Romantic Relationships among Immigrant Adolescents1

We examine the importance of the family and friendship group as two crucial developmental contexts for adolescent relationship experiences. We focus particularly on immigrant adolescents who make up an increasing proportion of the youth population and who come from cultural contexts with stronger family traditions than native‐born adolescents.  Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we model the characteristics associated with having romantic relationships and participating in sex‐related activities within relationships for immigrant adolescents, children of immigrants and adolescents in native‐born families.  First generation adolescents are less likely to enter romantic relationships than adolescents in native‐born families, but those who do participate engage in similar sex‐related activities as native‐born youth.  This evidence suggests that immigrant youth who enter romantic relationships are selective of the more assimilated to native adolescent norms of heterosexual behavior.  The peer group is especially important for immigrant adolescents because it provides opportunities for romantic relationship involvement.     

Family Structure and Parent–Child Contact: A Comparison of Native and Migrant Families

This article is an investigation of the frequency of contact between parents and adult children in Germany. It compares Turkish immigrants and native Germans and includes both biological and step‐relations. After the United States and Russia, Germany reports the third highest proportion of immigrants internationally, but the extent to which results regarding natives are applicable to immigrant families remains unknown. Data are from the first wave of the German Generations and Gender Surveys (2005) and the supplemental survey of Turkish citizens living in Germany (2006). A total of 7,035 parent–child relations are analyzed. The frequency of parent–adult child contact is significantly higher for biological parents living with the child's other biological parent than for parents without a partner, parents with a new partner, or stepparents. Contact is more frequent for all Turkish families, but the pattern of variation by family structure is similar for both Germans and Turks.     

The Short Term Effects of Immigrant Students on the Educational Achievements of Native‐Born Students

Since 1989 nearly one million immigrants from the FSU have arrived in Israel. Although well‐educated on average, most of these immigrants lacked economic means. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the presence of immigrants in schools affected the educational achievements of their Israeli‐born peers. We analyzed data pertaining to 8,288 Israeli tenth graders who attended 208 schools in 1994. Respondents' records were obtained from the Ministry of Education and the Bureau of the Census. Using hierarchical models we examined the effects of the proportion of immigrant students in a school and of their parents' education on the probability that Israeli‐born students in the school would earn matriculation certificates. Results did not yield evidence of any negative spillover effects on the educational achievements of the native students. Moreover, the presence of many immigrant students with high educational backgrounds increased the likelihood of Israeli‐born students earning matriculation certificates.     

Are immigrants and natives perfect substitutes in production?

This article discusses whether immigrant and native labor are perfect substitutes in production when conventional measures of skill and demographic characteristics are held constant. The ratio of immigrant to native labor and the ratio of immigrant to native earnings are studied in 5 major immigrant receiving countries with other variables held constant. Countries included are 1) the US and Britian, where the foreign born are only about 5% to 6% of the adult male labor force; 2) Canada and Australia, where they are about 20% and 30%, respectively; and 3) Israel, where the foreign born are about 3/4 of the Jewish adult male labor force. The relative earnings of adult male immigrants and the adult male native-born sons of immigrants are found to be lower when the labor supply of immigrants is greater. The estimated elasticity of substitution between immigrant and native labor is high, but significantly less than infinity. Workers who are relatively more intensively in the favorable self selection characteristics of immigrants are not perfect substitutes for workers relatively more intensive in country-specific skills. As immigrants increase in the labor force, their relative earnings tend to fall, although the decline is small. Economies have sufficiently flexible markets and develop institutional arrangements to mitigate the relative fail in immigrant earnings as their relative supply increase.     

The Great Recession and the Allure of New Immigrant Destinations in the United States

In the 1990s, the immigrant population in the United States dispersed to non‐traditional settlement locations (what have become known as “new immigrant destinations”). This paper examines whether the allure of new destinations persisted in the 2000s with a particular focus on the internal migration of the foreign‐born during the recent deep recessionary period and its aftermath. Three specific questions motivate the analysis. First, are immigrants, much like the U.S.‐born population, becoming less migratory within the country over time? Second, is immigrant dispersal from traditional gateways via internal migration continuing despite considerable economic contraction in many new destination metropolitan areas? Third, is immigration from aboard a substitute for what appears to be declining immigrant internal migration to new destinations? The findings reveal a close correlation between the declining internal migration propensity of the U.S.‐born and immigrants in the last two decades. We also observe parallels between the geographies of migration of native‐ and foreign‐born populations with both groups moving to similar metropolitan areas in the 1990s. This redistributive association, however, weakened in the subsequent decade as new destination metropolitan areas lost their appeal for both groups, especially immigrants. There is no evidence to suggest that immigration from abroad is substituting for the decline in immigrant redistribution through internal migration to new destinations. Across destination types, the relationship between immigration from abroad and the internal migration of the foreign‐born remained the same during and after the Great Recession as in the period immediately before it.     

