The role of the immigrant family in 2nd generation educational outcomes: The Chinese American case

I conducted a study of the adult children of Chinese immigrants to the United States and their parents that was designed to explore the process of immigrant adaptation, and the role of the immigrant family in the educational experiences of 1.5 and 2nd generation Chinese Americans. It has been argued that cultural values, as mediated by the immigrant family, constitute a key explanatory variable in Asian American academic achievement. Through interviews with college students of diverse class origins and class trajectories and their immigrant parents, I examined how the family can facilitate as well as constrain outcomes, and the role of education as a channel of assimilation. This research explores these issues through the following questions: (1) How do Chinese immigrant parents develop educational aspirations for their children, and what kinds of specific strategies do they employ to actualize them? (2) How do 1.5 and 2nd generation children respond to these aspirations? and (3) How do they define their ethnic and racial identities?; I find that the role of the immigrant family is more multi-faceted than previous theories would suggest. In this report, Chinese immigrant parents expect their children to obtain a bachelor's degree (at the minimum), and to pursue careers in a narrow set of technical fields. However, this emphasis does not derive solely from cultural values.; Rather, it derives from the interaction of a cultural legacy privileging education, and the parents' pre-immigration experiences in the homeland with structural circumstances in the United States that are cause for both immigrant optimism (the widespread accessibility of higher education, and the connection between the college degree and mobility), and immigrant pessimism (perceptions of a racialized social structure). The student respondents learn about the importance of education in the mobility process directly from parents, but they also come to this realization as they attempt to make sense of their parents' adaptation to the United States and their socio-economic trajectories.; Moreover, while the parental emphasis on education was uniformly experienced, it did not necessarily ensure success for the 1.5 and 2nd generation. There were significant differences in the resources and educational strategies marshalled by Chinese immigrant parents based in the ethnic economy, and Chinese immigrant parents, who were professionals living in middle-class, suburban neighborhoods. Respondents who grew up in ethnic communities also reported a more complex experience with schooling than previous assessments might suggest. Gender emerged as an important variable, particularly in working-class families. Finally, I found that there were two distinct processes of racial and ethnic identification that were shaped by community and class background, but that students overall saw assimilation and mobility as deeply complicated by race and ethnicity.