Intergenerational Adverse Childhood Experiences and Adolescent Migration Aspirations in Nicaragua

Abstract

Adolescents’ aspirations are strong predictors of their future outcomes, including later migration experiences. Adversity also shapes aspirations for and decisions about the future. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are measures of early exposure to adversity and may be associated with migration aspirations, though this relationship is understudied. Given high rates of gender-based violence, single-headed households, and economic insecurity, Nicaragua is an important context to study this relationship. Drawing on data from the Nicaragua Health and Stress Study, we estimate multinomial logistic regressions to examine the association between adolescents’ and mothers’ ACEs and adolescent migration aspirations. We find that mothers’ ACEs, but not adolescents’ ACEs, are positively associated with adolescent migration aspirations. We also find that girls are more likely than boys to aspire to migrate. Results highlight how family and gender work together to shape young people’s migration goals, with important implications for migration flows within and outside of Central America.

Introduction

Migration flows within and across countries are critical demographic processes with broad social, economic, and health implications for migrants and their families, and for sending and receiving communities (Asad & Garip, 2019; Zenteno et al., 2013). Migration can be an important survival and mobility process that allows migrants to support themselves and their families (Nobles & McKelvey, 2015; Van Hook & Zhang, 2011). The decision to migrate is shaped by many factors, including family resources, migrant social networks, community incidence of migration, and the broader political and economic conditions of both sending and receiving contexts (Asad & Garip, 2019; Creighton, 2013; Garip, 2016). Financial, climate, political, and personal adversity are also deeply tied to decisions about the future, especially the importance and possibility of migration (Congressional Research Service, 2022; Feingold, 2018; Loebach, 2016). Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are key measures of exposure to interpersonal trauma and may also be associated with migration aspirations and behavior, though this relationship is currently understudied. These factors shape migration decisions across the life course and are particularly important to consider during adolescence (Elder, 1998; Jalil & Fischer, 2020), as young people gain independence and take on new identities and social roles with long-term consequences for their family, schooling, and work trajectories (Arnett, 2000; Elder, 1998).

Adolescents’ aspirations are strong, if imperfect, predictors of their future outcomes (Eccles et al., 2004; Schoon, 2001), including later migration experiences (Creighton, 2013). Aspirations, expectations, and intentions are often used interchangeably to capture goals, but they measure distinct concepts. Whereas aspirations are the most ambitious version of what is possible, expectations account for whether individuals believe those aspirations can be realized. Intentions fit somewhere in between these two concepts, capturing what individuals hope for and plan on (Hitlin & Kirkpatrick Johnson, 2015). We use a broad definition of migration goals that include a mix of aspirations, expectations, and intentions. Goals and decisions about migration can pertain to internal, international, temporary, or permanent moves (Garip, 2016; Massey et al., 1998). Given the social and economic costs of migration (Massey & Aysa-Lastra, 2011; Sana & Massey, 2005), as well as regular exposure to return migrants, young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are particularly likely to aspire to migrate for schooling, work, or other reasons. Young people’s aspirations to migrate thus provide a window into both their contemporary social contexts and how these relate to their outlook toward the future.

The current study focuses on young people’s migration aspirations in Nicaragua. Central America has high and growing rates of out-migration (domestic and international) among children, youth, and adults (Cheatham & Roy, 2022; Congressional Research Service, 2022; Fix, 2018). In Nicaragua, as in other low-income Latin American countries, adolescents are often aware at an early age of the potential opportunities available both in and outside of their home communities, and adolescent migration aspirations reflect these perceptions (Carling & Collins, 2018; Creighton, 2013; Meyer, 2018). To better understand adolescent migration aspirations in this unique context, we leverage new data (collected in 2020) from the Nicaragua Health and Stress Study (NHSS) (n =316)¹ to make three contributions to existing scholarship. First, we contribute to the relatively sparse literature on Nicaraguan migration, with consideration for both internal and international migration aspirations. Second, we add to the slim but growing body of research on adolescent migration aspirations. We consider how gender, childhood adversity, and family context relate to young people’s migration calculus. Third, we examine the role of both adolescents’ and their mothers’ adverse childhood experiences on adolescent migration aspirations. With a few notable exceptions, research on the relationship between migration and ACEs remains sparse. Given high rates of gender-based violence, single-headed households, and economic insecurity, Nicaragua is an especially important context to study this association. Results highlight how family and gender work together to shape young people’s migration goals with important implications for future migration flows within and outside of Central America.

