Doctoral Dissertation Research: Intergenerational Transmission of Status in New Immigrant Families

Columbia University, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Intergenerational Transmission Through Undocumented Status PI: Shamus Khan, PhD; Co-PI: Nicol Valdez NSF Abstract This project is a study of U.S.-born, citizen youth to better understand the intergenerational transfer of citizenship status. The project compares the experience of youth from undocumented and documented immigrant families. The legal-illegal dichotomy ingrained in U.S. immigration policies is conceptually limiting for understanding the diversity of citizenship experiences for the children of immigrants. A more nuanced analysis is now required to further uncover the generational effects of parental undocumented status on their U.S. born children with citizenship. This type of research offers new ways of understanding the intergenerational transmission of parents' social background to their children and develops insight into how local context can mediate and shape the lived experiences of immigrant origin youth. This research holds the potential to help policy makers, educators, and the wider public understand the social implications of undocumented status for future generations. This comparative qualitative study will interrogate intra-group differences related to the legal status of Mexican-American families residing in New York City. The hypothesis guiding this research is that parents? undocumented status creates a social context that is inheritable or passed on to subsequent generations. Interviews with both undocumented and documented families coupled with ethnographic observations of a subset of these families will provide new insights into the strategies undocumented families employ in their daily lives. This study takes a multi-level ecological approach by gathering observations across both the individual and contextual level. On the individual level, the study will provide a descriptive portrait of the everyday lives of undocumented and documented Mexican-American parents as they raise their families. On a contextual level, this study will detail the highly variable experiences of undocumented parents and their children resulting from factors such as neighborhoods, schools, and social networks. Given that the undocumented experience is often shaped by the local factors, New York's policies on immigrant families can offer insight into how states can help ameliorate the negative impact of an undocumented parent. More broadly, the stakes are high for creating a more empowered and educated immigrant origin youth population, whose future achievements do matter in aiding the competitive advantage of our nation.