The schooling of migrant children across contexts: US- and Mexican-born children of Immigrants in the United States and Mexico

Child migrants face new opportunities and barriers to upward mobility across receiving contexts. This paper draws on nationally representative household data in Mexico (ENADID: 2009) and in the United States (ACS: 2006-2010) to examine the growing populations of US born children living in Mexico and Mexican born children living in the United States. The focus is on differential school enrollment patterns by children’s nativity in each country with attention to comparing those from migrant sending and non-migrant households. The results reveal that, adjusting for household resources and household-level migration experience, US born children lag behind in school enrollment at younger ages in Mexico. The analyses provide some preliminary evidence that US born children encounter some structural barriers to school enrollment that are not shared by their Mexican born counterparts. However, the enrollment disadvantage is ameliorated among older children. There is much less age variability in school enrollment among US born children in the United States with more rapid attrition from school on the part of their Mexican born counterparts.