Education and Immigration

Grace Kao, Elizabeth Vaquera, Kimberly Goyette

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780745648323, 9780745648316
• eBook ISBN: 9780745664569
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Política económica

Education is a crucially important social institution, closely correlated with wealth, occupational prestige, psychological well-being, and health outcomes. Moreover, for children of immigrants – who account for almost one in four school-aged children in the U.S. – it is the primary means through which they become incorporated into American society. 

This insightful new book explores the educational outcomes of post-1965 immigrants and their children. Tracing the historical context and key contemporary scholarship on immigration, the authors examine issues such as structural versus cultural theories of education stratification, the overlap of immigrant status with race and ethnicity, and the role of language in educational outcomes. Throughout, the authors pay attention to the great diversity among immigrants: some arrive with PhDs to work as research professors, while others arrive with a primary school education and no English skills to work as migrant laborers. As immigrants come from an ever-increasing array of races, ethnicities, and national origins, immigrant assimilation is more complex than ever before, and education is central to their adaptation to American society.

Shedding light on often misunderstood topics, this book will be invaluable for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate-level courses in sociology of education, immigration, and race and ethnicity.

1

Education and the American Dream

Picture the following family:

It is 1989; Juanjo is a 14-year-old boy. He is the son of a Mayan family from Guatemala, who fled the country trying to escape the civil war. They first moved to Mexico, but due to the lack of economic opportunities, they continued their migration north. The family recently arrived to the US, and upon their arrival, they applied for asylum, but the US denies their petition. They cannot return to their home country, so Juanjo’s parents decide to stay in the US – undocumented. After they contact an acquaintance who migrated to the US a few years earlier, they are able to find an affordable apartment in a poor neighborhood in the town of Jupiter, Florida. First because of the war in Guatemala and then because of the constant moving, Juanjo has not attended school regularly since he was nine. He is now in the US and about to start classes in his local school half-way through the school year. Neither he nor his parents speak English.

Now imagine this other family:

In the year 2000, Hyunsuk’s parents leave South Korea and establish their residence in Torrance, California. They migrate to the US because her father, who has a degree in management and finance, was offered an upper management position. They buy a house in an upper-middle-class suburban neighborhood, afforded by her father’s high-paying job. Her mom also has a Bachelor’s degree, but for now she will stay home taking care of her daughter, who is only two, until it is time to start primary school. Having learned English in school back in South Korea, Hyunsuk’s parents can speak some English and they decide they will only speak to their daughter in English since they are now not just Korean, but Korean American.

Introduction

The United States is a country of immigrants. Immigration is a key part of why America is considered the land of opportunity. But what does it mean to be an immigrant in America? In this “land of opportunity,” anyone could come to the US and expect to be treated just like anyone else. In the idealized vision of America, immigrants from all walks of life can live and flourish in a country where one’s race, ethnicity, religion, or class background does not matter. A person could arrive to America without a dime in his or her pocket and without being able to speak a word of English, could “make it” after working hard because America offers freedom and equal opportunity for all.

The crux of the aspirations of the average immigrant (and arguably the average American) is motivated by the notion that one can achieve the American Dream through hard work and perseverance, and, ultimately, hard work and perseverance are rewarded by upward mobility via their children’s educational achievement. For both the native-born and immigrants alike, education is seen as the best way to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility. Almost universally, parents want their children to do well in school and to go to college, so that they may one day have a “‘good’ job,” a house, a family, and make a comfortable living. Immigrant adults may be willing to suffer as newcomers in a strange, unfamiliar land because of the belief that their (American-born or American-raised) children will learn to speak accent-less English, go to college, and obtain a secure, well-paying job (Zhou 1997).

