How does the American Dream come true? It all depends

By way of contrast, only 17 percent of children of Mexican immigrants graduated from college, but their high-school graduation rate was double that of their parents'.

Among the Mexicans interviewed, even though they were the least successful in terms of the objective financial and academic indicators, "they felt the most successful because they measured their success inter-generationally. They understood how far they came from their parent's generation", Lee said.

Many of the Mexicans' parents had only an elementary school education. "We were interviewing people who had graduated from college and were teachers, people who owned their own gardening businesses that they were expanding from their parents. They felt enormously successful because they understood how far they came from their parents, many of whom worked in minimum wage jobs without benefits or any type of security," Lee said.

"Success cannot be boiled down to the supposed cultural traits and values," Lee said. "All groups value success. All groups value education. However, institutional and structural factors like immigration status (especially undocumented status), access to economic and social capital, and the educational backgrounds of immigrant parents determine the opportunities that a child may or may not have."

The children of Chinese and Mexican immigrants start their quest for mobility from different points. "This is not to say that the children of Chinese immigrants don't work hard; my research shows that they work very hard, indeed," Lee said. "However, most start far ahead of their Mexican peers, who are disadvantaged because their parents often arrive in the United States with less than a high school education and as undocumented immigrants.

"For the children of Mexican immigrants to break through these barriers and graduate from high school or college is an enormous feat, and an enormous jump in mobility," Lee said.

Lee used a baseball analogy to illustrate her point. Most Americans, she said, would be more impressed by someone who made it from the batter's box to second base than someone who was on third base because their parents started on third base. "But because we tend to focus strictly on outcomes when we talk about success and mobility, we fail to acknowledge that the third base runner didn't have to run very far at all," Lee said.

"Anyone who thinks the American Dream is about the end rewards is missing the point," she writes. "It's always been about the striving."

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com.

(China Daily USA 03/12/2014 page2)