Mexican Children's Family Migration Arrangements

• In Event: 508 - Section on Latino/a Sociology Paper Session. Mixed Legal Studies and Transnational Families

Abstract

Scholars increasingly recognize that migration is a family affair that involves men, women, and
children. Worldwide, more children under the age of 18 are migrating without their parents or other adult guardians. In the United States alone, the Border Patrol is apprehending exponential numbers of unaccompanied minors crossing the border without authorization.Yet there is little empirical understanding about the ways in which children migrate and the family migration arrangements that encompass children's moves. Do children always migrate with their parents? If so, what do these arrangements look like and how have they changed over time? To what
extent do child migrate alone? We use data from the Mexican Migration Project to identify five types of family migration arrangements for children leaving on a first U.S. trip: those who enter only with fathers, those who enter only with mothers, those migrating with both parents, those entering alone without parents with any U.S. experience, those entering without parents but having at least one parent in the United States during the year the child migrates, and those entering without parents, but whose mother and father have prior migration experience. Understanding differences in children’s migration arrangements offers a unique opportunity to examine whether and how these arrangements have shifted with recent U.S. policies that have dramatically altered Mexico-U.S. migration. Thus, understanding the family migration arrangements of children is a timely topic of great significance as enforcement continues and Congress considers immigration policy reforms.

Authors

• Katharine Donato, Vanderbilt University

• Samantha L. Perez, Vanderbilt University