Education – and in particular achievement and attainment – is an important way to judge how well immigrants “fit in” or assimilate into the US. Educational attainment usually refers to the number of years of schooling one receives, or the degrees one earns (such as a Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, etc.). Educational achievement refers to the grades, test scores, or other indicators that measure performance in school (such as your grade point average (GPA) or SAT score). Of course, achievement and attainment are not completely different from each other, but researchers often study these outcomes separately from one another. Arguably, there is no better single indicator of success for individuals and families than their educational attainment, or the number of years they attend school. Parents and children would no doubt view themselves or others with a Master’s degree as more successful than those who dropped out of high school. However, opportunities to succeed in the US, whether in education or any other realm of life, are not the same for all individuals. Race, ethnicity, gender, national origin, and the ability to speak English fluently are important in shaping the very different lives experienced by immigrants.

Stories about immigrants in books and popular movies often portray those who arrive to the US as foreigners and aliens at first, but they eventually “learn the ropes,” or assimilate, and then become “true” Americans. What does it mean to become an assimilated American? The ideal immigrant (as portrayed by Ben Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, for example) quickly sheds his or her “foreign” ways and becomes an English-speaking American without a “hyphenated” identity – like Chinese American or Mexican American. He or she no longer identifies with his or her motherland, and later marries a native-born American and lives undetected among them. An indicator and result of successful assimilation is that an individual attains as much and as good an education as those who are not immigrants, as well as a similar type of job as another individual whose family has lived in the country over several generations.

Stories about assimilation often imply that immigrants are welcome when they become “American.” However, not every immigrant has the chance to become “fully” American. Although the US presents itself as a “land of opportunity” that provides “equal chances” to everyone, a closer look through the past and present, as well as at personal and group experiences, tells a different story. Always implied, and often explicit through US immigration and citizenship laws, as well as popular attitudes towards racial, ethnic, and national-origin groups, is the reality that only individuals of certain racial, ethnic, and national origins have the potential to assimilate into (white) America. Hence, some immigrants were seen as “unassimilable” – that is, they would never become wholly American. Interestingly, the category of people who do not “fit in” has evolved over time – this group has included African Americans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Asian Indians, Mexicans, and arguably all immigrants who are not seen as “white.”

Those immigrants who do “fit in” are perceived to bring ideas and skills that allow America to thrive and become great. Indeed, many of our greatest statesmen, scientists, artists, and so forth were immigrants themselves (think of scientists such as Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein, or inventor Alexander Graham Bell, or architects such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hideyo Noguchi, and I.M. Pei, or politicians such as Henry Kissinger, or naturalist John Muir). Because America is seen as the “land of opportunity,” it attracts “the best and the brightest” from all over the world and can draw workers with specific skills that are in short supply in the US.

On the other hand, immigrants who do not “belong” or assimilate are often portrayed as “cheap laborers” who unfairly compete with “real” (white and sometimes black) American workers. The perception is that these foreign-born workers are willing to do the same jobs for less money, which drives down wages and increases unemployment among native-born Americans. Outspoken opponents of immigration argue that the foreign-born, particularly those who migrate illegally, drain the resources of our schools, hospitals, and other public services. They portray this group as not wanting to assimilate by learning English, or adopting “American” customs, which they believe further weakens the social fabric of America. These immigrants have been typically caricatured as uneducated, lazy, prone to crime, and simply inferior to (white) Americans.

In this book, we explore theories of how immigrants come to be assimilated into US society – whether the process approximates a “straight line,” with immigrants becoming more culturally and socially similar to the native-born over generations, or whether the process is not straightforward, with some immigrants assimilating into the native-born middle class, while others join the ranks of the urban poor. We review theories that suggest that retaining parts of one’s culture prior to immigration is helpful for some immigrants’ achievement and attainment in the US. We also discuss the belief that immigrants hold advantages in educational achievement and attainment, especially over native-born minorities, because they compare themselves favorably to their peers who did not immigrate and are therefore optimistic about their chances of educational success in the US.

