Immigration and Victimization in Adolescence and Adulthood: Findings from a Nationally Representative Sample

ABSTRACT

There has been a considerable amount of research examining the potential connection between immigration and the risk for victimization. The results generated from this body of research have produced somewhat mixed results, with some research showing an association and other research failing to detect an association. The current study sought to add to this existing knowledge base by examining the potential association between being an immigrant and being victimized during adolescence and adulthood. To do so, the authors analyzed data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Analyses of these data revealed that being an immigrant was unrelated to 11 measures of victimization, including repeat victimization, drawn from four waves of data. There were no results indicating that immigration and victimization were associated. We conclude by discussing the limitations of the study and avenues for additional research addressing the association between immigration and victimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Add health
• antisocial
• immigration
• life course
• victimization

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. It is important to note that we also estimated bivariate associations between immigration and all of the victimization measures. The effect sizes for these bivariate correlations ranged between r =.017 and r =.033. While most of these correlations were statistically significant (p <.05, two-tailed tests), we note that they are likely not considered substantively meaningful and, instead, were driven by the statistical power associated with the large sample size employed in most of these analyses.

Additional information

Funding

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant [P01-HD31921] from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations.