Abstract: In recent decades, naturalization rates among U.S. immigrants have surged as many seek citizenship to regain lost rights and protections. However, the impact of naturalization on immigrants’ life outcomes, such as health, remains underexplored in academic research. Challenges arising from selection processes complicate the interpretation of any observed health disparities between naturalized citizens and noncitizens. To address this gap, we link restricted-use data from the 2000 U.S. census to individual Social Security records on citizenship change and death, enabling a 20-year observation of naturalization and mortality. Results from discrete-time hazard analysis of mortality risk reveals a significant protective health effect from naturalization, which increases in magnitude among long-term naturalized citizens. The effect is particularly strong across older ages and among groups with lower education, refugee entry status, Hispanic origin, and health limitations. These findings suggest that naturalization represents an important but stratifying source of institutional support for socially vulnerable immigrants.

Citation: Khuu, Thoa V., Jennifer Van Hook, and Kendal L. Lowrey. 2025. "Living with(out) Citizenship: The Impact of Naturalization on Mortality Risk among U.S. Immigrants." Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465241310347

Abstract: Immigrants initially arrive in the United States in better health than the U.S.-born, but this advantage tends to diminish over time. The factors behind the existence and decline of the immigrant health advantage (IHA) are a subject of ongoing debate. While prior research has mainly focused on ethno-cultural group differences and individual selection dynamics, this study investigates how institutional selection and support, varying with different legal-entry pathways, affect immigrants’ initial health status and subsequent health trajectory. Leveraging microdata samples from the Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey (ASEC-CPS), the research offers a comparative analysis of work disability and self-rated health across the U.S.-born demographic and three legal-entry groups: employment-based, refugee, and U.S.-territory entries. The findings reveal a significant initial health advantage for both employment-based and refugee entries compared to the U.S.-born. However, while the health advantage holds steady for refugee entry over longer durations of stay, it diminishes for employment-based entry. These findings hold important implications for policies regarding immigration and immigrant integration.

Citation: Khuu, Thoa V. 2024. “Mapping Immigrant Health Trajectories: Investigating the Implications of Institutional Selection and Post-Arrival Support Across Legal-Entry Pathways.” Population Research and Policy Review 43(1):4. doi: 10.1007/s11113-023-09850-7.

Abstract: Recent research on intergroup contact theory has emphasized the potency of cross-group friendship for reducing prejudice. Evaluating this claim requires consideration of competing friend influence and selection processes. Few studies have jointly tested these mechanisms and often only in limited, majority/minority group contexts. In this study, the authors articulate several mechanisms linking friendships with intergroup attitudes and test them in a diverse U.S. context (two large high schools with significant representations of multiple ethnoracial groups). The analysis involves a longitudinal network model of friendship and attitude coevolution. The findings indicate that ingroup friends influenced intergroup contact attitudes (ICAs) over time, while more open ICAs promoted selection into cross-group friendship. By contrast, effects of cross-group friendships on ICAs were limited to White students with Black friends. These findings suggest that the effect of intergroup contact is overstated in the context of friendship and that more focus should be paid to understanding other friendship dynamics.

Citation: Khuu, Thoa V., David R. Schaefer, Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor, and Allison M. Ryan. 2023. “The Limitations of Intergroup Friendship: Using Social Network Analysis to Test the Pathways Linking Contact and Intergroup Attitudes in a Multigroup Context.” Socius 9:1–25. doi: 10.1177/23780231231161048.

Abstract: We investigate the network micro-selection mechanisms responsible for patterns of high school student extracurricular activity (ECA) participation, with a particular focus on those that can lead to ethnoracial segregation. We identify six types of mechanisms by which students select into activities (e.g., peer influence, homophily), which we test using a unique longitudinal dataset that combines student surveys with yearbook data on ECA involvement. These contexts represent two ethnoracially diverse U.S. high schools involving 2403 students and over 200 different activities spanning two school years. Using a stochastic actor-oriented model for two-mode networks, we find support for the hypothesized activity selection mechanisms. Follow-up analyses convey the relative importance of different mechanisms and inform our discussion of how ECA participation patterns develop and possible sources of segregation. Whereas selection is driven by mechanisms that include influence from friends and co-participants and similarity to fellow participants, no single overarching mechanism appears strong enough to fully account for ECA segregation.

Citation: Schaefer, David R., Thoa V. Khuu, J. Ashwin Rambaran, Deborah Rivas-Drake, and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor. 2022. “How Do Youth Choose Activities? Assessing the Relative Importance of the Micro-Selection Mechanisms behind Adolescent Extracurricular Activity Participation.” Social Networks. doi: 10.1016/j.socnet.2021.12.008.

Abstract: Initial relations between the host society and migrants are likely to influence whether and to what degree migrants receive tangible and intangible settlement support that might affect their children’s educational integration. As part of the 1980 Refugee Act, the United States officially began to provide settlement support to one group of migrants - refugees, thus institutionalizing more favorable host-society relations for refugees compared to non-refugee migrants. This article assesses the general idea that post-1980 US refugees will show higher levels of integration than non-refugees by testing the specific hypothesis that refugees’ foreign-born children will attain (by adulthood) higher levels of educational attainment than their non-refugee counterparts. As expected, we find that more schooling is completed among refugees’ children than among non-refugees’ children, all else being equal. We also observe that the level of governmental support at arrival is positively associated with educational attainment among refugees’ children. As expected, schooling differentials also drop in accordance with arrival-period declines in support due to drops in refugee children’s schooling. The results highlight the pivotal roles that initial host-society/migrant relations play in fostering refugee integration and underscore the potential societal benefits from adopting and maintaining settlement policies for migrants.

Citation: Khuu, Thoa V., and Frank D. Bean. 2022. “Refugee Status, Settlement Assistance, and the Educational Integration of Migrants’ Children in the United States.” International Migration Review 56(3):780–809. doi: 10.1177/01979183211057837.