Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences · Immigrant Children and the Transition to Adulthood

Immigrant Children and the Transition to Adulthood

Item

Title: Immigrant Children and the Transition to Adulthood
Author: Gonzales, Roberto G.; Roth, Benjamin J.
Research Area: Social Processes
Topic: Immigration
Abstract: The children of immigrants represent a large and growing segment of the US population. The children of immigrants are not progressing steadily as a group at the same rate or following a standard pathway to adulthood. Rather, there is wide variation across ethnic groups and immigrant generations, and immigrant children are not necessarily following the patterned sequence of the nonimmigrant majority.
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Identifier: etrds0173
extracted text: Immigrant Children and the
Transition to Adulthood
ROBERTO G. GONZALES and BENJAMIN J. ROTH

Abstract
The children of immigrants represent a large and growing segment of the US population. The children of immigrants are not progressing steadily as a group at the
same rate or following a standard pathway to adulthood. Rather, there is wide variation across ethnic groups and immigrant generations, and immigrant children are
not necessarily following the patterned sequence of the nonimmigrant majority.
Immigrant youth reach developmental milestones such as educational attainment,
job attainment, and achieving independence from parents, but they do so at varying rates and with different levels of success. These young people are diverse in
terms of their backgrounds and the places where they come of age, and these factors interact in ways that help explain why they are following divergent pathways to
adulthood. In particular, legal status—whether of immigrant parents or of immigrant
youth themselves—has become a “master status” that conditions their path to adulthood. Future research must continue to identify the ways in which geography, local
organizations, immigration reform, and other factors interact to shape opportunities
that immigrant youth as they approach adulthood.
The implications of the diverging developmental pathways of immigrant youth are
significant, not only for immigrants and their families but also for the larger society.
Given that they represent a large percentage of children today, these young people
will heavily influence tomorrow’s workforce—and therefore the economic strength
and security of this country.

BACKGROUND
The research on immigrant children and the transition to adulthood has
emerged as a significant literature that concerns a large and growing
segment of our population. There are over 40 million first-generation
immigrants today, and their US-born children totaled over 32 million in
2008. At no other point in the last century have immigrants represented such
a significant percentage of the nation’s population, and their children are the
fastest growing segment of children under the age of 18. Therefore, as the
children of immigrants come of age considerable attention has been given
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

to their outcomes on measures such as educational attainment, voting, and
employment. The literature on the children of immigrants emphasizes that
these young people are diverse in terms of their backgrounds and the places
where they come of age, and that these factors interact in ways that help
explain why they are following divergent pathways to adulthood.
Immigrants and their children are extremely diverse. Whether in terms
of their country of origin, skin color, primary language, religion, education
levels, or financial resources, today’s immigrant population is unlike any
previous era in America’s history (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). While some
arrive with visas, advanced degrees, and well-paying professional jobs,
others come clandestinely with minimal levels of education and find
employment in low-wage labor markets. The diversity of immigrant parents
contributes to the divergent starting points from which their children begin
their journey to adulthood. Depending on the resources immigrant parents
are able to provide their children and how these families are received by
the places where they settle, the children of immigrants from certain ethnic
groups have a very different set of life options than those who pertain to
another.
The transition to adulthood for the children of immigrants is important
not only for these young people and their families, but also for an aging
baby-boom generation who will increasingly rely on working-age children of
immigrants for economic support (Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2008).
More broadly, the political, social, and economic incorporation of the children
of immigrants has significant implications for the country as a whole.
Although there is no consistent definition among immigration scholars, immigrant children are generally understood to be individuals with
parents who were born outside the United States. The American-born
children of immigrants are often referred to as the second generation, while
their parents are of the first generation. Most scholars define individuals
with immigrant parents who were born abroad and moved to the United
States before age 12 as the 1.5 generation (Rumbaut, 2004). While 1.5- and
second-generation young people have much in common—at very least,
they both grow up in immigrant households and straddle two separate
cultures and languages—they differ from each other in important ways.
Immigrant children who did not come to the country until later in childhood
have had less time in the United States to develop English language skills,
for example, or to learn the cultural nuances that children adopt from the
context in which they grow up. Most significantly, while second-generation
youth are US citizens by birth, those of the 1.5 generation do not enjoy any
such guarantee.
We typically think about becoming an adult as the process by which one
exits adolescence and assumes the tasks and responsibilities characteristic

