Crossing the Mexico-U.S. Border: Illegality and Children’s Migration to the United States

Abstract

Recent public debates reveal that the experiences of child migrants are not well understood. This study is a child-centered analysis of Mexican migration. We examine whether and how conditions in origin communities, and the attributes of children and parents, affect the propensities that children undertake a first migrant trip to the United States. From event history and other multivariate models used to assess children’s undocumented migration and how conditions in origin and sending communities explain its variation, our findings reveal close links between violence in Mexico and unauthorized child migration, and important variation in children’s likelihoods to initiate migration related to parents’ migration, origin migrant networks, and period of U.S. entry.