement Gaps between Immigrant and Native Students in Two "New Immigration Countries": Italy and Spain in comparison

We use PISA 2009 data to determine how immigrant children in Italy and Spain compare with native students in reading and mathematics skills. Drawing on the vast empirical literature in traditional immigration countries, we test the extent to which the most well-established patterns and hypotheses of immigrant/native educational achievement gaps also apply to these new immigration countries. Findings show that both first- and second-generation immigrant students underperform natives in both countries. Although socioeconomic background and language skills contribute to the explanation of achievement gaps, significant differences remain within countries. While modeling socioeconomic background reduces the observed gaps to a very similar extent in the two countries, language spoken at home is more strongly associated with achievement in Italy. School-type differentiation, such as tracking in Italy and school ownership in Spain, do not reduce immigrant/native gaps, although in Italy tracking is strongly associated with students' test scores.

Migration processes, familial characteristics, and schooling dropout among black youths

This study uses data from the 2000 U.S. census to examine whether the schooling advantage of black immigrants' children found in previous studies is robust. According to the results, the advantage associated with having migrant parents is not restricted to the children of immigrants. Black migrant parents, regardless of foreign-born status, have children with favorable schooling outcomes. Such parental-level influences, however, seem stronger among some immigrant groups than among native internal migrants. The study also suggests that the collective advantage of the children of immigrants is driven by positive migrant selectivity. Accordingly, comparisons between the children of native migrants and children in various immigrant groups reveal that the immigrant advantage is not robust. In fact, the results suggest that when immigrant ethnicity is considered, some children of immigrants may be disadvantaged relative to the children of native migrants. Among recent migrants, the children of native internal migrants also have more favorable outcomes than the children of immigrants, although these differences disappear after background factors are controlled. Further, internal-migrant and immigrant households are less likely to have characteristics that adversely affect schooling than nonmigrant households. Unsurprisingly, the children of nonmigrants have the worst outcomes among black youths.

WELFARE AND THE CHILDREN OF IMMIGRANTS: TRANSMISSION OF DEPENDENCE OR INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE?

The public concern that immigrant families might be using a disproportionate share of social benefits and transmitting some form of public dependency to their children, combined with the rising levels of immigrants entering the country, fueled the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996, which limited public assistance to many immigrant families. This paper uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to explore the association between exposure to welfare and young adult outcomes of high school graduation, college enrollment and labor force participation with a focus on parental nativity status as well as broad country of origin group. Results indicate a persistent negative association between welfare legacy and high school graduation; a negative association that is most pronounced for children of natives. Results also show the largest positive effect of welfare receipt among the most disadvantaged group, the young adult children of immigrants from Mexican and Central American countries. The main finding of this study suggests that the negative impacts of welfare receipt might be lessened and in some cases reversed among the young adults from immigrant families. Such findings challenge the common notion that immigrant families use welfare as a crutch across generations and raise serious concern about U.S. immigration and welfare policies.

Foreign Students, Immigrants, Domestic Minorities and Admission to Texas' Selective Flagship Universities Before and After the Ban on Affirmative Action

A growing body of research examines the effects of state affirmative action bans on domestic minority students' application and admission rates. This study expands previous research, considering how Texas's implementation of a race-neutral percent plan influenced admission opportunities for two understudied groups: foreign students and in-state Black and Hispanic immigrants. Using a census of all applicants to Texas's flagship universities-University of Texas-Austin (UT) and Texas A&M (A&M)-between 1992 and 2002, descriptive analysis and logistic regressions help examine how the passage of the Top Ten Percent Plan influenced selectivity in terms of observed admission rates and counterfactual admission probabilities for students of varying SAT scores and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) versus non-STEM-proposed majors for foreign students compared to a variety of in- and out-of-state Black and Hispanic immigrants and domestic minorities. Findings point to salient institutional differences in selectivity for foreign applicants. The surge in UT's foreign applicant numbers post-Top Ten led to significant decreases in admission rates and increases in average SAT score and STEM foreign admits. Post-Top Ten A&M, on the other hand, maintained numbers of foreign admits on par with UT by accepting a significantly larger percentage of less selective foreign applicants.