Education, occupation and family patterns of second generation immigrant youth in the U.S.: the importance of embeddedness in social relationships in the transition to adulthood

Within the United States, nearly all growth in the young adult population over the next forty years will come from immigrants and their U.S.-born children. While many immigrant youth face similar challenges, they also vary substantially in their access to family and institutional resources which may influence their ability to make a successful transition to adulthood. Utilizing national, longitudinal data from the adolescent (2002/2004), young adult follow-up (2006) and later adult follow-up (2012) surveys of the Educational Longitudinal Study (U.S. Department of Education), I examine the degree to which second generation immigrant youth are rooted in significant social relationships with parents, peers, teachers and in their communities and whether the potential and actual resources available from these relationships influence early patterns and later adult status attainment. I find that second generation immigrant youth vary in the intensity and quality of relationships during the adolescent development period and these differences in part reflect differences between racial/ethnic groups, gender and by family and neighborhood characteristics. The results from my hierarchical linear regression analysis also indicate that immigrant adolescence who are socially embedded within their family, peer, school and community have higher educational attainment and are more civically engaged ten years later in adulthood.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human & Community Development

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Wu, Joanna

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lleras, Christy
• Raffaelli, Marcela
• Ferguson, Gail
• Mendenhall, Ruby

• educational attainment
• civic engagement
• neighborhood
• transition to adulthood
• Second generation immigrant

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Joanna Wu

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78709

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/78709