Pathways to Social Mobility: Understanding Immigrant Bargains at the Margins of the State

• In Event: Sociology of Population Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 5. Migration and Migrants

Abstract

Children growing up in immigrant families account for one-quarter of all children in the United States. How they navigate the transition to adulthood, specifically whether they successfully climb the social mobility ladder, will continue to be a significant factor in determining the long- term effects of immigration on inequality in the U.S. today. My dissertation takes this issue as its starting point and focuses on how Mexican-origin immigrants, who are usually referred to as “disadvantaged” among second generation immigrant groups, in an emerging (i.e., newer and growing) immigrant destination experience social mobility across and within generations. In alignment with critical race scholarship and multi-family member approaches that have been used to recognize the diverse perspectives across generations within each family, I hope to center the voices of Mexican immigrants and the lived experiences of their families by engaging in pláticas with various individual family members across 20 different families, for a total of around 60 pláticas. Leveraging these conversations, I aim to better understand how interfamilial (parental expectations, responsibilities, siblings, and aspirations) and extrafamilial processes (social and political context of reception) shape the pathways for social mobility within and across Mexican immigrant families. Center to this work is the examination of how Mexican families negotiate the “immigrant bargain,” a concept that describes the intergenerational expectation that working-class immigrant parents’ sacrifices will be validated via their children’s achievements. While children’s repayment most commonly takes the form of upward social mobility via educational attainment or economic progress, how they repay parents can vary according to each family’s history, size, and gender composition, and may differ inter- and intra-generationally in important ways—ways that my research aims to address.

Author

• Akanne Torres Beltran, The Ohio State University