Background

Adolescence as a Key Life Course Stage

Adolescence is the transitionary period between childhood and adulthood; it is a critical time of the life course, characterized by important developmental changes, including identity development, decision making, and the onset of puberty (Elder, 1998; Johnson et al., 2011). This stage of the life course is marked not only by physical changes but also transitions in social roles and responsibilities. Scholars continue to debate at what age adolescence begins and when it ends (Bongaarts et al., 2017; Eliason et al., 2015; Johnson et al., 2011). However, a general consensus places adolescences as sometime between the early pre-teen years (age 10) on the younger end through the early-to-mid-twenties on the older end (Sawyer et al., 2018). For the purposes of this study and based on our sample, we consider adolescence to begin at age 11 and end at age 19.

Across cultural and economic contexts, there is significant variation in the level of agency and responsibility that adolescents possess. For example, in societies where children are expected to be economic contributors to their household, children may enter the labor market (often informally) earlier than peers in contexts where childhood is prolonged or protected. Ideas about gender also shape expectations for adolescents, with different familial and societal expectations for caretaking, work, and housework responsibilities (Chiapa et al., 2016; Gibbons & Luna, 2015). Prior research in low- and middle-income country contexts highlights that the uneven experiences of globalization further complicate the educational, economic, and social constraints and opportunities adolescents face (see, for example, (National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2005)). In Nicaragua, about 25% of adolescents live below the national poverty line (UNICEF, 2014). Adolescents are at a high risk for drug use due to extensive drug trafficking (Aguilar et al., 2020). Educational attainment rates also remain markedly low, with only about 50% completion rate for young people in lower secondary school (UNICEF, 2014). These conditions are likely associated with both exposure to ACEs and young people’s desires to migrate.

The Formation of Adolescent Migration Aspirations

Social scientists have spent decades investigating why people migrate from their countries of origin (for example, see Durand et al., 1996; Massey et al., 1998). Both life course and social capital approaches to migration have highlighted that, while often characterized as an economically-motivated process, migration decisions and actions are shaped by many social influences across the life course (Asad & Garip, 2019; Bernard et al., 2014; Creighton, 2013; Creighton & Riosmena, 2013). Family context also may play an important role in shaping migration aspirations among adolescents, whose identities and aspirations are rapidly in flux but who typically still reside with their families of origin (Ali, 2007; Creighton, 2013). More scholarly attention has been paid to the predictors of migration aspirations among adults, presumably because adults are more agentic and have greater economic and social responsibilities than their younger counterparts (Adserà & Ferrer, 2015; Carling & Collins, 2018). Life course research, however, indicates that decisions about migration can be shaped much earlier in life, as young people plan their transitions to adulthood (Horváth, 2008; Kandel & Massey, 2002; Zenteno et al., 2013).

A “successful” transition to adulthood is characterized by the appropriate timing and sequencing of key markers of adulthood, including higher education, family formation, and entering the workforce (Arnett, 2000). In contexts where out-migration is common, migration can also become an integral part of the transition to adulthood (Ali, 2007; Horváth, 2008; Kandel & Massey, 2002; Zenteno et al., 2013). Adolescents’ migration aspirations are intertwined with other opportunities, hardships, and decisions they anticipate in early adulthood (e.g., education, work, family formation) (Alcaraz, 2022; Azaola, 2012). Existing research in LMICs indicates that adolescents’ desires to migrate are often connected to stagnant opportunities for economic advancement, a need for belonging among peers and community members, and local norms about migration (Horváth, 2008; Jalil & Fischer, 2020; Kandel & Massey, 2002).

Predictors of Adolescent Migration Aspirations

Young people’s migration aspirations are formed in conjunction with (gendered) expectations about the timing and sequencing of other life course events (Alcaraz et al., 2022; Jalil & Fischer, 2020; Meyer, 2018). For example, because women in Central America are often encouraged to dedicate more of their time and energy to raising a family than are men (Gibbons & Luna, 2015), girls in Central America may be less likely to expect to migrate than their male peers. Even so, over the last decade, the number of women out-migrating from Central American countries has risen dramatically (Fix, 2018; Schmidt & Buechler, 2017). Girls in Central America are thus witnessing substantial changes in the gender composition of who is migrating around them. Therefore, it is possible that, in defiance of longstanding gender norms, adolescent girls in Nicaragua today may desire migration just as much or even more than boys.

