Elsevier

Social Science Research

Volume 40, Issue 6, November 2011, Pages 1579-1595
Social Science Research

Ethnoracial patterns of schooling and work among adolescents: Implications for Mexican immigrant incorporation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2011.06.008Get rights and content

Abstract

This paper investigates Mexican immigrant incorporation by examining labor force participation and schooling among Mexican-origin adolescents in the United States. Theoretical perspectives on immigrant incorporation, labor migration-related cultural repertoires and adolescent development considered together imply that studying ethnoracial differences in schooling among adolescents without taking work into account can yield mis-leading pictures of Mexican-origin non-high school completion patterns, thus hampering the assessment of incorporation theories. To avoid this, we analyze Mexican-origin generational differences in the relationship between schooling and workforce participation among adolescents compared to non-Hispanic whites and blacks. Using micro-data from the 2000 US Census, we find that Mexican immigrant boys who are not enrolled in school are more likely to be in the workforce, and conversely that those who are enrolled in school are much less likely to be in the workforce, compared to whites and blacks. Such relative differences in school/work specialization, as predicted, diminish across Mexican-origin generations. Moreover, based on supplementary analyses, we find similar patterns for a cohort of young adults who failed to complete high school during the 1990s. Overall, the results are consistent with the idea that cultural orientations growing out of the nature and experience of Mexican labor migration are important for assessing school enrollment patterns among Mexican-origin youth and for gauging their implications for educational policy and immigrant-group incorporation.

Highlights

► Rates of school enrollment and employment are compared among Mexican, white, and black youth. ► For Mexican boys, employment depends on enrollment to a greater degree than among blacks or whites. ► This difference is most prevalent among adolescents born in Mexico. ► Similar employment patterns are found among adult males who did not complete high school. ► A culture of labor migration seems to facilitate labor market integration of low-skilled Mexican men.

Introduction

The persistence of large-scale immigration to the United States over the past four decades has raised the importance of accurately charting and explaining the incorporation experiences of immigrants and their children (Alba and Nee, 2003, Bean and Stevens, 2003, Kasinitz et al., 2008, Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Available evidence suggests that many groups, especially the children of immigrant parents arriving with considerable stocks of human capital, are progressing reasonably rapidly into the American social and economic mainstream (Alba, 2009, Bean et al., 2011). Concerns, however, have been raised about the prospects for successful incorporation in the case of some groups, especially those arriving with very low levels of human capital (Borjas, 1999, Borjas, 2006, Huntington, 2004, Portes and Fernández-Kelly, 2008, Portes and Zhou, 1993). Of these groups, Mexicans are by far the largest (Passel and Cohn, 2010). Research about the Mexican experience, however, has yet to produce evidence consistent and compelling enough to generate consensus about the extent and course of the group’s incorporation (Bean and Stevens, 2003, Jiménez, 2010, Perlmann, 2005). An important reason for inconclusive research findings is that the distinctive nature of Mexican labor migration engenders cultural orientations that, if not taken into consideration, can lead to confounded results about factors conventionally thought to yield insights about the nature and degree of Mexican immigrant incorporation (Jiménez, 2010, Van Hook and Bean, 2009).

Much of the worry about the incorporation of the Mexican origin population in the United States is fueled by a large body of research demonstrating that Mexican immigrant educational attainment is among the lowest of all national origin and nativity groups in the country (Fry, 2003, Tienda and Mitchell, 2006). Though the descendants of Mexican immigrants complete substantially more years of formal schooling than their immigrant forebears, existing data nonetheless suggest they fail to reach parity with the US white majority, even when third and higher generations are compared with non-Hispanic whites (Grogger and Trejo, 2002, Telles and Ortiz, 2008). Perhaps the most critical finding from the educational incorporation literature is the relatively high rate of so-called “high school dropout” among Mexican origin adolescents (Bean and Tienda, 1987, Hirschman, 2001, Perreira et al., 2006, Wojtkiewicz and Donato, 1995). Given that educational attainment is the strongest predictor of subsequent economic attainment, persons lacking a high school diploma face particular disadvantages in the labor market (Duncan et al., 2006). Thus, high rates of high school non-completion among Mexican-origin adolescents have contributed to the conclusion that an intergenerational pattern of “downward” assimilation occurs for many Mexican second-generation immigrants, one apparently consistent with the tenets of segmented assimilation ideas and perhaps large enough even to begin to fuel a new immigrant underclass (Gans, 1992, Massey, 2007, Portes and Rumbaut, 2001, Portes and Zhou, 1993, López and Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Based on the lens through which they are usually examined, high Mexican-origin non-completion rates are also often interpreted as resulting from “dysfunction” (at the level of either the student, parents, teacher or school), a conclusion that may not be entirely warranted.

