How Mexican migration to the U.S. shapes the educational attainment of the next
generation has been a topic of heated debates among scholars and policy analysts in the U.S. and
Mexico. In the U.S., some observers argue that Mexican migration depresses aggregate levels of
education by introducing large numbers of individuals with low levels of education, who
experience limited educational mobility across and within generations (Grogger and Trejo 2002;
Telles and Ortiz 2008). Their opponents, however, contend that these concerns are ill founded as
Mexican immigrants experience educational mobility at virtually equal rates as earlier waves of
immigrants despite the unique challenges that contemporary immigrants face (Smith 2003). In
Mexico, some fear that migration will give rise to “brain drain” as it selects individuals with
higher levels of education (Feliciano 2005; McKenzie and Rapoport 2006; Ozden 2005). In
contrast, others contend that migration enhances aggregate levels of education by increasing the
availability of educational resources and promoting economic development, which generates an
internal demand for higher levels of education (Antman 2007; Hanson and Woodruff 2003).
Yet, all these conclusions rest on country-specific research that use simple regression
models investigating the impact of parental migration affects the educational mobility across
generations. Generalizing findings from these studies to the aggregate level is problematic
because of two reasons. First, it focuses solely on the effects of migration that accrues due to
differences in the ability and willingness of migrant and non-migrant parents to invest in their
children’s educational futures. In the process, it ignores that the aggregate effects of migration
also accrues through a complex set of demographic processes, including the selectivity of the
migration process that encourage the cross-national move of individuals with certain
3
demographic profiles as well as the fertility differentials between non-migrants in the country of
origin, immigrants, and the native born in destination countries. These interdependencies not
only determine the number and types of individuals who remain or move across national
boundaries, but also the relative number of offspring that the different types of parents contribute
to the populations of the countries of origin and destination. Country-specific analysis also
renders an incomplete assessment by ignoring processes that occur outside the scope of the
country in observation. Specifically, studies examining how immigrants fare in the destination
country ignore the role of migrant selectivity despite the fact that it has been identified as a key
determinant of the extent and speed to which immigrants adapt educationally (Feliciano 2006).
Studies on the impact of migration on sending communities cannot accurately ascertain the size
of the impact of migration because they are forced to exclude migrants who are residing in
destination countries. To accurately estimate the impact of migration on educational mobility,
studies should explore how socio-demographic processes in the countries of origin and
destination influence the size and characteristics of migratory flows. Simultaneously, they should
also consider how migration affects the educational composition of the next generation by
redistributing individuals with distinct fertility behaviors across the two countries and altering
the availability of educational opportunities as well as their incentives for childbearing.