Even so, social and financial resources shape whether individuals are able to actually realize their aspirations. Historically, family structure, resources, and social capital have been intimately related to migration behavior, especially in Latin America. Migrants from Central America, for example, have historically relied on social networks for the information, resources, and documentation necessary to migrate internationally (Asad & Garip, 2019; Massey & Aysa-Lastra, 2011). Migration is more feasible when individuals have connections to family and friends who can guide them through the process, share information about job opportunities, and provide shelter and resources to fund migration (Asad & Garip, 2019; Creighton & Riosmena, 2013). Notably, remittances sent to those who stay behind are a salient family resource and are used to invest in home improvement and land ownership (Massey et al., 1998), children’s schooling (Antman, 2015), and basic household needs (Sikder & Ballis, 2013).

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Migration

Adverse and traumatic events may also be relevant to adolescents’ migration aspirations. Economic adversity, for instance, can push people to migrate in search of better material circumstances and financial opportunities (Carling & Collins, 2018; Durand et al., 1996; Kandel & Massey, 2002; Massey et al., 1998). Trauma exposures like political and gender violence, climate emergencies, and war also push individuals to migrate (Feingold, 2018; Loebach, 2016; Vaughn et al., 2017). These phenomena, in conjunction with studies of how family context shapes migration, indicate that proximate and early exposure to household adversity (e.g., ACEs) may also shape migration aspirations. However, research on ACEs and migration has tended to focus on the prevalence of ACEs among first and second generation migrants (Barajas-Gonzalez et al., 2021; Cao et al., 2022; Solberg & Peters, 2020; Vaughn et al., 2017). In the current study, we seek to better understand how experiences of trauma shape migration aspirations, which are often antecedents to subsequent migration.

ACEs encompass a wide variety of exposures to trauma and hardship during childhood, such as experiencing emotional or physical neglect or being abused (Felitti et al., 1998). ACEs are strongly associated with negative behavioral and social outcomes (Solberg & Peters, 2020), such as lower educational goals and attainment (Brumley et al., 2021; Merrick et al., 2018), criminality (Pierce & Jones, 2022), and externalizing behavior (Pierce et al., 2022). The effects of ACEs span the life course and are associated with long-term health outcomes, from adolescence through adulthood (Woods-Jaeger et al., 2018). To the extent that ACEs lead to depression, low self-esteem, or an external locus of control (Berber Çelik & Odacı, 2020; Roazzi et al., 2016), they may minimize adolescents’ aspirations altogether. Conversely, if ACEs contribute to adolescents’ desire or need to escape, they may be positively associated with migration aspirations. Parents with their own exposure to multiple ACEs are at an increased risk for mental health issues, behavioral problems, lower educational attainment, and substance abuse. This may lead to more stressful conditions that make parenting more difficult or less engaged. Parental ACEs also increase the likelihood of children’s negative outcomes, such as poor health and disrupted development (Zhang et al., 2022). Thus, in addition to their own ACEs, parents’ ACEs may contribute to adolescents’ migration aspirations via shaping adolescents’ home life, educational and economic prospects, and parent-child relationships. These conditions, in turn, are associated with adolescents’ desires and abilities to migrate.

Study Setting

Nicaragua is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Approximately 25% of Nicaraguans live below the national poverty line, 35% below the international poverty line for middle-income countries, and 3% live in extreme poverty (The World Bank Group, 2021). Upwards of 40% of the population is deprived in terms of education, housing, energy, sanitation, and assets (Espinoza-Delgado & Klasen, 2018). Nicaragua thus provides an important setting to understand how adolescent migration aspirations take shape in a place where many families face chronic economic distress. In the absence of granular data on individual municipalities, we briefly review broader country conditions, as these serve as a backdrop to the current study.

