One in five U.S. residents under the age of 18 has at least one foreign-born parent. Given the large proportion of immigrants with very low levels of schooling, the strength of the intergenerational transmission of education between immigrant parent and child has important repercussions for the future of social stratification in the United States. We find that the educational transmission process between parent and child is much weaker in immigrant families than in native families and, among immigrants, differs significantly across national origins. We demonstrate how this variation causes a substantial overestimation of the importance of parental education in immigrant families in studies that use aggregate data. We also show that the common practice of "controlling" for family human capital using parental years of schooling is problematic when comparing families from different origin countries and especially when comparing native and immigrant families. We link these findings to analytical and empirical distinctions between group-and individual-level processes in intergenerational transmission.

The descendants of immigrants comprise nearly a third of the West German population under the age of 25 years and will soon become a substantial proportion of the native born labor force. Owing to the young age of this group, and a lack of governmental data on parental place of birth, there is currently little research that compares the labor market outcomes of the second generation of different origins. Exploiting the first data set to allow the disaggregation of all immigrant groups in Germany, this article draws on the concepts of context of reception and boundary crossing to explain variation in the labor market performance of different immigrant origin groups. Positively received ethnic Germans consistently perform better than negatively received guest worker origin groups. Labor market inequality is greatest among men and in obtaining employment. Ethnic differences are more compressed among women and for occupational attainment among the employed. The boundary crossing mechanisms of naturalization and intermarriage have modest association with labor market success. Findings suggest that successful integration in Germany is influenced by labor market institutions, which encourage inequality in unemployment while diminishing inequality amongst the employed.

Applying latent class analysis to a unique data source of 3,500 Polish migrants in Western Europe, we develop a new typology of Polish migrants under “free movement” following the 2004 expansion of the European Union. We characterize these diverse migrant types in terms of their premigration characteristics and link them to varied early social and economic integration outcomes. We show that alongside traditional circular and temporary labor migration, European Union expansion has given rise to new migrant types who are driven by experiential concerns, resulting in a more complex relationship between their economic and social integration in destination countries.