Opposition to Pro‐Immigrant Public Policy: Symbolic Racism and Group Threat

This study examines the relationship between symbolic racism and native‐born citizens’ policy opinions toward legal and undocumented immigration. With data from the 1994 General Social Survey and the NPR/Kaiser Foundation/Kennedy School of Government 2004 Immigration Survey, the results from logit regression models indicate that symbolic racism significantly predicts opposition to legal immigration, immigrant access to federal aid, and standard costs for college, citizenship for U.S.‐born children, and work permits for undocumented immigrants. The effects are independent of group threat and other factors. Symbolic racism explained more variation in policy opinions toward government assistance, while group threat explained more variation toward immigration levels and citizenship status. Depending on the issue, native‐born citizens likely derive their immigration policy opinions from moral ideologies in addition to intergroup competition.     

Adoption,Foreign‐Born Status,and Children's Progress in School

Using recent data from the American Community Survey, the author investigated how the dynamics of immigration influence our understanding of the adoption–schooling relationship. The results suggest that implications of immigrant and adoption statuses could be understood within specific familial contexts. Thus, no statistical differences were found in the outcomes of foreign‐born adoptees in U.S. native families and their peers with immigrant parents. Instead, the most favorable patterns of schooling progress were found among U.S.‐born adoptees living in immigrant families. Among immigrants, the analysis indicated similar patterns of achievement among Hispanic and White adoptees that are inconsistent with the predictions of segmented assimilation theory. However, there was a Hispanic disadvantage relative to Whites among immigrant children living with biological and stepparents. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for kinship selection and assimilation processes and the contention that alternative theoretical frameworks should be used to understand the implications of adoption status.     

Earning Disparities between Immigrants and Native‐born Canadians*

La contribution économique des immigrants est mesurée par l'am‐pleur de leurs salaires. Plus on diminue l'écart des salaires, plus les immigrants sont sensés se doter du capital humain. En utilisant les données du recensement de 1996, cet article compare des groupes d'immigrants avec des Canadiens de naissance de même sexe et de même origine raciale à quatre niveaux de la région métropolitaine de recensement, définie par la taille de la population. Les résultats indiquent que les immigrants de même sexe et de même origine raciale gagnent soit le même salaire sinon plus que leurs homologues canadiens. Cependant, en prenant en considération les variations dans le capital humain, l'expérience, les différences dans l'échelle urbaine, la taille de la population immigrante et le taux de chômage, tout groupe d'immigrants gagne moins que son homologue canadien. L'ampleur des salaires nets entre les immigrants et les Canadiens de naissance varie selon le sexe, l'origine raciale et moins ainsi selon le niveau de la région metropolitaine de recensement. Plusieurs fac‐teurs, dont les possibilités d'emploi inégales, touchent le salaire des immigrants. II n'est pas du tout évident de supposer que la teneur du capital humain des immigrants est inférieure alors qu'elle est déduite de la disparité de salaires. The economic contribution of immigrants is often measured by their earnings in that the closer they are to the earnings of native‐born Canadians and the more quickly immigrants can bridge the income gap, the more immigrants are assumed to be endowed with human capital. Using microdata of the 1996 census, this paper compares immigrant groups with native‐born Canadians of the same gender and racial origin at four levels of Census Metropolitan Area defined by population size. The findings indicate that immigrants of the same gender and racial origin earned either the same or more than their native‐born counterparts. However, when variations in human capital, experience, and other individual differences in work‐related characteristics and immigrant experience are taken into account, along with differences in urban scale, immigrant population size and unemployment rate, all immigrant groups earned less than their native‐born counterparts. The magnitude of net earning disparities between immigrants and native‐born Canadians varies, depending on gender, racial origin and less so on CMA level. The study suggests that many factors, including unequal opportunities, affect the earnings of immigrants, and that the assumption of immigrants' inferior human capital content inferred from earning disparities is tenuous at best.     