Migration is a common economic survival strategy in Nicaragua. Migrant remittances account for a substantial portion of both national and household economic resources (Andersen & Christensen, 2009; Hobbs & Jameson, 2012). The most recent estimates available suggest that 22% of Nicaraguan households receive remittances and 14% have a member absent due to international migration (Murrugarra et al., 2011). Likewise, an estimated 30% of Nicaraguans have ever migrated internally, primarily from rural to urban areas (Vivas Viachica, 2007). Nicaraguans who migrate internationally tend to be working-age youth and adults, of whom 53% are male (International Organization for Migration, 2013). The two most common international migration destinations are Costa Rica and the United States, though Nicaraguan men and women tend toward different destinations (International Organization for Migration, 2013).

Other key markers of family contexts are worth noting. Approximately 30% of households with children are headed by single mothers, which is higher than in most other Latin American countries (Altamirano Montoya & Teixeira, 2017). Multi-partner fertility is also high in Nicaragua and is correlated with fathers living apart from and not supporting all of their biological children (Schmeer & Hays, 2017). Many Nicaraguan adolescents live in households marked by family instability, union dissolution, and/or paternal absence. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is also high in Nicaragua. Approximately 25% of Nicaraguan women have experienced physical IPV (Ellsberg et al., 2020), meaning that many adolescents also grow up in households where violence is present.

Economic hardships, migration levels, and family instability and violence in Nicaragua may have been even higher when our data were collected. Data collection took place in the summer of 2020, against the backdrop of ongoing political unrest, the COVID-19 pandemic, and corresponding economic decline (Human Rights Watch, 2022; The World Bank Group, 2021).

Current Study

We draw on existing research on the impacts of ACEs on adolescents and parents and empirical work on migration aspirations to investigate the association between experiencing adversity and wanting to migrate. The extant literature on ACEs and migration is quite sparse, but other measures of adversity are associated with both the desire to migrate and actual migration. We draw on unique and recent data from Nicaragua to examine whether intergenerational exposure to adverse childhood experiences are associated with adolescents’ migration aspirations. We propose the following hypotheses:

• H1: Consistent with existing migration flows from Nicaragua, more boys than girls will want to migrate either internally or internationally.

• H2: Adolescent ACEs will be positively associated with desiring to migrate either internally or internationally rather than staying in their home communities.

• H3: Maternal ACEs will be positively associated with adolescent internal and international migration aspirations.

Method

Data

The Nicaragua Health and Stress Study (NHSS) is an innovative study of caregivers and adolescents in León, Nicaragua. The municipality of León is home to about 210,000 people, where about 22% of the population lives in rural areas (Instituto Nacional de Información de Desarrollo (INIDE), 2018). The NHSS builds on a sample of mothers and their index child who participated in a 2012 food insecurity and health study. The sample was representative of households with young children (ages 3 to 11 years) in the municipality and includes both rural and urban adolescents. Six years later, the NHSS was designed with US and Nicaraguan researchers involved in the initial Leon study. The goal was to create a panel study focused on social and economic stressors, physiological stress responses, and non-communicable disease risk factors among adolescents and their caregivers. Among the topics added to this wave of the study were questions about childhood adversity and adolescent aspirations, which are the focus of this paper. Importantly, both mothers and the youth themselves were interviewed and asked about their own adverse childhood events, as well as current health and well-being. The study design was approved by Institutional Review Boards in both the United States and Nicaragua.

Researchers were able to locate 455 of the 485 (94%) of the original households. The project was then delayed due to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The response rate was reduced to 77% of the households contacted in 2019. Ultimately, 72% if the original women were included in the NHSS. The sample used in this study are 349 mothers/caregivers and 358 youth interviewed from approximately June through September 2020.

Sample

Our analytic sample consists of adolescents who completed the aspirations section of the NHSS questionnaire. Information about these adolescents’ households was collected through their caregivers’ surveys. Because of our interest in mothers’ ACES as a potential correlate of migration aspirations, we exclude adolescents who did not live with their mothers at the time of survey (n=29) and who did not provide information on their aspirations (n=6). Because information on covariates were missing in <6% of observations, we impute missing data using multiple imputation via chained equations in Stata 17, estimating a total of 25 imputations (Royston & White, 2011). Our final analytical sample consists of 316 adolescents ages 11 to 19, approximately half of whom are female.

Measures

Dependent variable.