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of adulthood. Traditionally, this process entails the transition from full-time
schooling to full-time work, and from living with (or otherwise being
financially dependent on) one’s parents to getting married and starting
one’s own family. The latter is often associated with buying a home, or
physically living apart from one’s parents. Moreover, we have come to
associate the transition to adulthood with a normative timeline—certain
milestones should be achieved by a certain age—even though there is
considerable evidence that this timeline of events is getting pushed back
(Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010), although not necessarily for young people from
minority, work-class or poor families (Berlin, Furstenberg, & Waters, 2010;
Silva, 2012). Young people today are living with their parents longer than
they were several decades ago, for example, and putting off marriage and
having children for longer than in the past (Furstenberg et al., 2002).
This is not necessarily the case with the children of immigrants—or at least
not with all ethnic groups. As with the transition to adulthood summarized
above, the children of immigrants reach a series of developmental milestones
to adulthood such as independence from their parents, marriage, employment, and starting their own family (Rindfuss, 1991). However, these transitions are not necessarily linear or fluid, and the children of immigrants are
not progressing steadily as a group at the same rate or following a standard
pathway to adulthood. Rather, there is wide variation across ethnic groups
and immigrant generations, and immigrant children are not necessarily following the patterned sequence of the nonimmigrant majority (Rumbaut &
Komaie, 2010).
There is considerable evidence that many children of immigrants are transitioning to adulthood successfully, but outcomes for the members of some
ethnic groups are a cause for some concern. Whereas the 1.5 and second generations of certain immigrant groups are more likely to graduate from college
and work high-paying jobs in the tech sector, members of other ethnic groups
are at elevated risk of dropping out of high school, getting caught up in the
criminal justice system, and becoming young parents—all factors that can
interrupt the transition to adulthood. In other words, as these young people
begin to approach adulthood, their divergent outcomes suggest that we may
be reproducing the problem of inequality in America rather than resolving it.
The implications of these diverging pathways are significant, not only for
immigrants and their families but also for the larger society. Given that they
represent a large percentage of children today, these young people will heavily influence tomorrow’s workforce—and therefore the economic strength
and security of this country. This should be of particular concern for the aging
baby-boom generation because they will increasingly rely on working-age
children of immigrants for economic support (Hernandez, Denton, & Macartney, 2008). There are many other ways that their incorporation matters, of

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course, not the least of which is political incorporation through voting and
other forms of civic participation. Indeed, if the children of immigrants are
blocked from entry into the mainstream economic, social, and political operations of society, their exclusion will have ramifications well beyond the individual young people who may experience this inequality most acutely.
Therefore, it is incumbent to explore why some children of immigrants are
getting ahead while others are falling behind. Scholars find that the reasons
for different mobility or incorporation pathways among the children of immigrants are multiple, complex, and overlapping. One way to think about why
some children of immigrants are falling behind is cumulative disadvantage.
Poverty, legal status, bad schools, community violence, discrimination in the
labor market, and many other factors interact in ways that compound the barriers some immigrant youth must overcome in order to navigate the pathway
to adulthood successfully. Cumulative disadvantage might be understood
on a continuum. At one end, immigrant youth encounter few roadblocks to
the transition to adulthood. At the other end, immigrant youth get bogged
down by a host of factors that make it difficult to achieve the basic milestones
marking the transition to adulthood. As growing numbers of the children of
the most recent immigrants reach adulthood, researchers are pursuing the
complexities of cumulative disadvantage and how these correspond with the
major markers that signal this developmental transition, often with a focus
on educational attainment, labor market outcomes, and independence.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
The literature on the transition to adulthood identifies three developmental
milestones: educational attainment, job attainment, and achieving independence from parents (Elder, 1985). Research on the children of immigrants
provides insights into how each of these milestones is conditioned by a
cumulative set of disadvantages, therefore affecting some immigrant groups
more than others. Cross-cutting these themes is the immigration status of
immigrant parents and, for the 1.5 generation, the children themselves. This
section will briefly take up each of these milestones before underscoring the
growing awareness among researchers of immigration status as a “master
status” that fundamentally conditions the transition to adulthood.
EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Educational attainment is a central aspect of the transition to adulthood,
especially given the shifting demands of today’s labor market. It is no longer
as possible to get a stable job—let alone one with a decent salary—without a
college degree. Increasingly, a graduate or professional degree is necessary to

