Paying Off Intergenerational Debt: The Immigrant Bargain and Status-Striving Behaviors

Children of immigrants—referred to as second-gens—are increasingly making up the labor force. Yet, they, along with their immigrant parents remain understudied in management. Our research begins the exploration of second-gens by examining their status-striving behavior, relative to children of native-born parents—referred to as third-gens. We argue that second-gens will engage in greater status-striving behavior, relative to third-gens, and that such behavior is mediated by the immigrant bargain—a psychological contract between the immigrant parent and the second-gen child—and indebtedness. We conduct a mixed methods investigation across 3 studies, blending: 1) an archival study that examines occupational status across Europe by immigrant generation; 2) a scale development using American and British samples to operationalize the immigrant bargain; and 3) a quantitative investigation to examine the indirect effects of immigrant bargain and indebtedness on status-striving. Across all studies, our results find that second-gens, relative to third-gens, do engage in greater status-striving. We discuss the theoretical implications of such behavior by incoming second-gen employees in the workplace.