Adolescent migration aspirations are measured using a categorical indicator with three categories: desire to stay in current community, desire to migrate internally, and desire to migrate internationally. We assign adolescents to a given category based on their responses to two questions: 1) whether they wanted to remain in their home community or live somewhere else in Nicaragua; and 2) whether they wanted to remain in Nicaragua or live in another country. We code adolescents as “staying” if they wanted to remain in their current community; as having “internal migration aspirations” if they wanted to leave their community but remain in Nicaragua; and as having “international migration aspirations” if they wanted to leave their community and wanted to live in another country.

Adolescent and mother adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

We include measures of ACEs for both adolescents and their mothers. ACEs were assessed using several questions adapted from the landmark CDC-Kaiser ACEs Study (Felitti et al., 1998). Adolescents and mothers were asked the following questions whether: the respondents had a “mother/father/caregiver who yelled at them” sometimes or frequently; did not “have a mother/father/caregiver who gave [respondents] attention and listened to them;” parents did not regularly “actually know what [respondents] did in their free time” or were often “too drunk or high to take care of [respondents];” parents “did not give [respondents] enough food to eat when it was available;” had a “household member who… was alcoholic, or who inappropriately used prescription drugs;” had a household member who “experienced depression, mental illness, or suicidal ideation;” had a “household member who was imprisoned;” had a “mother/father/caregiver who died” while the respondent was a child; had “parents who were separated or divorced;” and “moved to live with a new caregiver” during childhood². We recode each of these variables into binary indicators and then tally them, ranging from 0 to 8. Due to their distribution, and following recent research on ACEs (Jones & Pierce, 2021; Pierce et al., 2022), we top-code both adolescent and mother ACEs at 4+. For more information on the frequency of each ACE, see Table 1.

Table 1.

Frequencies of ACEs Experienced by Mothers and Adolescents

	Mother		Adolescent
	Proportion	n	Proportion	n
Parents didn’t give you attention	.28	313	.07	321
Parents didn’t know where you were in free time	.22	313	.09	317
Parents didn’t give you food when available	.23	312	.16	321
Parents too drunk/high to take care of you	.19	313	.15	321
Household member was an alcoholic	.20	313	.22	320
Household member dealt with mental health issues	.05	313	.09	322
Household member was incarcerated	.07	313	.16	322
Parents were separated/divorced	.38	310	.46	321
Parent died during childhood	.12	312	.20	321
Moved to live with new caregiver	.13	313	.09	322
Parents yelled at you	.55	313	.48	322
Household member had suicidal tendencies	-	-	.06	322

Note. Proportions are derived from non-missing data.

Adolescent sociodemographic characteristics.

Gender is a binary measure of whether adolescent respondents identify as female or male. To account for potential differences in their aspirations by age and geographic location, we control for adolescents’ age, measured continuously from 11 to 19, and whether they lived in a rural (versus urban) context. Migration aspirations may also be shaped by children’s education and/or educational prospects; to account for this, we use a dummy indicator to control for whether children are currently enrolled in school.

Family structure.

Family structure and household composition are measured in three ways. First, we dichotomously measure whether an adolescent’s primary caregiver (PCG) is the child’s mother (versus someone else). Second, PCG’s marital status is a three-category variable defined as cohabiting, married, or no partner in the household. Third, father absence is a binary measure of whether the adolescent’s biological father does not currently live in the household.

Family resources.

Family resources are measured via primary caregiver education, household wealth, and receipt of remittances. Primary caregiver education is a continuous measure of the PCG’s total number of years of schooling. Household wealth is a continuous measure based on a principal components analysis (PCA) of household assets and dwelling construction materials. This method is a well-established, reliable way of measuring socioeconomic status in low- and middle-income countries and captures households’ long-term consumption, rather than short-term changes in formal income (Filmer & Pritchett, 2001). It is also commonly used in the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) program (Corsi et al., 2012). This is a statistical method that determines necessary weights for a series of variables and captures the most latent, common information across variables. We construct a measure for households’ wealth in 2020 using 38 binary measures of ownership of household assets (e.g., refrigerator, computer, etc.) and dwelling construction materials (e.g., floor, walls, plumbing, etc.). Here, a “0” value for the individual asset indicates lack of ownership of a household asset or that the dwelling construction material (e.g., floors made of concrete) was used in the household; a “1” value indicates that the household owns an asset or that a specific dwelling construction material was used. The variable we use is a score predicted using the first component of the final PCA, as the first principle component is “captures the largest amount of information that is common to all of the variables” (Filmer & Pritchett, 2001, p. 116). Receipt of remittances is captured via a binary indicator of whether the adolescent’s household received remittances in the last six months from a family member not currently living in the household.