Child Mortality and Socioeconomic Status: An Examination of Differentials by Migration Status in South Africa1

This study examines child mortality and socioeconomic status among migrants and nonmigrants. It also examines child mortality by migration status in all quintiles of socioeconomic status, comparing immigrants to the native‐born and internal migrants to nonmigrants. The results show that among migrants, child mortality decreased faster as socioeconomic status increased than among nonmigrants. The results also show a cross‐over in the likelihood of child mortality by immigration status as socioeconomic status increased. In the poorest socioeconomic quintiles immigrants had a greater likelihood of child mortality than the native‐born while in the wealthiest quintiles child mortality was greater among the native‐born.     

Between Two Worlds: Source‐Country Gender Roles and Gender Differences in Educational Attainment among Immigrant Children

Recent scholarship has focused on the relationship between source‐country characteristics such as female labor force participation, fertility, level of economic development, gender role attitudes, and immigrants’ labor market assimilation. These studies refer to national‐level factors when accounting for the vast differences in home‐country groups in labor market outcomes. This study asks to what extent these source‐country characteristics affect immigrant children's educational outcomes. Using data from the 2006 Canadian Census and World Values Survey, this article examines the extent to which the gender gap in educational attainment among immigrant children is associated with source‐country factors. Female child immigrants who come from countries with high female labor force participation and high levels of GDP have an advantage over their male counterparts in university education. Source‐country gender role ideology played a role in university completion rates for immigrant parents, but not for child immigrants.     

Bridges and Barriers: Religion and Immigrant Occupational Attainment across Integration Contexts

This article advances knowledge about context‐dependent impacts of religion on immigrant structural integration. Drawing on theories of inter‐generational immigrant integration, it identifies and spells out two context‐dependent mechanisms through which religion impinges upon structural integration – as ethnic marker prompting exclusion and discrimination, or as social organization providing access to tangible resources. The propositions are empirically tested with nationally representative data on occupational attainment in three different integration contexts which vary in religious boundary configurations and religious field characteristics – the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Using data from the US General Social Survey, the Canadian Ethnic Diversity Survey, and the European Social Survey, the article analyzes indirect and direct effects of religious affiliation and participation on occupational attainment among first and second generation immigrants. The analyses find only limited evidence for the assumption that in contexts with strong religious boundaries (such as Western Europe and, to a lesser extent, Canada), immigrants face religious penalties in structural integration. By contrast, the analyses support the assumption that in contexts with a thriving religious field (such as the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada), religious attendance tends to be positively related to occupational attainment, especially for the second generation. For the first time, the article empirically tests arguments about transatlantic differences in the role of religion for immigrant structural integration, and it suggests ways of better integrating micro‐oriented survey research with macro‐oriented institutional analysis.     

Immigrant and native fertility during the 1980s: adaptation and expectations for the future

Many immigrants have come to the US since the mid-1960s. The demographic effects of this phenomenon may be seen in both the changing racial and ethnic composition of the population and in the increasing contribution of immigration to sustaining population growth. Given the current below replacement level of fertility in the country, US population growth depends increasingly upon the entry of new immigrants each year and their subsequent fertility. Over much of the 20th century, immigrants had consistently lower fertility than native-born women. This situation changed, however, since the 1970s with the arrival of large numbers of immigrants from countries with high fertility. Studies based upon the US census have shown that, despite considerable variation according to country of origin, recent immigrants have higher fertility on average than native-born women. Moreover, the gap between immigrant and native fertility levels appears to have increased during the 1980s. By 1986, immigrant women aged 18-44 had about one-quarter child more than similarly aged native-born women. This article compares both the fertility behavior and expectations for future childbearing of foreign and native-born women in the US with the goal of analyzing the sources of the growing fertility gap between immigrant and native women, and exploring the extent to which immigrants adapt their fertility once in the US. Data are drawn from the 1980 US Census and the 1986 and 1988 June Current Population Surveys. The author found that the immigrant-native fertility gap increased during the 1980s, not because immigrant fertility increased, but because fertility dropped at a faster rate for natives than for immigrants. The relatively high fertility of immigrants compared to natives can be explained by compositional differences with respect to age, education, income, and ethnicity. The two analyses of adaptation, however, yielded different results. The synthetic cohort analysis, which traced the fertility behavior of a fixed cohort of immigrants during the 1980s, found little evidence of adaptation or assimilation, except for immigrants from southeast Asia. On the other hand, the analysis of fertility expectations suggests that although immigrants expect to have higher fertility than similar natives, they tend to adapt their fertility goals over time, both within and across generations.     

