Paths to Mobility: The Mexican Second Generation at Work in a New Destination

Abstract

Prior studies have shown that children of Mexican immigrants face structural challenges that threaten to obstruct their economic success in young adulthood. Drawing on 58 interviews with upwardly mobile young adult children of Mexican immigrants in a new immigrant destination in the U.S. South, I examine how a group of second-generation Mexicans has made occupational gains during their early employment careers. They activated three resources in mobility-promoting ways given the demographic, economic, and social characteristics of their community. The resources include parental support, advice and guidance from extrafamilial mentors, and bilingualism in English and Spanish.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research was supported by the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, the UCLA Institute of American Cultures (c/o Chicano Studies Research Center), and the UCLA Graduate Research Mentorship program. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2009 University of California LERF/IRLE Southern California Graduate Student Conference, the 2009 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, the 2009 Conference on Work and Inequality in the Global Economy at UCLA, the 2009 Labor Markets and Workplace Dynamics in New Destinations of Mexican and Latino Immigration Workshop at UCLA, the 2009 Conference on Emerging Adulthood, and the 2010 Pacific Sociological Association Annual Meeting. I wish to gratefully acknowledge Rubén Hernández-León, Stefan Timmermans, Roger Waldinger, Amada Armenta, Jacqueline Hagan, Helen Marrow, and four anonymous reviewers for comments on previous drafts. I also extend special thanks to Lisa Faigman, David Faigman, Amit Lakhani, and Hyeyoung Oh for their support.

NOTES

Notes

¹ I define human capital as the resources and benefits accruing to individuals that derive from personally honed skills and knowledge, and social capital as the resources and benefits accruing to individuals by virtue of participation in groups.

² I do not discuss the employment trajectories of downwardly mobile or horizontally mobile second-generation Mexican young adults in Dalton in this article. However, for the sake of clarity, I define the way I conceptualize upward, horizontal, and downward mobility here. Upwardly mobile individuals in this article were considered those who were earning higher wages and laboring in superior conditions at the time of interview as compared with their parents and as compared with their own first jobs. Horizontally mobile individuals would have been those whose current wages and work conditions were equal or very similar to those of their parents and as compared with their own first jobs. Downwardly mobile individuals would have been those whose current wages and work conditions were worse than those of their parents and as compared with their own first jobs.

³ I did not explicitly ask the 1.5-generation respondents what their legal status was because I felt that could make some uncomfortable and because the primary focus of the research was not legality. Nonetheless, I asked all respondents if they felt their legal status had affected their educational or occupational opportunities, and all respondents answered in the negative. Many offered up their legal status at that point. Those who did so said that they were permanent residents or naturalized citizens.

⁴ The wages provided in this article for respondents and their parents have not been adjusted for inflation over the course of time individuals were in the labor market.

⁵ Scholars have measured class status along a number of indicators, with home ownership often considered a mark of middle-class standing (Blau and Duncan 1967; Conley 1999; Pattillo-McCoy 2000). Nearly half of respondents (28 of 58), particularly the older members, were homeowners. For other study participants, wages allowed patterns of middle-class consumption, which meant the ability to live outside of their parents' homes in rented apartments, to purchase a vehicle, or to participate in social activities like dining at restaurants and vacationing.

⁶ I was not able to collect comprehensive data on the wages of respondents' parents because most interviewees did not know their parents' precise earnings. I estimated an approximate range of $8.00 to $10.00/hour for parents' earnings in low-wage, blue-collar carpet positions using some respondents' estimates of parents' earnings and the wages respondents reported who had worked in these jobs.

⁷ All respondents described themselves as bilingual in English and Spanish. A few emphasized that while they spoke Spanish fluently, their reading and writing of the language was imperfect.