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be competitive on the labor market. This has prolonged the period of formal
education for young people, ultimately delaying the moment when they
are financially independent from their parents. However, for the children of
immigrants, this is not uniformly the case.
Within the larger national population there are key differences by social
class, country of origin, nativity, and immigrant generation (Mollenkopf
et al., 2005; Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010). For example, many young people
from less-advantaged immigrant households cannot afford to move seamlessly from high school to full-time postsecondary schooling because of lack
of financial support from their parents or because they carry considerable
financial responsibilities in their households that make it impossible for
them to make tuition payments (Fuligni & Pedersen, 2002; Suárez-Orozco
& Suárez-Orozco, 1995). Moreover, many 1.5 and second generation young
people from certain immigrant groups are in reciprocal financial relationships with their parents, often even supporting them (Rumbaut & Komaie,
2010). These arrangements shape the ways in which these children of
immigrants enter into and experience early adulthood. Many are required
to take on considerable financial and household responsibility and do
not have the opportunity to pursue post-secondary schooling full-time
and uninterrupted. As a result, for many of these young people college
pursuits take a much longer time and do not always result in the successful
completion.
LABOR MARKET ENTRY AND “SUCCESS”
The timing of entry into the labor market is important because it often
coincides with when young people are no longer going to school. For
nonimmigrant youth from middle-class families, many of whom are going
to college and graduate school, this moment does not come until their early
twenties. But for many immigrant children—particularly those of Latin
American descent—entry into the labor market happens at a much earlier
age. The need for families to spread out expenses among multiple members
means that many children of immigrant families enter into the work force
before high school completion. As a result, these young people do not enjoy
the same degree of freedom from the stresses and responsibilities of adult
roles that allow their middle-class counterparts to make investments in
human capital.
Undeniably, one’s position in the labor market is also important. Not surprisingly, those who enter early and who tend to have less education do not
earn as much on average because of the types of jobs that are available to
them. Given the children of immigrants do not all approach adulthood with
the same set of advantages, they enter the labor market at different starting

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points and, as such, experience different rates of occupational and economic
success.
PARENTAL SUPPORT VERSUS INDEPENDENCE
Young people today tend to rely on financial support from their parents well
into their twenties, suggesting that financial independence—another marker
of the transition to adulthood—has been moved back relative to earlier generations. This is not necessarily the case with immigrant youth, however,
because “the pattern of support in immigrant families more often flows reciprocally or even in the opposite direction” (Rumbaut & Komaie, 2010). In other
words, as they enter into adulthood many of the children of immigrants support their parents financially, or expect that their parents will move in with
them when they retire or grow too old to care for themselves.
IMMIGRATION STATUS
Over the last two decades, the rights of noncitizens have dwindled while
enforcement efforts at the border and also in communities and public spaces
have increased. Millions of children and families are living with the results.
Owing to unforeseen circumstances resulting from a buildup of border
enforcement, disrupting once-circular migration patterns, the number of
undocumented immigrants living in the United States grew nearly sixfold
in a span of about 20 years (Massey, Durand, & Malone, 2002). Today, nearly
two-thirds of adult undocumented immigrants have lived in the United
States for more than 10 years, and nearly half are parents to minor children.
Current research suggests that immigration status plays a large part in
developmental and life course issues among the children of undocumented
immigrants.
Parents’ immigration status and current policies restricting the participation of undocumented immigrants undermine the well-being of these
children and can impair their cognitive development (Yoshikawa, 2011;
Yoshikawa & Kalil, 2011). The fear of authorities causes undocumented
parents to forgo critical learning opportunities for which their children are
eligible, particularly when services require several forms of identification,
proof of employment or proof of earnings. These lost opportunities hamper
children’s early language development as well as their motor and perceptual
skills.
Undocumented parents’ work life also affects their children’s life chances.
The types of jobs available to undocumented immigrants typically draw
those with low skill levels, jobs that often involve long hours, tedious, and

Immigrant Children and the Transition to Adulthood

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laborious tasks, and very meager wages. These jobs provide limited opportunities for self-direction and autonomy. Taken together, the psychological
distress of backbreaking and unfulfilling work, long hours and prolonged
economic hardship are found to negatively affect parents’ interaction
with their children. Children with an undocumented parent also face the
daunting fear that they will experience prolonged separation from one or
more of their parents because of detention and deportation.
At the same time, growing numbers of undocumented children are moving
through adolescence and young adulthood without full rights (Abrego, 2006;
Gonzales, 2011). These young people have unrestricted access to K-12 education but, because of their unauthorized immigration status, cannot legally
work, vote, or travel outside of the country. They are also restricted from
federal and state financial aid and cannot get driver’s licenses in most states.
They can also be deported. While their immigration status places few restrictions as their childhood lives, critical and adolescent transitions entail a fundamental shift in their experiences (Gonzales, 2011). However, as their rights
narrow in adulthood their responsibilities increase. Many of these young
people live in families that have difficulty making ends meet each month and
must rely on the earning power of all members. As a result, undocumented
young people must make difficult decisions about working illegally.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
Community college has been celebrated by policy makers as a stepping
stone for low-income and minority youth for whom a 4-year college is not
an option. Immigrant youth, in particular, have been identified by policy
makers and others as beneficiaries of the community college system, and
President Obama acknowledged in his State of the Union address in 2013
that these institutions need more support given that they are a mobility
springboard for many youth from minority and immigrant communities.
However, little research has explored how immigrant youth are navigating
these institutions or how they are leveraging these degrees to get ahead.
“Second-chance” educational institutions, such as those that offer General
Educational Development (GED) credentials, are important for the nontrivial
percentage of immigrant youth who drop out of high school. Some college
is necessary to compete for well-paying jobs, and we need to better understand the types of “second-chance” programs that serve immigrant youth.
[See Bloom (2010) on evaluation of these programs.]
Indeed, individuals with a college degree earn 1.8 times more than those
with a high school diploma (Berlin et al., 2010). So completing college is an

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

important step as young immigrant youth transition to adulthood. More
research needs to explore the experiences of the college-going children of
immigrants to understand why some are accessing the supports they need
while others are not. It is possible that some of these young people are
simply taking a less linear pathway through college, taking some time off
to help their family financially before returning to finish their degree at
some later point. Just as the pathway to adulthood does not seem linear
for their peers who drop out of high school or go to community college,
there is reason to believe that those who go to college may not hue to the
conventional 4-year time to degree. As the children of immigrants, they
often retain a strong connection and obligation to family. Whether that
family connection is social, cultural, or economic—or some combination of
the three—these linkages to family often remain strong.
GEOGRAPHY
Changes in immigrant settlement and the geography of poverty are reshaping how we understand the American metropolis and the life-course
experiences of the children of immigrants. There is a growing literature
documenting the various ways in which local and state contexts influence
immigrant social, economic, and political incorporation. The impact of local
contexts has become even more relevant in the wake of stalled immigration
reform at the federal level. A growing number of state and local governments have adopted legislation that advocates and researchers consider
unwelcoming—if not hostile—to immigrant newcomers. By contrast, some
other places have intentionally embraced policies and practices that seek to
incorporate immigrants.
To be sure, these changes have implications for the children of immigrants.
But we have only a nascent understanding of how local contexts matter
because many of these young people have not yet begun to transition
into adulthood. We know that growing up in urban neighborhoods with a
high concentration of poverty can negatively impact many aspects of child
development, but much less is known about growing up in nontraditional
immigrant “gateways” such as the suburbs or understudied regions of
the country, including the Midwest and southeast. Just as the children of
immigrants come from diverse backgrounds, the places where they grow up
vary widely.
Historically, most immigrant youth grew up in places such as Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York—cities that have been home to new immigrants
for generations—and often lived in ethnic neighborhoods or areas of immigrant concentration. They attended high schools with immigrant youth from

