Moving up or Moving on: The Role of Parental Aspirations to Migrate in their Children’s Education in Mexico

Mathew Creighton, University of Pennsylvania

An important social consequence of parental aspirations to migrate domestically and internationally is on the educational trajectory of their children. This is particularly relevant in the context of Mexico given the large amount of internal migration as well as the strong and active migratory relationship with the United States. In this study, I use data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS-1) to measure the association between a parent’s aspiration to a future migration and a child’s current enrollment in school. Preliminary results suggest that parental aspirations to migrate have a significant association for elementary, middle, and high school age children. Contrary to some previous work, aspirations to migrate significantly predict school enrollment only for children of mothers who aspire to domestic migration. Understanding the implications of aspirations to migrate across generations is fundamental to assessing the long-term social consequences of migration.