Children of Immigrants: Identity, Acculturation, and Achievement

Introduction: The Immigrant Family Experience

A familiar story in the American narrative and a central theme in the psychology of the second generation is that children of immigrants believe they are the primary reason for their parents' immigration. In most cases, immigrant parents stake their hopes for the future on the success of their children. Perceiving the sacrifices made by parents—seemingly on their behalf—children experience guilt that drives their motivation to achieve, creating a dynamic that offers immigrant parents some psychological sense of influence over their offspring.

Growing up in immigrant families is typically marked by discordant acculturation, in which children's learning of new cultural ways and simultaneous loss of immigrant culture outpace that of their parents. When this occurs, linguistic and cultural gaps can exacerbate intergenerational conflicts, causing children to feel ashamed of their parents as they attempt to blend with native peers. This mismatch can also lead to role reversal, with children assuming adult responsibilities earlier than typical development would suggest.

Migrant Families and Cultural Conflicts

All immigrant families must contend with the stress of adolescence and generational gaps while acculturating to a new society. This is often a conflictual and complex process, full of tensions that cannot be reduced to simplistic explanations of parental pressure or peer pressure alone. Nevertheless, at the heart of the matter lies the relationship between children and their immigrant parents and the contradictions generated in this dynamic.

Intergenerational relations in immigrant families are shaped by divergent frameworks of incorporation and reception, and by differing vulnerabilities and resources. Even accounting for circumstances such as parental socioeconomic status, peer networks, family structure, and school contexts, considerable and unexpected variation emerges in children's intrapersonal and interpersonal responses. This paper explores how children of immigrants negotiate the frequently contrasting goals and values of their immigrant parents and their new society, their school experiences, sense of self-worth, and how they envision their occupational and adult futures.

Migration has become a significant topic of research among social scientists. Understanding how immigrant parents raise their children raises subsequent questions about the challenges these parents face as a result of cultural differences. Much of the literature on immigrant families has focused on intergenerational and intercultural conflicts, cultural continuity, value transmission, and the responsibilities of immigrant parents in nurturing cultural and ethnic identities in their children, as well as subsequent acculturation stresses and changes.

Bernhard Nauck, a sociologist, extensively studied intergenerational cultural transmission and cultural continuity among different immigrant groups in Germany—specifically immigrants of Greek, Turkish, and Italian origins. Although his study focused on European immigrants, Nauck introduced the concept of "cultural distance" to explain cultural variation and adaptation patterns. This framework can be applied to immigrants from different areas with greater cultural distances to understand how parents transmit culture to their children.

Value transmission is a fundamental characteristic of immigrant families. As Nauck notes, intergenerational relationships among immigrant families are vital and inherent in institutional and cultural arrangements—in terms of what children and parents expect from one another and how they value each other. For the perpetuation and continuity of traditions, customs, and norms, immigrant parents have a mandate to pass cultural resources to their children. However, the transmission process is neither complete nor easy; it never results in perfect reproduction of culture across generations. Rather, cultural transmission typically results in strained relationships at two extremes: from near-total transmission to near-absence of transmission.

Successful value transmission occurs when children are aware of and acknowledge their parents' values as their own. During transmission, the cultural influences of the larger society play vital roles in determining the parenting strategies immigrant parents employ. Based on extensive review of prior research, Kwak identified three general findings about intergenerational relationships in immigrant families:

Scholars distinguish between intergenerational conflict and intercultural conflict, both of which characterize the dynamics between immigrant parents and their children. Intercultural conflicts result from contact between two cultures—the culture of origin and that of the host—and can be explained through four outcomes of the acculturation process: assimilation, integration, marginalization, and segregation. Nauck uses the assimilation perspective to analyze value transmission and intergenerational continuity among immigrants.

School Environments and Peer Groups

Intergenerational conflicts, by contrast, arise between immigrant parents and children because of gaps in skills, knowledge, and value orientations. While parents retain their original normative values and may be reluctant to change, their children adapt faster to mainstream culture. This differential pace of acculturation catalyzes intergenerational conflict. Two contradictory elements have been identified as central: the embeddedness and interdependence in family that parents expect, and the autonomy and independence that children seek. Due to rapid adaptation to the values and cultural ethos of the host society, immigrant children typically seek greater independence and autonomy, but their parents are often unwilling to grant it.

Research across diverse immigrant populations reveals that intergenerational conflicts relate consistently to issues of children's rights and parental authority. In a study of Vietnamese immigrants in the United States, Zhou and Bankston documented that cultural conflict between immigrant parents and their children—whether raised or born in the U.S.—is common. Immigrant children wish to blend into society and identify as "American" to gain peer acceptance, a desire that conflicts with their parents' wish to maintain cultural values from their place of origin. Four major sources of intergenerational conflict have been identified:

As immigrant children adapt to the new culture, their parents often experience a loss of authority over them, intensifying these conflicts.

Until formal schooling is completed, children and adolescents spend more time in schools than any other location outside the home. Schools therefore play a critical role in development, shaping what students learn, their aspirations, and their motivation—particularly for children of immigrants. Since their inception in the nineteenth century, schools have served as exemplary agencies of acculturation. Ironically, schools institutionally separate youth from adults to prepare them for adult roles, making schools a vital context for the formation of peer groups. These groups determine exposure to various networks, constrain the differential associations youth can create, and influence experiences and outcomes stemming from those associations.

