Status attainment desires from young adult women of immigrant families

• In Event: Student Forum Roundtables Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Roundtable 17: Family, Relationships and Household Dynamics

Abstract

State violence against and discrimination of Mexicans, Latinos, and immigrants to the U.S. is a human rights concern. The silence of prominent 1.5 and second generation daughters of immigrants, particularly those presumed silent while maintaining affiliations with conservative politics and philanthropy in 2025, has become prominent. Narrative interviews in 2015 answer the study’s aim to investigate the once-children of immigrant communities under the following research question: how are young adult participants shaped by child, family, and community experiences of immigration? Within a conceptual framework informed by the civil-criminal line of U.S. immigration, illegality, and segmented assimilation, findings show that young adult women in college who grew up in immigrant families articulate links between systemic exclusion and desired status attainment. Participants (N = 12) identified nine countries from which their families arrived to the U.S., as well as four regions in the U.S. where they resided off campus (Northeast, West, South, and Puerto Rico), consisting of seven cities, four suburbs, and one rural town. In alphabetical order, participant-identified heritage or country of origin included China, Haiti, Jamaica, India (n = 2), Korea, Mexico (n = 2), Nepal, Palestine, and Vietnam. Participants discussed status attainment desires in occupational (e.g., career achievement), cultural (e.g., culture negotiation and creation), and social (e.g., relationship- and community-building) categories. Focusing on children of immigrants reveals what is also true of but may be overlooked among immigrants: that worth and belonging are not earnable on the basis of occupational, assimilationist, or community success.

Author

• Amy Xu, Ohio State University