Generation 1.5, Educational Experiences of

Research has established that there are fundamental differences between the education and adaptation of persons who immigrate as adults and those who do so as children. Differences in nativity (of self and parents) and age at arrival in a new land, which are criteria used to distinguish between generational cohorts, are known to affect significantly the modes of acculturation of adults and children in immigrant families, especially with regard to language and ethnic identity, educational attainment and aspirations, patterns of social mobility, outlooks and frames of reference, and even propensity to sustain transnational attachments over time. However, despite the import of intergenerational analysis for the study of the long-term impact of immigration, both the meaning and measurement of “generations” have varied.

The term one-and-a-half or 1.5 generation distinguishes those who immigrate as children from the “first” generation of immigrants who migrate as adults and the “second” generation of native-born persons of foreign parentage. Segments of any foreign-born population can be further refined into distinct types, depending on their ages and life stages at migration. The processes of acculturation and educational experiences can vary significantly among those who immigrate as children depending on whether their migration occurred during early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence. They are at starkly different life stages at the point of migration and begin their adaptation processes in very different social contexts. Preschool children (ages 0–5 at arrival) retain virtually no memory of their country of birth, are too young to have learned to read or write in the parental language in the home country, and are largely socialized in the host country; they typically learn the new language without an accent, and their educational experiences and adaptive outcomes are most similar to the native-born second generation. Primary-school-age children (ages 6–12 at arrival) typically learn to read and write in the mother tongue, but their education is completed in the host country; classic “1.5ers,” they are most likely to adapt flexibly between two worlds and to become fluent bilinguals. Adolescents (ages 13–17 at arrival) may or may not come with their families of origin and either attend secondary schools after arrival or, in the older ages, may go directly into the workforce; their experiences and adaptive outcomes are closer to the first generation of young immigrant adults than to the native-born second generation.

Educational and other adaptive outcomes are also affected by historical circumstances (such as the case of war-torn refugees), the socioeconomic and cultural distance traveled by migrant populations, and their reception in host countries. Although life stage and generational status matter, intergenerational analyses need to consider multiple possible determinants of concrete outcomes, and situate and interpret the data within larger contexts. First and later waves of migrants from the same sending country may differ fundamentally in their social class origins, ethnic composition, motives for migration, and contexts of reception—that is, different “vintages” in migration flows, not only diverse “waves,” need to be considered in studies of immigrant education and adaptation, to avoid confounding historical period and cohort effects.

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