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Title: Selective immigration and national-origin group characteristics: Explaining variation in educational success among children of U.S. immigrants

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2003

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Abstract: Immigration scholars agree that migrants are not random samples of the populations from which they originated; however, they disagree considerably about how immigrants are selected and how this selection affects inequality in the United States. Examining the effects of selectivity requires comparable data on both the sending and receiving sides of the migration process, which only a few case studies have used. To address this gap in the literature, I compiled a unique dataset from published educational attainment data in 32 immigrant-sending countries and corresponding U.S. Census data on immigrants from those countries. To examine the effects of immigrants' educational selectivity on children of immigrants' educational outcomes, I also analyze 1990 IPUMS Census data, Current Population Survey data from 1997-2001, and Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey data from 1992 and 1996. My findings run contrary to the common assumption that many immigrants are negatively selected: nearly all immigrants (with the critical exception of Puerto Ricans) are more educated than the populations in their home countries, but Asian immigrants are more highly selected than Latin American immigrants. Also, earlier waves of Mexican immigrants are more positively selected than later waves. I find that as immigrants' educational selectivity increases, the educational attainment of their second-generation also increases, at both the group and individual levels of analysis. The more positive selection of Asian immigrants helps explain their second generations' superior high school graduation rates, average years of schooling, and college attendance rates as compared to Europeans, Afro-Caribbeans, or Latin Americans. I also find that immigrant group structural characteristics (including selection and average socioeconomic status) shape educational outcomes among immigrants' children beyond the influence of their own family members. My findings challenge arguments that certain national-origin groups value education more than others by highlighting how the inherently unequal structure of the immigration process itself produces immigrant groups with varying levels of relative pre-migration educational attainment. Thus, I argue that some national-origin groups excel in school while others lag behind because inequalities in the relative pre-migration educational attainments of immigrants are often reproduced among their children in the United States.

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Authors: Feliciano, Cynthia

Institution: University of California, Los Angeles

Department: Sociology

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Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Los Angeles, CA

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Education, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity

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