China’s rural-urban migration presents a significant educational challenge. This study uses theories of segmented assimilation and school segregation to measure the assimilation and well-being of m...
Mounting reports in the media suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified prejudice and discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities, especially Asians. Existing research has focused on discrimination against Asians and is primarily based on self-reported incidents or nonrepresentative samples. We investigate the extent to which COVID-19 has fueled prejudice and discrimination against multiple racial/ethnic minority groups in the United States by examining nationally representative survey data with an embedded vignette experiment about roommate selection (collected in August 2020; n = 5,000). We find that priming COVID-19 salience has an immediate, statistically significant impact: compared to the control group, respondents in the treatment group exhibited increased prejudice and discriminatory intent against East Asian, South Asian, and Hispanic hypothetical room-seekers. The treatment effect is more pronounced in increasing extreme negative attitudes toward the three minority groups than decreasing extreme positive attitudes toward them. This is partly due to the treatment increasing the proportion of respondents who perceive these minority groups as extremely culturally incompatible (Asians and Hispanics) and extremely irresponsible (Asians). Sociopolitical factors did not moderate the treatment effects on attitudes toward Asians, but prior social contact with Hispanics mitigated prejudices against them. These findings suggest that COVID-19–fueled prejudice and discrimination have not been limited to East Asians but are part of a broader phenomenon that has affected Asians generally and Hispanics as well. Significance This study investigates whether the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated prejudice and discrimination against racial/ethnic minority groups. Results from a nationally representative survey experiment about roommate selection suggest that incidents of anti-Asian hostility reported in the media are not isolated acts but signal-amplified racism against East Asians. While popular rhetoric has blamed East Asians for the pandemic, we find that COVID-19–associated discrimination has spilled over to South Asians and Hispanics, suggesting a generalized phenomenon of xenophobia. Prejudice fueled by COVID-19 against Asians has been particularly widespread, but for Hispanics, such negative sentiments are mitigated by respondents’ prior social contact with them. These findings highlight the need to develop a multitargeted approach to address racism and xenophobia associated with COVID-19.
This article extends previous work on family structure and children's education by conceptualizing migration as a distinct form of family disruption that reduces parental input but brings substantial economic benefits through remittances. It examines the multiple and countervailing effects of migration on schooling in the context of substantial migration and limited educational opportunities for blacks in South Africa. The receipt of remittances substantially increases black children's school attendance, but has no such effect for whites. The effect for blacks is in part attributable to improved household economic conditions that increase household educational spending and reduce the demand for child labor. We also find a negative effect of parental absence due to migration, but it is largely cushioned by inflows of remittances. Sensitivity analyses using propensity score methods and contextual fixed-effect modeling suggest that the beneficial effect of remittances is relatively robust. We find further that remittances help ameliorate inter-familial socioeconomic inequality in schooling. Finally, we evaluate possible temporal changes and show that the positive and equalizing effects of remittances persisted during and after the apartheid regime. We conclude that labor migration and remittances, as institutionalized family strategies adopted by many blacks, help reconfigure structural opportunities in the educational stratification process in South Africa.