Legacies of Marginalization: System Avoidance among the Adult Children of Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States

The threat of deportation shapes the way that unauthorized immigrants and their families interact with social institutions. For example, the adult children of unauthorized immigrants might avoid institutions that keep formal records (“surveilling” institutions) because such institutions could potentially expose their families to deportation. Using intergenerational data from the Immigration and Intergenerational Mobility in Metropolitan Los Angeles survey, we examine the relationship between immigrant parents’ authorization status and their adult children’s institutional participation (n = 3,283). Results from Poisson and propensity-weighted regression models suggest that the adult children of unauthorized immigrants were more likely to avoid surveilling institutions, such as formal employment, than those with authorized parents. In contrast, parental immigration status was unrelated to their attachment to non-surveilling institutions, such as community groups or religious organizations. This finding suggests that the adult children of unauthorized immigrants are not systematically disengaged from all institutions but may avoid surveilling institutions in particular due to fear of their family’s deportation. This type of system avoidance may have long-term consequences for their social and economic mobility.