Child Migration from Mexico to the United States

University Of California At Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

Project Summary In 2010, nearly one million children born in Mexico were living in the United States. This large population of immigrant children is of central concern to scholars and policy makers because child migration often signals the permanent settlement of their families in the United States, and immigrant children and their families, particularly those from Mexico, face substantial barriers to successful incorporation into U.S. society. Yet due to data limitations, we know relatively little about the migration process of immigrant children. This is an important oversight because pre-migration conditions and the migration process are thought to be key determinants of health, wellbeing, and socioeconomic integration in the United States. In this R03 proposal, I outline a research project to study child and parent migration using the Mexican Family Life Survey, a nationally representative data set that tracked Mexican households over time, including across the Mexico-U.S. border. The central objective is to understand why and under what conditions children and their parents migrate from Mexico to the United States, with two specific aims. First, I will determine the individual, household, and community factors associated with the migration of children from Mexico to the United States, and examine whether the relevance of these factors varies among children in relation to their position in the life course. Child migrants may be autonomous actors who migrate to maximize their own or their household's economic interests, much like adults, or they may simply be dependents of adults, migrating primarily to maintain or reunite families. In a third perspective, considerations specific to the life course circumstances of children are paramount, including the child's transnational family structure, educational opportunities, safety, and youth norms of migration in the community of origin. Second, I will determine whether, and if so how, considerations that are relevant to child well-being impact parents' decisions to migrate from Mexico to the United States and whether to do so with children. If child-specific considerations matter for adult migration decisions, then our current understanding of the causes of migration from Mexico to the United States, and policy recommendations based on that understanding, are incomplete.