Paradise Shift: Immigration, Mobility and Inequality in Southern California

In a context of widening economic inequality and governmental persecution of undocumented immigrants, central theoretical and policy questions concern the social mobility (intra- and inter-generational) of new ethnic groups being formed as a result of mass migration from Latin America and Asia - especially the rapidly growing generation of children of immigrants now making their transitions to adulthood (finishing their education, entering full-time work, forming families of their own). In this paper findings are presented from merged samples of two research studies in Southern California (IIMMLA and CILS-III). The focus is on the educational mobility of foreign-parentage (1.5- and 2nd-generation) young adults of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian origin - representing distinct and segmented modes of incorporation. The analysis examines factors which facilitate or derail their mobility prospects, including the relative role of parental human capital and legal/citizenship status, family and neighborhood contexts growing up, early school achievement, acculturation, incarceration, and teenage and non-marital child-bearing, compared to patterns observed for native-parentage (3rd-generation and beyond) white, black, and Mexican-American peers. The relationship of acculturation and mobility, the resultant formation of new patterns of urban ethnic inequality and their implications for social science and public policy, are also addressed.