It is in school that immigrant youth directly encounter native peers—as close friends, role models, distant members of exclusive cliques, sources of discrimination or derogation, purveyors of peer pressure and peer acceptance. Paradoxically, schools are also where immigrant parents place their deepest hopes for their children's social improvement, yet often express fear about their children's safety and well-being.

Data from the Children of Immigrant Longitudinal Study, conducted during a 1995–96 survey of immigrant children in various locations, reveal indices of teaching quality and unsafe school conditions. The survey documents the prevalence of gangs and fights between racial-ethnic groups, as well as instances in which children were pressured to sell or buy illegal drugs. Information is cross-tabulated by national origin, socioeconomic status, and peer associations.

Overall, three out of ten children reported high degrees of disruptive and unsafe school conditions. Four out of ten stated that gangs were prevalent in their schools; approximately thirty-nine percent reported frequent quarrels and fights between racial-ethnic groups. By ethnic origin, Lao, Hmong, and Cambodian students experienced the most insecure conditions, including high prevalence of violent fights and gang activity, followed by Vietnamese and Filipino students—all surveyed in San Diego schools. Cuban students in Miami private schools, by contrast, reported by far the safest learning environments and highest quality of teaching, a difference largely attributable to parental socioeconomic resources and access to school types that such resources make possible.

The lower the family socioeconomic status (SES), the more unsafe the school environment and the greater the incidence of gangs and inter-group fights. Different types of peer group associations are linked to and reinforced by such school conditions. Youths whose close friends planned to attend a four-year college or university attended safer schools and reported significantly higher teaching quality than youths with few or no close friends with similar college plans. Conversely, youths whose close friends had already dropped out attended schools perceived as much more unsafe and plagued by gangs and interracial fights.

A different pattern emerges regarding exposure to the drug scene. When asked how many times they had been offered to sell drugs at school, twenty-six percent of the sample reported at least one such incident. Among national origin groups, Colombians in Miami reported the most regular involvement at approximately forty-three percent, followed by Canadians and Europeans at thirty-five percent, and Cubans in public schools at thirty-four percent. Jamaicans, Haitians, and most Asian-origin groups fell below average, reporting such incidents between ten and fifteen percent, with Filipinos as an exception at twenty-eight percent, exceeding most Latin American groups.

Aspirations and Expectations of Immigrant Children

Paradoxically and troublingly, the higher the family socioeconomic status, the more likely children have disposable income to purchase drugs and become linked with drug trade. While higher SES correlates with attendance at safer suburban schools, it also correlates with greater drug involvement. The survey makes clear that involvement with the drug scene is related to peer associations that denigrate academic achievement. According to the CILS survey, the greater the connection to the drug scene, the more likely respondents' networks included peers who had stopped attending school and fewer friends planning to attend a four-year university or college, regardless of family socioeconomic status.

Expectations and aspirations represent distinct psychological constructs. Aspirations are the desired levels of future performance—what individuals wish to happen. Expectations, conversely, are beliefs about possible future states of affairs or perceived contingency likelihoods—what individuals realistically think might happen. These represent the means through which past knowledge and experiences are used to imagine, plan, and predict one's future. Aspirations are typically less realistic than expectations, as subjective desires exceed realistic beliefs. Expectations align more closely with objective interpretations of prior performance and thus better predict future behavior. For this reason, expectations constitute fundamental building blocks people use to make behavioral choices.

More than family structure alone, the quality of family relationships is strongly associated with youths' ambitions, as depicted by the CILS survey. Educational expectations increase significantly as levels of family cohesion rise and parent-child conflict diminishes. By language ability, fluent bilinguals exhibit the highest expectations and aspirations, followed by English-dominant children, foreign-dominant children, and limited bilinguals.

Peer groups and school environments also determine how immigrant children imagine their future. Educational expectations and aspirations are lowered in environments perceived as insecure and in which learning is regularly disrupted by other students. The same applies for drug involvement: expectations and aspirations increased over time for students reporting no drug involvement, while they decreased for those reporting involvement. Similarly, students with decreasing or lower expectations and aspirations were closely connected to friends who had dropped out of school, while those with increasing or highest aspirations were associated with focused friends planning to complete college or university studies.

The powerful effect of parental expectations is evident in the CILS survey. Among youths who believed their parents wanted them to earn an advanced degree, eighty-five percent aspired to do so, and fifty-eight percent realistically expected to achieve that goal. Among youths who believed their parents had lower expectations for their education, only twenty-nine percent aspired to an advanced degree, and fifteen percent realistically expected to earn one. Parental pressure, rather than peer pressure, had a stronger relationship with educational and occupational futures. In multivariate analyses of current educational expectations, the strongest effect observed was perceived parental aspirations. This remained significant even in models controlling for educational ambitions students had reported at the end of junior high school, strongly reflecting the influence of parental expectations at that earlier time.

Conclusion

Results from the Children of Immigrant Longitudinal Study highlight the challenges immigrant children face in their trajectories and transitions to adulthood. Drawn overwhelmingly from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, these children differ greatly in their social, economic, and cultural origins, face various complex circumstances that compound the developmental pressures of adolescence, and display wide variations in achievement and motivation across origin groups. Achievement gaps are narrowed or widened through the interplay of family structure and social class, life change events and acculturation processes, school context, and diverse peer groups. Multiple factors are associated with parent-child conflict and family cohesion, youths' psychological well-being, educational ambitions, and schoolwork discipline. Together, these form a complex psychosocial system of interrelated attitudes, experiences, expectations, and beliefs about various aspects of host culture—particularly education—that ultimately determine motivation and achievement.