Analytic Strategy

We provide a descriptive overview of our sample, including gender differences in migration aspirations, family context, and adolescents’ and their mothers’ ACEs (Table 2). We next fit multinomial logistic regressions predicting migration aspirations (Table 3) using multiply imputed data. We briefly review results from sensitivity analyses and alternative specifications of our models.

Table 2.

Descriptive Statistics

	Full Sample (n=322)		Male (n=154)		Female (n=174)
	Mean/Prop. (SD)	n	Mean/Prop. (SD)	n	Mean/Prop. (SD)	n
Migration aspirationsa		316		150		166
Stay	0.53		0.62		0.46
Internal	0.20		0.16		0.23
International	0.27		0.22		0.31
Adolescent ACEs		322		155		167
0 ACEs	0.11		0.1		0.13
1 ACE	0.21		0.23		0.20
2 ACEs	0.25		0.26		0.24
3 ACEs	0.16		0.15		0.16
4+ ACEs	0.27		0.26		0.28
Mother’s ACEs		322		155		167
0 ACEs	0.16		0.12		0.19
1 ACE	0.25		0.23		0.26
2 ACEs	0.24		0.28		0.20
3 ACEs	0.17		0.17		0.18
4+ ACEs	0.18		0.19		0.16
Female (vs. male)	0.52	322	-	-	-	-
Age	14.45 (1.97)	322	14.57 (2.05)	155	14.34 (1.88)	167
Child enrolled in schoola	0.81	322	0.75	155	0.86	167
Primary caregiver (PCG) is mother	0.96	313	0.97	153	0.94	160
Primary caregiver marital status		313		153		160
Consensual union	0.32		0.28		0.36
Married	0.45		0.52		0.39
No partner in household	0.23		0.2		0.26
Absent father	0.42		0.37	150	0.46	152
PCG years of schooling	9.42 (5.62)	313	9.69 (5.44)	153	9.16 (5.79)	160
HH received remittances in last 6 months	0.18	313	0.18	153	0.18	160
Household wealth index (Range: −5.7 – 3.8)	0.10 (2.32)	312	0.16 (2.24)	153	0.05 (2.41)	159
Rural (vs. urban) residence	0.42	322	0.43	155	0.42	167

Notes: Descriptive statistics are estimated for all non-missing observations.

Table 3.

Multinomial regressions predicting adolescent migration aspirations in Nicaragua

	Internal vs. stay	International vs. stay	International vs. internal
	IRR (SE)	IRR (SE)	IRR (SE)
Adolescent ACEs (v. 0 ACEs)
1 ACE	1.12	1.40	1.24
	(0.30 – 4.18)	(0.45 – 4.33)	(0.29 – 5.43)
2 ACEs	3.50+	1.96	0.56
	(0.97 – 12.66)	(0.61 – 6.28)	(0.13 – 2.36)
3 ACEs	2.35	3.16+	1.35
	(0.58 – 9.46)	(0.92 – 10.84)	(0.29 – 6.29)
4+ ACEs	3.14+	2.73+	0.87
	(0.85 – 11.63)	(0.85 – 8.75)	(0.21 – 3.64)
Mother’s ACEs (v. 0 ACEs)
1 ACE	0.63	1.20	1.92
	(0.22 – 1.76)	(0.44 – 3.30)	(0.58 – 6.32)
2 ACEs	0.65	2.14	3.26+
	(0.22 – 1.96)	(0.77 – 5.89)	(0.95 – 11.24)
3 ACEs	3.31*	3.85*	1.16
	(1.13 – 9.75)	(1.25 – 11.81)	(0.35 – 3.89)
4+ ACEs	1.23	2.46	2.00
	(0.41 – 3.65)	(9.82 – 7.34)	(0.57 – 7.00)
Female (vs. male)	2.68**	2.79**	1.04
	(1.34 – 5.36)	(1.47 – 5.27)	(0.58 – 2.23)
Age	1.15	1.21*	1.05
	(0.96 – 1.37)	(1.03 – 1.42)	(0.87 – 1.28)
Child is currently enrolled in school	1.29	0.82	0.63
	(0.53 – 3.14)	(0.36 – 1.84)	(0.24 – 1.68)
PCG relationship to child (vs. not mother)
PCG is mother	0.75	0.43	0.57
	(0.12 – 4.87)	(0.10 – 1.79)	(0.98 – 3.96)
PCG marital status (vs. married)
Consensual union	0.53	0.89	1.70
	(0.23 – 1.22)	(0.42 – 1.90)	(0.67 – 4.30)
Other	0.56	0.75	1.34
	(0.18 – 1.77)	(0.27 – 2.11)	(0.39 – 4.54)
Absent father	0.84	0.97	1.16
	(0.32 – 2.17)	(0.41 – 2.26)	(0.43 – 3.13)
PCG years of schooling	1.06	1.05	1.00
	(0.97 – 1.14)	(0.98 – 1.13)	(0.39 – 4.54)
HH received remittances in last 6 months	3.84**	2.07+	0.54
	(1.59 – 9.28)	(0.89 – 4.78)	(0.23 – 1.28)
Household wealth index	0.89	1.38**	1.55**
	(0.71 – 1.11)	(1.10 – 1.73)	(1.19 – 2.02)
Rural (vs. urban) residence	0.29**	0.70	2.44
	(0.11 – 0.72)	(0.30 – 1.64)	(0.85 – 6.98)

