Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles: A Qualitative Study

In 2003, the Foundation set forth on an ambitious research initiative to assess how well the young adult children of recent immigrants in Los Angeles fare as they move through American schools and into the labor market. The project, dubbed the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles (IIMMLA) study, began with a telephone survey that collected data on the young adult children of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino immigrants, as well as three comparison groups of native parentage.

With the present funding, several of the principal investigators from the IIMMLA study will develop a research plan to conduct in-depth, open-ended interviews with a subset of the telephone survey respondents. The interviews will provide the children of immigrants with a chance to discuss complex issues like life aspirations, racial and ethnic identity, inter-generational relations, educational and occupational choices, discrimination, and transnationalism.