Current immigration research has revealed little about how immigrants compare to those who do not migrate. Although most scholars agree that migrants are not random samples of their home countries' populations, the direction and degree of educational selectivity is not fully understood. This study of 32 U.S. immigrant groups found that although nearly all immigrants are more educated than those who remain in their home countries, immigrants vary substantially in their degree of selectivity, depending upon the origin country and the timing of migration. Uncovering patterns of immigrant selectivity reveals the fallacy in attributing immigrants' characteristics to national groups as a whole and may help explain socioeconomic differences among immigrant groups in the United States.
By 2040, about one third of U.S. children will be raised in immigrant families (Suárez-Orozco, Abo-Zena, and Marks 2015). Because educational attainment is crucial for economic mobility, debates about the incorporation of immigrants' children have long centered on their educational adaptation. Early researchers studying the children of post-1965 U.S. immigrants expressed concern that a substantial portion would experience "decline" or "downward assimilation" (Gans 1992; Portes and Zhou 1993). Yet several studies reveal a curious pattern, referred to as the "second-generation advantage," "immigrant paradox," or "superachievement": when compared to others from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, immigrants' children outperform their counterparts in native-born 684777A SRXXX10.
Understanding why some national‐origin groups excel in school while others do not is an enduring sociological puzzle. This paper examines whether the degree of immigrants’educational selectivity ‐ that is, how immigrants differ educationally from non‐migrants in the home country ‐ influences educational outcomes among groups of immigrants’children. This study uses published international data and U. S. Census and Current Population Survey data on 32 immigrant groups to show that as immigrants’educational selectivity increases, the college attainment of the second generation also increases. Moreover, the more positive selection of Asian immigrants helps explain their second generations’higher college attendance rates as compared to Europeans, Afro‐Caribbeans, and Latinos. Thus, the findings suggest that inequalities in relative pre‐migration educational attainments among immigrants are often reproduced among the next generation in the United States.
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