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Title: Is immigrant social mobility driven by the people or the place? The case of Irish Americans in the early twentieth century

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: Proponents of restrictive immigration policies often claim that immigrants arriving with fewer skills and resources will be less socially mobile. This claim is challenging to test as pre-migration characteristics are not easily separated from host country influences. This article uses new multigenerational data on Irish Americans in the early twentieth century, before and after migration, to study the effect of pre-migration characteristics and the interaction structure of settlement locations on social mobility outcomes. I find a strong link between pre-migration characteristics and economic attainment in the immigrant generation, but this attenuates for second generation children. Second generation social mobility is largely affected by contextual influences, particularly the schooling environment and labor market context of cities. Advantageous places for second generation mobility, such as Pacific cities, appear to have attracted immigrant parents from higher status backgrounds. These findings suggest that selective immigration policies may not be required to ensure upward mobility for the children of immigrants

Url: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/5b79427m

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Authors: Connor, Dylan S

Publisher: University of California, Los Angeles

Data Collections: IPUMS USA - Ancestry Full Count Data

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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