Immigrants,Natives and Social Assistance: Comparable Take‐Up Under Comparable Circumstances

Are immigrants on welfare because they are more likely to be eligible or because they are more likely to claim benefits for which they are eligible? The answer is politically important, but because most current research on immigration and welfare is based on data from the United States, the answer is difficult due to the complexities of the transfer system which make eligibility determinations difficult. In Germany, by contrast, eligibility for the main cash transfer program, Sozialhilfe (Social Assistance), is determined by a comparatively simple nationwide formula. We use data from the German Socio‐Economic Panel to test whether immigrants to Germany are more likely than natives to claim welfare benefits for which they are eligible. We find that immigrants are more likely than native Germans to receive welfare, both because immigrants are more likely to be eligible and because they are more likely, when eligible, to claim their benefits. However, we also find that this greater propensity to take‐up benefits is not related to immigrant status per se: when other sociodemographic factors are accounted for in an appropriate manner, immigrant households are no more likely to take‐up benefits than native households.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

Earning Gaps for Chinese Immigrants in Canada and the United States

This study compares the US and Canada on the gap in earnings between Chinese immigrants and native‐born whites. Canada and the US are arguably more alike than most possible country pairings, yet they differ in significant ways in their approaches to immigration and integration. The primary difference between Canada and the US regarding immigration policy is that Canada selects a larger proportion of economic immigrants – that is, those admitted based on their ability to contribute to the economy – than the US's focus on family reunification. Canadian immigration and multicultural integration policy does not appear to improve Chinese immigrant earnings in the way that might be predicted from Canada's skilled‐based immigrant selection policy and welcoming social context. In spite of a more laissez‐faire approach to immigrant integration and a less skill‐selective immigration policy, we show that Chinese immigrants are earning relatively more in the US than in Canada.     

Education,Skills, and Wage Gaps in Canada and the United States

We analyse data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies to reveal that immigrants in Canada and the United States make over $200 less per month than native‐born workers. In the United States, immigrants disproportionately work in low‐wage occupations, leading to large mean national differences between immigrants and native workers. The wage differential disappears after accounting for education and cognitive skills, indicating policies must focus on reducing education and skill gaps in the United States. In Canada, an immigrant wage gap persists in nearly all occupational fields, suggesting that the better skilled and educated immigrants in Canada are not receiving the same wage premium as native workers. We close with implications for policy and future research.     

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.     

Could “Acculturation” Effects Be Explained by Latent Health Disadvantages Among Mexican Immigrants?

This paper tests portions of a new theory of immigrant health by focusing exclusively on latent biomarkers of future health risks. Using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III, 1988–1994 – we uncover the typically observed immigrant health advantage among recent immigrants that diminishes among long‐term immigrants. In addition, we observe worse health among U.S.‐born Mexican Americans relative to non‐Hispanic Whites. Finally, although our theory suggests that recent immigrants may have latent health risks due to disadvantaged childhood experiences, we do not find evidence in support of this theory.     

Childbearing after Migration: Fertility Patterns of Foreign‐born Women in Sweden1

The present study provides an investigation of patterns in childbearing among foreign‐born women in Sweden from the 1960s to the 1990s. Event‐history techniques are applied to longitudinal population register data on childbearing and migration of 446,000 foreign‐born women who had ever lived in Sweden before the end of 1999. Period trends in parity‐specific fertility appear to be quite similar for Swedish‐ and foreignborn women, but important differences exist in levels of childbearing propensities between women from different countries of origin. Most immigrant groups tend to display higher levels of childbearing shortly after immigration. We conclude that migration and family building in many cases are interrelated processes and that it is always important to account for time since migration when fertility of immigrants is studied.