A Game of Catch-Up? The Offending Experience of Second-Generation Immigrants

Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared with their first-generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inCrime and delinquency Vol. 60; no. 1; pp. 60 - 84
Main Author Bersani, Bianca E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.02.2014
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects
Assimilation
Children
Children & youth
Crime
Hispanic Americans
Hispanics
Immigrants
Immigration
Neighborhoods
Neighbourhoods
Noncitizens
Peers
Racial Differences
Regression analysis
Socialization
U.S.A
Variables
Whites
Youth
United States > US
immigration
crime
second generation
assimilation
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared with their first-generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist, namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis—born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second-generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from nine waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer, and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second-generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second-generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared with native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
ISSN:0011-1287
1552-387X
DOI:10.1177/0011128713502406