Immigrant Families, Communities and Child Development

Jennifer E. Glick, Arizona State University
Laquitta M. Smith, Arizona State University

Studies of immigrant adaptation in the United States emphasize the importance of age at arrival, location of schooling and other factors related to the migration process in shaping outcomes for immigrants. Research also points to the variability of socioeconomic mobility among immigrants and their descendants across receiving contexts encountered in the United States. This paper combines these two perspectives to examine the extent to which family migration and community context interact to produce differential developmental outcomes among very young children in immigrant families. Using unique data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B) and 2000 US Census data, the analyses examine the extent to which mothers’ age at arrival in the United States and language use have differential effects on children’s cognitive development depending on the community context in which the family resides.