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similar ethnic backgrounds, and were embedded in large immigrant communities with ethnic grocery stores and restaurants. While many immigrants
still raise their children in these ethnic urban environments, the dispersion of
immigrants across the metropolis and into rural areas of the country raises
questions about the developmental experiences of immigrant youth in these
places.
Scholars studying immigrant settlement in new destination areas have
written extensively about the role of sub-national governments who are
crafting and implementing policies that affect immigrants. Some of these
policies use language that specifically targets undocumented immigrants
while others are less direct, but all such policies and practices influence the
opportunities that immigrants have to get settled in their new communities,
the protections they enjoy at the workplace, and the access they have to
resources such as health care (Mitnik & Halpern-Finnerty, 2010). Some of
these policies and practices are exclusionary while others aim to integrate
immigrant newcomers (Marrow, 2009; Mitnik & Halpern-Finnerty, 2010),
thereby creating variation in the type of reception immigrants receive at the
local level (Alexander, 2003; Wells, 2004). Therefore, while the nation-state
remains important for determining the context of reception writ large,
the city is a viable—and perhaps better—unit of comparison for studying
immigrant integration and migrant policy (Favell, 2001).
For the children of immigrants, in particular, one area in need of further
research concerns the role of local organizations. Entities such as schools,
youth-serving organizations, and sports clubs may serve as buffers against
forces such as discrimination or anti-immigrant sentiment that may inhibit
the life chances for immigrant youth and their families in these places.
Ethnic organizations in urban ethnic neighborhoods have long served
this protective function, but it is less clear how formal organizations and
institutions in new settlement areas adapt to the needs of the immigrants
who live there—especially when the reception extended to new immigrants
is hostile.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
Again, cross-cutting a future research agenda is the legal context—and the
possibility for policy reform. Future research will need to follow undocumented young people further into adulthood to better understand the challenges these transitions present.
Immigration policy is often influenced by public tolerance for immigration, and therefore is not static. The “context of reception” for immigrants
tends to reactively swing from one extreme to another and is often countercyclical relative to economic trends (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006). Historically, as

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the economy shrinks, intolerance for immigrants strengthens. At such times,
immigrants are often characterized as outsiders and job stealers. The 1920s
and early 2000s are good examples. However, during better periods when
unemployment is low and economy stable, immigrants are less likely to be
characterized as a threat. This pattern has been well documented by immigration historians. IRCA and the 1996 Act are both recent examples of these
swings.
In the event that Federal immigration reform creates a path to citizenship,
it will be critical to study how this policy is implemented, who benefits from
it, and how these young people—whether they are able to attain legal status
or not—become adults. On June 15, President Obama announced a change in
policy that could provide deferred action to an estimated 1.4 million young
people who have lived in the United States since childhood. The policy, while
not granting a path to legalization, enables qualified young undocumented
immigrants to remain in the country without fear of deportation and able
to apply for work permits. While Congress debates their future, this policy
potentially opens up other opportunities, including those that could enable
young people to further their education, find jobs commensurate with their
degrees, and access other government and private sector resources. This program, which began on August 15, 2012, presents a remarkable opportunity to
better understand the educational, economic, and social and health impacts
of widened access as these young people make critical transitions to adulthood. At the time of our writing of this entry, Congress is debating large-scale
immigration reform that could potentially further widen access and rights for
these young people and their parents.
MORE AND BETTER DATA
With the exception of a handful of large-scale studies of the 1.5 and second
generation children of immigrants, there are relatively few data sources that
give us a window into the textured reality of the transition to adulthood
for these young people. The Decennial census stopped asking about parents’ nativity decades ago. Indeed, the Community Population Survey, an
annual snapshot taken by the Census, allows for us to assess labor market
and education trends for immigrant children. But its limited sample makes it
impossible to compare how these trends compare across finer geographies,
such as neighborhoods.
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades
7–12 in the United States during the 1994–1995 school year, is an example of
a longitudinal study that has provided immigration researchers with some

