Beyond the Family: The Influence of Premigration Group Status on the Educational Expectations of Immigrants' Children

Understanding how immigrants' children form educational expectations may yield insights into the causes of eventual ethnic disparities in socioeconomic attainments. This article examines how the average relative premigration educational status of the immigrant group and the immigrant group's average postmigration SES shape the educational expectations of immigrants' children. It analyzes a unique data set that was compiled from published international data and U.S. census data on 30 immigrant groups, combined with data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey. The findings reveal that higher group premigration educational status facilitates higher perceived parental aspirations, which shape the educational expectations of second-generation youths. Furthermore, as an immigrant group's premigration educational status increases, youths' educational expectations also increase. The results highlight the interaction between group and individual-level factors in that the effect of parents' socioeconomic status on students' educational expectations depends upon the premigration status of their immigrant group. These findings suggest that a premigration group-level characteristic influences second-generation adaptation beyond its association with family background and that greater attention should be drawn to the effects of premigration factors in shaping ethnic communities and the experiences of immigrant groups in the United States.

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