Education and Ethnic Identity Formation among Children of Latin American and Caribbean Immigrants

While some scholars argue that ethnic identities influence educational achievement, few studies have examined whether education influences ethnic identity formation. This study uses a longitudinal survey to examine changes in ethnic identities from adolescence to adulthood among children of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants and how educational attainments, and other life experiences, relate to those changes. Contrary to assimilation frameworks suggesting that incorporation into mainstream higher education institutions should lead to greater identification as American or with U.S.-created racial/panethnic categories, such as Latino or black, these findings show that the most educated adult respondents identified with both their countries of origin and the United States, regardless of how they identified as adolescents. This study suggests that educational institutions are important contexts in which racial and ethnic identities are formed.