Immigrant Children and the Transition to Adulthood

11

promise. This study oversampled certain groups, including children of Mexican descent, making it possible to assess change for these youth across the
early stages of the life course. Similar kinds of studies are necessary so we
can explore and identify causal mechanisms that may be driving variable
developmental pathways for immigrant youth.
Building on studies of intergroup differences that compare outcomes
for immigrant youth by national origin, it is important that researchers
find ways to collect new data (or leverage existing sources) to explore
intragroup variation. Emerging work on intragroup comparison is selective
given the limitations of existing data sources. One exception is a unique
dataset on Mexican-origin immigrants, called the Mexican American Study
Project, which tracks Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio
from the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s (Telles & Ortiz, 2008). Intragroup
comparisons using data from the Mexican American Study Project have
challenged traditional frameworks for how we understand the processes
of immigrant adaptation over time, the role of race in the exclusion of
immigrants, and the importance of educational institutions for ameliorating
barriers to social mobility for immigrant youth. Such studies promise to
challenge long-standing and reductionist classification schemes whereby
immigrant youth from some ethnic groups are described as following
one type of mobility path (downward or upward, for example), thereby
overlooking variation within that ethnic group and the factors explaining
this heterogeneity.
And, finally, immigration status has increasingly become a central determinant for upward or downward mobility among immigrant youth. We have
conceptual maps (Suárez-Orozco et al., 2011) and a strong foundation of qualitative data (Gonzales, 2011) to provide a foundational understanding into
the inner lives and vulnerabilities of undocumented youth. But there is much
work to be done. Mixed methods research could go a long way in helping us
better understand the ways in which unauthorized status intervenes in the
transition to adulthood and how it is mediated by community institutions
and variance across geographic settings. In addition, our findings thus far
are largely driven by the work on Latino populations. A better understanding of this population must be achieved by careful attention to differences
across ethnic and national-origin groups.
CONCLUSION
Divergent outcomes in the transition to adulthood have significant implications for the lives of the children of immigrants as well as American society
writ large. Inequality in America is higher today than at any other point
since the 1920s, and the promise that all newcomers have a chance to join and

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

contribute to this society is ironically under threat just when we are at the
cusp of ushering millions of immigrant youth into adulthood. Given that the
children of immigrants represent a significant percentage of youth today, it
is imperative that we understand the barriers they encounter on the way to
adulthood. A number of the obstacles that detour or derail immigrant youth
en route to adulthood are common to those impeding nonimmigrant youth,
but many immigrant youth encounter additional obstacles (and resources)
that merit attention by researchers and policymakers. Immigration policy,
diverse educational programs, and the contours of the labor market are three
such factors. These and other factors are often conditioned in important
ways by where in the United States immigrant parents settle—whether in
the suburbs, new destination areas, or traditional ethnic neighborhoods in
large cities. The experiences of immigrant youth who are coming of age
is by no means uniform, whether across ethnic groups or even looking
comparatively within ethnic groups, and researchers are compelled to
develop new and innovative ways to better understand this variation and
how it matters for these young people.
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FURTHER READING
Gonzales, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal
contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76(4), 602–619.
Kasinitz, P., Mollenkopf, J., Waters, M. C., & Holdaway, J. (2008). Inheriting the city:
The children of immigrants come of age. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Rumbaut, R. G., & Komaie, G. (2010). Immigration and adult transitions. The Future
of Children, 20(1), 43–66.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Settersten, R. A., Furstenberg, F. F., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2008). On the frontier of adulthood: Theory, research, and public policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Silva, J. M. (2012). Constructing adulthood in an age of uncertainty. American Sociological Review, 77(4), 505–522.
Smith, R. C. (2006). Mexican New York: Transnational lives of new immigrants. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Suárez-Orozco, C., Yoshikawa, H., Teranishi, R., & Suárez-Orozco, M. (2011). Growing Up in the Shadows: The Developmental Implications of Unauthorized Status.
Harvard Educational Review, 81, 438–473.
Telles, E. E., & Ortiz, V. (2008). Generations of exclusion: Mexican Americans, assimilation,
and race. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Waters, M. C., Carr, P. J., & Kefalas, M. J. (2011). Coming of age in America: The transition
to adulthood in the twenty-first century. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Yoshikawa, H. (2011). Immigrants raising citizens: Undocumented parents and their children. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

ROBERTO G. GONZALES SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Roberto G. Gonzales is Assistant Professor at the Harvard University
Graduate School of Education. He received his PhD in sociology from the
University of California at Irvine. His research focuses on the ways in which
legal and educational contexts shape the everyday experiences of poor,
minority, and immigrant youth along the life course, and their responses
to legal, economic, and educational barriers. He is currently working on a
book manuscript based on a study of undocumented young adults in Los
Angeles.
BENJAMIN J. ROTH SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Benjamin J. Roth is an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work
at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include poverty
and inequality, community development, local organizations and immigrant
integration. Recent studies he has conducted explore processes of immigrant
integration in places outside the urban ethnic enclave, with a particular focus
on the barriers to adaptation experienced by low-income Latino immigrants
and their children.
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