Paternal migration and children’s educational attainment and work activity: the case of Mexico

ABSTRACT

Most of the research evaluating the import of paternal migration for children’s outcomes has taken ‘left-behind children’ as a single group. Taking a life course perspective, this paper distinguishes fathers’ short-term and long-term migrations, as well as return migration, as they affect children’s productive activities. Using the Mexican Family Life Survey (2002–2009), we followed school-aged children from two-parent households in 2002 and observed their activities as they transitioned into adulthood from 2005 through 2009. We found that fathers’ short-term migration is negatively associated with children’s labor force participation, especially for 12 – to 18-year-old boys, suggesting that paternal migration may interrupt adolescent boys’ labor market transition in the short-term. Fathers’ long-term migration and return migration does not significantly alter children’s activities. However, the negative role of fathers’ long-term absence and benefits brought by the paternal migration trip are important mechanisms for educational persistence and the labor force entrance of 12 – to 18-year-old girls, highlighting the conditions under which certain mechanisms may work. This suggests that migration is a family process, with the outcomes lying in the interplay of the stages of migration, children’s life stages, and how gender is treated within cultural and familial contexts.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• father
• life course
• education
• work activity

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Jeff A. Burr for his generous comments and suggestions on this paper. We acknowledge the support of the Population Research Institute at Penn State University (NICHD P2CHD041025).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qian Song

Qian Song, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her research interests include examining the health and well-being of children and older adults left behind by migrants, as well as how social and institutional discrimination creates health disparities in later life. She currently leads a project on the long-term effect of job loss on health.

Jennifer Glick

Jennifer Glick, Ph.D. is the Hoffman Professor of Sociology and Demography and Director of the Population Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on immigrant adaptation, family migration and children's well-being in sending and receiving contexts. Currently, she leads the interdisciplinary Family Migration and Early Life Outcomes (FAMELO) project focused on children's developmental and educational trajectories across several diverse migration contexts.