Presenting Author: Jennifer Glick
Educational aspirations are important predictors of educational attainment and intergenerational mobility for children and youth. These aspirations are built from children’s own experiences in the family of origin and community. At the family level, parental education, family resources, transitions and parenting practices shape children’s own orientation towards schooling. Although educational aspirations figure heavily in the research on educational attainment and disparities, they are less often considered in the research on the returns to migration. This paper explores the association between familial migration from the household and the educational aspirations of children and youth remaining behind in two very different settings. The analyses consider the extent to which children’s educational aspirations are related to their exposure to migration from their household, their relationship to the migrant (i.e. a parent, sibling or other relative) and their caregiver’s aspirations for them. These associations are compared by child’s gender and age. By taking advantage of new comparative data on children, the analyses can explore consistencies in these relationships in two very different social and economic settings of migration.