The Citizenship Advantage: Immigrant Socioeconomic Attainment in the Age of Mass Migration

Catron, Peter

doi:10.1086/701297

Cited by 38 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…For instance, every immigrant enters as a foreigner and government policy sets the criteria for which citizenship can be obtained and the rights and entitlements corresponding to different formal statuses. Thus, governmental policy is likely to aid certain immigrant groups and disadvantage others leading to a system of civic stratification (Catron 2019). Similarly, immigrants enter new racial/ethnic hierarchies that may place individuals and groups in less desirable positions.…”

Section: Discussion/conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond the effects of local labor markets and schooling contexts, researchers have focused on how race, return migration, political categories, and cultural features of immigrant groups would have severed the link between premigration status and mobility across generations (Fox and Guglielmo 2012;Perlmann 1990;Catron 2019). Whereas these other contextual features would have an important influence on various parts of the assimilation experience, the local labor market and schooling context would have the greatest effect when determining economic integration.…”

Section: The Melting-pot In the Age Of Mass Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, many teenagers would move out of the household if they lived in families with low socioeconomic status (Bodner 1985). Half of all children not living with a parent were between the ages of 16 and 18 during the time (Catron 2019). Not including children of unsuccessful parents may overestimate the level of convergence over time.…”

Section: Matching and Construction Of Panel Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The linking procedure follows standard algorithms that match individuals using their name, age, and place of birth (Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson 2014;Connor 2018a;Catron 2019). This technique links individuals from their passenger record to their 1910 census record by first standardizing first and last names by correcting for nicknames (e.g., "Pete" v. "Peter") and then uses a New York State Identification and Intelligence System (NYSIIS) phonetic coding system to account for alternate and misspelling of names.…”

Section: [Figure 1 Here]mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

Catron

2019

Social Forces

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A long-standing debate is concerned over how long premigration socioeconomic differences persisted for immigrants and their descendants who entered at the turn-of-thetwentieth century. Some researchers argue that differences exist today, over 100 years after first arrival, while others argue that most differences disappeared after the third generation. However, none of this research has directly measured pre-migration socioeconomic status nor has it directly linked immigrants to their children. I create a new panel dataset that follows immigrants and their children from the sending country through settlement. Specifically, I link ship manifest records to census records to track how long premigration socioeconomic differences persist across generations. Passenger records provide a wealth of information of individuals including the occupation before arrival. I analyze how long premigration differences persist within and between groups. Whereas premigration socioeconomic status is associated with the first generation's economic outcomes after settlement, many of these differences disappear by the second generation. These results suggest that background is not destiny for immigrant descendants. As scholars and politicians debate about whether countries should admit primarily high-skilled or low-skilled immigrants, the results from this article tell us whether such selection policies are necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in a period of open borders.Acknowledgements: Dylan Connor, Leah Boustan, Zach Ward, and participants at McGill's Centre on Population Dynamics speaker series provided useful comments on this article. All mistakes are my own.From its inception to the mid-1920s, the United States had an open immigration policy with a few ethno-racial exceptions. Millions of immigrants entered the US and were subsequently absorbed into the labor market. A long-standing debate is concerned over how long initial differences in socioeconomic status persisted for these immigrant groups (Waters 1990; Waters and Lieberson 1989;Alba et al. 2001;Borjas 1994Borjas , 2001. Whereas some researchers argue that the United States is a melting-pot, quickly dissolving background differences, others argue that there was strong socioeconomic persistence for groups leading to long-term differences that lasted for over 100 years. Much of this research, however, has relied on synthetic-cohort analyses since there are few datasets that link immigrant parents to their offspring. However, with the development of panel datasets using full-count censuses and other historical sources, there has been a resurgence of research seeking to understand how long socioeconomic differences persist (Abramitzky et al. 2014;Connor 2018b;Ward 2018). This study enters this debate by investigating how long differences in premigration socioeconomic status lasted within and across immigrant groups who entered at the turn of the twentieth century.Specifically, this article develops a new dataset that tracks within-family intergenerational mobility ...

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Section: Discussion/conclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Melting-pot In the Age Of Mass Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Matching and Construction Of Panel Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: [Figure 1 Here]mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

Catron

2019

Social Forces

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Section: [Figure 1 Here]mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

Catron¹

2018

Preprint

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A long-standing debate is concerned over how long premigration socioeconomic differences persisted for immigrants and their descendants who entered at the turn-of-the-twentieth century. Some researchers argue that differences exist today, over 100 years after first arrival, while others argue that most differences disappeared after the third generation. However, none of this research has directly measured pre-migration socioeconomic status nor has it directly linked immigrants to their children. I create a new panel dataset that follows immigrants and their children from the sending country through settlement. Specifically, I link ship manifest records to census records to track how long premigration socioeconomic differences persist across generations. Passenger records provide a wealth of information of individuals including the occupation before arrival. I analyze how long premigration differences persist within and between groups. Whereas premigration socioeconomic status is associated with the first generation’s economic outcomes after settlement, many of these differences disappear by the second generation. These results suggest that background is not destiny for immigrant descendants. As scholars and politicians debate about whether countries should admit primarily high-skilled or low-skilled immigrants, the results from this article tell us whether such selection policies are necessary to ensure strong migrants’ performance in a period of open borders.

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Migration policies on migrant–native marriage: A multilevel analysis of 43 Chinese cities

Tian

Qian

2021

Population Space and Place

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China's household registration (hukou) system creates internal migration patterns similar to international patterns. Variations in the stringency of city policies for acquiring local hukou provide a unique opportunity to examine how migration policies affect migrant–native marriage. In this study, we merge a city‐level index that measures the overall difficulty of obtaining local hukou in 43 Chinese cities with China's 2005 mini‐census. Results from multilevel logistic regression models reveal that migration policies have heterogeneous effects on intermarriage. For migrant men, as it becomes more difficult to acquire local hukou, it becomes less likely that a less educated migrant man will marry and more likely that a better educated migrant man will marry a local hukou holder. For migrant women, their likelihood of intermarriage does not vary much with the stringency of hukou policies. These findings suggest that migration policies reinforce inequality between migrants and natives and within the migrant population.

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The Citizenship Advantage: Immigrant Socioeconomic Attainment in the Age of Mass Migration

Cited by 38 publications

References 35 publications

The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

The Melting-Pot Problem? The Persistence and Convergence of Premigration Socioeconomic Status During the Age of Mass Migration

Migration policies on migrant–native marriage: A multilevel analysis of 43 Chinese cities

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