Chapter 2: Children of Immigrants and Their Achievement: The Roles of Family, Acculturation, Social Class, Gender, Ethnicity, and School Contexts

Children of immigrants often perceive that they are a main, if not the main, reason for the immigration of their parents, who, in turn, often stake all of their hopes for the future on their children's success. Perceiving the sacrifices made by their parents, ostensibly on their behalf, the children bear a sense of obligation toward their parents and are motivated to achieve, a dynamic that, in turn, can give immigrant parents a degree of psychological leverage over their children. This is a theme that recurs in our study of more than 5,000 children of immigrants on both coasts ofthe United States, which is described in this chapter (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001).