Throughout the book, we ask our readers to keep in mind some questions to help them assess which of the possible descriptions of immigrants’ assimilation fits best. First, how does the way in which an immigrant comes to the US in the first place matter? Second, how does the reception of the group by the US matter for whether immigrants become “fully American?” Do US laws and policies shape the ability to become assimilated? Third, does it matter what types of jobs are available, where you live, and whether you have a community of co-ethnic peers if you are a recent immigrant? Does an immigrant’s ability to speak English and/or the language of his or her parents affect socioeconomic outcomes? Finally, how do race, ethnicity, gender, and national origin shape all of the above? Does it matter for an immigrant’s path to assimilation if he is Hispanic from Mexico, or if she is Asian from India? Throughout the book, we encourage readers to think about how race, ethnicity, and national origin of contemporary immigrants are central in thinking about their educational outcomes. Immigrants in the US not only arrive from an increasingly diverse set of countries, but also from a wide variety of racial and ethnic groups.

Throughout the book, we encourage our readers to think about both race and ethnicity as analytically, although not always practically, distinct (Hartmann and Cornell 2007). Ethnicity refers to identities that are chosen or assumed. Often, an individual can decide to adopt his or her ethnic identity. Race is typically assigned. People are placed in racial categories and judged according to that classification, whether or not they want to be. Race may be considered (we argue incorrectly) more “natural” or biologically determined or physiologically based than ethnicity, which is more often related to a place or social group from which a person came. Racial classifications are systematically related to how power and resources in a country are distributed. Ethnicity may also be related to power and resource distributions in a society, but it is often less strongly so. In this chapter, we assert that it is important to understand the ways in which race, ethnicity, and immigrant status overlap when we think about the educational outcomes of these newcomers. In the next section we present a brief overview of the basic socio-demographic characteristics of the immigrants who currently reside in the US.

Today’s Immigrant Population

Currently, over 38 million immigrants live in the United States (Gryn and Larsen 2010). This represents about 13% of the US population. Immigrants arrive to the US from all over the world, but, unlike immigrants who arrived during the 1800s and early 1900s, most of the immigrants today do not come from Europe. Among the foreign-born population in 1960, 75% had European origins (Grieco 2010). In contrast, by 2007, only 13.1% had European origins. In 1960, those from Latin America accounted for only 9.4% of the foreign-born population. By 2007, this number was 53.6%. Similarly, in 1960, only 5.1% of the foreign-born hailed from Asia; but by 2007, Asians accounted for 26.8% of the foreign-born population (Grieco 2010). Together, approximately three-quarters of the foreign-born population in 2009 came from Latin America and Asia. In 2009, Mexico alone accounted for 30% of the foreign-born population (Passel and Cohn 2009).

There is also a growing number of immigrants who come from Africa – although they still account for a minority of all immigrants in the US, adding about 4% of the foreign-born population (Grieco and Trevelyan 2010). The increase of immigration from Africa started in the 1960s with the end of European colonialism and the creation of many independent nation-states in sub- Saharan Africa. Many (mostly white) immigrants decided to migrate given the turmoil of these geopolitical changes, but migration of black Africans followed shortly thereafter. While many of these immigrants chose Europe as their destination, the numbers of those who migrated to the US started increasing during the 1980s as the European economies began to weaken. In the ten years between 1980 and 1989, 129,000 immigrants arrived from Africa to the US. In the six years between 2000 and 2005, the number of immigrants arriving from Africa to the US had increased to 353,000 (Kent 2007).

The majority of the newer immigrants (those who have arrived since 1965) are not white and their prospects for assimilation and equal outcomes in school and elsewhere remain uncertain. Further, understandings about race and ethnicity vary across different regional and national contexts, so immigrants can be somewhat surprised when they are classified by a distinctly American racial system different from one with which they are familiar. For example, individuals from Spain may be surprised to find themselves grouped together with other “Hispanics” rather than with “(white) Europeans.” People from China may not expect to be grouped with “Asians” that include Cambodians or South Asians.

Immigrant Status of Youth

Because this book focuses on education, we will spend much time discussing school-aged immigrants, that is, children and youth. In the US, children in immigrant families account for almost one in four school-aged children in the US and this figure is expected to increase to two in five by 2020 (O’Hare 2004). Thus, immigrant children form a sizeable portion of the student population and are an integral part of the social fabric of the US. Their socioeconomic advancement in the country largely depends on their educational success.

