Collaborative Research: The Second Generation in Early Adulthood: A Decade-Long Panel Study

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

The proposed study will analyze the adaptation process of second generation immigrants in early adulthood in the United States. Children of immigrants comprise today close to one-fourth of all young Americans aged 21 or under and represent the fastest growing segment of this population. Success or failure of second generation immigrants' economic, social, and cultural adaptation to American society will have an important effect on the cities and regions where today's immigrant population concentrate. This study will examine actual adult outcomes of the adaptation process on the basis of data collected expressly for this purpose. These data come from the just-completed third-survey of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), the largest research project to date focused on the immigrant second generation. CILS was begun in 1992 with a survey of 5,266 children of immigrants attending 8th and 9th grades in Miami/Ft. Lauderdale and San Diego, and continued with a follow-up of these students at the time of high school graduation in 1995-96 plus a survey of 50 percent of their immigrant parents. The recently completed follow-up survey traces the original sample into early adulthood, average age 24 and includes detailed data on adult outcomes such as education, employment, occupational status, ethnicity of spouses/partners, present family situations, incarceration, teenage motherhood, welfare dependence, and other indicators of downward assimilation, voting, political preferences, civic behavior, ethnic and racial identities, and identification with American society. It is this extensive data set that we intend to analyze, employing as predictors of key second generation outcomes, personal, family, and school variables measured in the two earlier surveys. Using these data, issues of causal order and non-spuriousness of causal effects can be addressed in a more robust manner on the basis of this data set. Findings will be disseminated, as in past phases of this study, through academic publications as well as through public lectures, journalistic articles, and Internet sites accessible to policy-makers and the public. The project's intellectual merit includes the following: This is the first major study on the long-term consequences of contemporary immigration through a focus on the adaptation of its offspring. It will test novel theories of segmented assimilation and compare them with those stemming from classic perspectives in this field. The project's broader impacts include the following: Results of the study will provide the first authoritative conclusion about the adaptation of the contemporary second generation and its impact on the cities and regions where it concentrates. As such, results of the study will have a direct bearing on immigration policy and education and language programs focused on new Americans.