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Background: In spite of the strong presence of child migrants in the United States and that they migrate at varying stages of development, scholarship has not fully addressed their experiences, challenges and educational outcomes. A large body of literature has looked beyond adult immigrants and turned their attention to children; however, in large part it has done so by combining the first-generation and second-generation into the “children of immigrants”. I argue that differences in vulnerabilities and outcomes for child migrants are obscured when combining the first and second generation. Moreover, the interaction between development and context is ignored when not considering how the timing of migration impacts outcomes. Thus, fully understanding child migrant’s educational attainment requires teasing apart “children of immigrants”. Consequently, this study examined the effect of migration age on the high school completion of Latino child migrants and factors that intensify or attenuate the impact of age. This study also incorporated immigration status, which remains a largely unexamined variable in analyzing immigrant outcomes.
Methods
Data: The study uses data from Wave 1 of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (L.A. FANS) and draws on the randomly selected native-born Latino adults and foreign-born Latino adults that migrated during childhood—Latino child migrants. (n = 977). To examine the impact of migration age, foreign-born Latinos were categorized into those migrating in early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence.
Measures: Educational attainment, measured by high school completion, was compared between native-born Latinos and Latino child migrants. In addition, individual characteristics, family background variables, and immigration status were examined in order to determine which intensify or attenuate the impact of age.
Approach: A two-step approach was utilized to compare the likelihood of high school completion between native-bon Latinos and Latino Child migrants. First, a set of logistic regression models compared all Latino child migrants to native-born Latinos. Second, another set of logistic regression models compared Latino child migrants by stage at development at migration to native-born Latinos.
Results: Latino child migrants were less likely to graduate high school than the native-born, however, once adjusting for individual characteristics, family background, and immigration status the differences disappeared. Moreover, both authorized and unauthorized were less likely to graduate highs school than U.S. citizens.
When analyzing high school completion by age at migration, individuals migrating during adolescence were at greatest risk of not completing high school. After controlling for all variables, teen migrants were 62 percent less likely to graduate high school than native-born Latinos. Compared to native-born Latinos there were no differences between early and middle childhood arrivals after including all variables.
Implications: In order to implement appropriate programs and policies it is necessary to understand the distinct challenges experienced by children migrating at different stages of development. This study points to increased vulnerability of teen migrants and to the importance of immigration status as a barrier to educational attainment both for authorized and unauthorized child migrants.