Immigrants and their children are often referred to by their generational status. Throughout this book, we use the phrase first generation to refer to individuals who were born outside the United States and usually arrived to this country as adults. The second generation are individuals who were born in the US but have at least one immigrant parent. Finally, the third and beyond generation (which we will primarily refer to as third generation) are individuals who were born in the United States to native-born parents. We collapse the third and beyond generation for two reasons. First, as we focus on post-1965 immigration, there are virtually no fourth generation individuals who hail from that period. Second, their grandparents’ birthplace is usually unknown from survey data with nationally representative samples. Thus, most social science studies usually cannot differentiate individuals who are third generation (native-born individuals with native-born parents but with foreign-born grandparents) from their fourth, fifth, etc. generation counterparts.

In this book, we often group children of the first and second immigrant generation using the term children from immigrant families. These children may themselves be US-born or foreign-born, but have immigrant parents. It is important to keep in mind that nativity, citizenship, and legal US residence are individual characteristics, and any “immigrant” family (in which, for example, the parents are foreign-born) may have children who were only born in a foreign country, only born in the US, or both US-born and native-born. These households may include those who are US citizens, legal permanent residents, or undocumented immigrants.

As you read through the chapters of the book, it is important to keep in mind that children from immigrant families are a very heterogeneous group. They range from children who were born and went to school in the US with well-educated, foreign-born parents who speak perfect English and may also have experienced all of their schooling in the US, to immigrant youth who arrived at age 17 with no knowledge of English and whose parents have very little education and who do not speak English.

In order to capture the importance of age of arrival for those who migrated before adulthood, Rumbaut (2004) proposed a specific terminology to differentiate among immigrant children according to their developmental stage and their age upon arrival to the US. He coined the term “decimal” generations, which, while they complicate the study of immigrants and immigration, are useful in understanding the diverse experiences of immigrants both in school and in their later integration into the labor market.

What are the “decimal generations” and what is their relationship to the educational outcomes of immigrants? The 1.25 generation typically refers to those who migrated as teenagers, that is, they spent their formative years in the country of origin. The 1.5 generation refers to those who arrived before adolescence, and who have experienced some education abroad and some in the US. Finally, the 1.75 generation is composed of those who arrived as preschoolers and will only have experienced US educational institutions. Because they arrive to the US at different ages, there is great variation among these “decimal generations” in how well they adapt to American schools and how fast they learn English. For example, a child who arrives at age 2, when he or she is just starting to learn and develop language skills, will have a very different experience from a 12-year-old who has completed a number of years of education in his or her country of origin, has had time to develop friendships in that country and has a mastery of their non-English mother tongue. Most likely the discordant experiences of the latter example are not comparable to those of the former (Orellana 2008; Suárez-Orozco et al. 2008). For that reason, researchers are trying to be more meticulous with their classification of these youngest immigrants. The experiences of the 1.75 generation are expected to be closer to those of the second generation (children born in the US to immigrant parents) than to their 1.25 generation counterparts. Unfortunately, most available data sources do not provide enough information to differentiate immigrants into the decimal generations, and others have sample sizes that are not large enough to perform detailed analyses. Thus, often researchers cannot directly test the assumptions behind Rumbaut’s finer categories. Throughout this book, we have highlighted research that discusses the decimal generations; however, you will notice that data analyzed for this volume did not provide such detail.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity among Immigrant and Native Youths

As we ha...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halt Title
• Other Books
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• 1 Education and the American Dream
• 2 Becoming American (or Not): Paths to Assimilation
• 3 Historical Overview of Immigration
• 4 Educational Attainment and Socioeconomic Status of Immigrant Adults
• 5 Educational Achievement and Outcomes of Children in Immigrant Families
• 6 Language and Educational Success
• 7 Conclusion
• References
• Index