This paper argues that workforce involvement is especially important for interpreting adolescent school enrollment patterns. By focusing on schooling and labor force participation, the latter a factor largely excluded from consideration in analyses of high school non-completion, the paper is able to assess the idea from segmented-assimilation theory that Mexicans experience downward assimilation. The downward assimilation hypothesis asserts that a close parallel exists between the Mexican experience and that of poor inner city African Americans (Portes et al., 2005). If in fact Mexican-origin youth resemble blacks, we would expect to observe both non-enrollment in school and detachment from the workforce, especially among young males (Waldinger and Feliciano, 2004, Wilson, 1978). By contrast, findings showing Mexican-origin adolescents leaving school early because of relatively strong workforce attractions would suggest an incorporation pattern not adequately explained by the downward assimilation hypothesis. Adequately gauging incorporation dynamics thus requires comparing Mexican-origin patterns of school enrollment and working with those of non-Hispanic whites, for whom holding part-time jobs often constitutes an important initial phase in developmental transitions to adulthood (Mortimer, 2003). However, research findings consistent with the presence of pro-work and family-oriented cultural repertoires among Mexican labor migrants (Van Hook and Bean, 2009) suggest that first- and second-generation Mexican-origin youth, in comparison to blacks, may be encouraged to develop strong work ethics and maintain seriousness of purpose whether or not they engage in school or employment. As a result, they might be expected to devote themselves more steadfastly to either work or school (i.e., adopt more mutually exclusive arrangements of schooling or work) than whites or blacks.

Section snippets

Theoretical background and hypotheses

In assessing contemporary immigration to the United States, debate has arisen over which theoretical perspectives best explain observed patterns of intergenerational differences between and within the nation’s major immigrant groups (Alba and Nee, 2003, Bean and Stevens, 2003, Brown and Bean, 2006, Waters and Jiménez, 2005). While there is no disputing rapid economic assimilation among the children of many Asian immigrant groups, whose parents tend to arrive with relatively high levels of human

Analyses of youth school enrollment and labor force participation

We first compare the empirical associations between labor force participation and school enrollment across the ethnoracial groups of adolescents using the 5% 2000 IPUMS data (Ruggles et al., 2010). Census micro-data have often been used in prior school enrollment research on immigrant adolescents because of the large numbers of cases (Fischer, 2010, Hirschman, 2001, Landale et al., 1998). Since we must limit our analytical sample to adolescents ages 16–17, living with at least one parent, and

Zero-order school-work distributions

Sample sizes and distributions across four school-work statuses for each ethnoracial and generational group are shown separately by sex in Table 1. Columns 1–4 correspond to the following combinations of school-work engagements (and non-engagements): (1) only working (2) working and in school (3) idle (neither school nor work) and (4) only in school. While a majority of adolescents in all groups tends to focus exclusively on schooling (at least two-thirds of Mexican origin and black youth),

Discussion and conclusions

In this paper we have introduced the idea that for many first- and second- generation Mexican origin adolescents, school enrollment is conditional upon labor force participation, and that strong propensities to work supported by social exigencies and cultural imperatives associated with undertaking and experiencing labor migration may in fact account for a substantial share of their non-enrollment in school. We have sought to develop a theoretical framework that emphasizes the possibility that

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