Note: n = 316 adolescents. Estimates are derived from imputed data. Confidence intervals appear in parentheses.

⁺p<.1,

^*p<.05,

^**p<.01,

^***p<.001

Results

Descriptive Results

Table 2 includes descriptive statistics for all measures. Just over half of surveyed adolescents (53%) want to stay in their home communities. Meanwhile, 27% want to migrate internationally, while 20% want to migrate internally. Our sample of adolescents is split close to evenly between boys (48%) and girls (52%). The average age of respondents is about 14 years old. Most adolescents (81%) were enrolled in school at the time of the survey, with girls statistically significantly more likely to be enrolled in school than their male peers. A majority of adolescents (96%) live with mothers who serve as their primary caregivers (PCGs). Most PCGs (77%) are in a consensual union or married. However, nearly half of adolescents (42%) have a father who is absent from their household. Adolescents’ caregivers completed an average of 9 years of schooling. Forty-two percent of adolescents live in rural areas, and about 10% live in households that were receiving remittances in 2012.

We observe no significant gender differences in any family context variables. However, boys and girls do exhibit distinct migration aspirations (Figure 1). Nearly two-thirds of boys (62%) want to remain where they are, whereas the same is true for less than half (46%) of girls. These differences are statistically significant (p < .05). Correspondingly, boys are less likely than girls to want to migrate internally (16% versus 23%) and internationally (22% vs. 31%). These findings are inconsistent with what we expected in our first hypothesis that more boys would have aspirations to migrate internally or internationally.

FIGURE 1.

ADOLESCENT MIGRATION ASPIRATIONS, BY GENDER (N=316)

Note: 95% confidence intervals are presented. * = Adolescent migration aspirations are significantly different by gender (p<.05).

Figure 2 describes and compares adolescents’ and mothers’ ACEs. Most adolescents (89%) and their mothers (84%) reported at least one ACE. Approximately half of adolescents (48%) and half of their mothers (48%) reported only one or two ACEs. Nevertheless, more than a quarter of adolescents (26%) and almost one-fifth of their mothers (18%) reported at least four ACEs. More adolescents than their mothers reported 4 or more ACEs; this difference is statistically significant (p<.01).

Figure 2.

ACES REPORTED BY ADOLESCENTS AND THEIR MOTHERS (N=316)

Notes: 95% confidence intervals are presented. * = The number of ACEs reported by mothers and adolescents are significantly different (p<.05).

Multivariate Results

We next present results from multinomial regressions predicting adolescents’ migration aspirations (Table 3). For ease of interpretation, we present exponentiated coefficients (relative risk ratios (RRRs)) and their corresponding confidence intervals.

Net of family context and sociodemographic background, the relative risk ratios of wanting to migrate both internally and internationally, versus remaining in one’s current community, are twice as high for girls than for boys (p<.01). However, there is no statistically significant difference between girls’ and boys’ desires to migrate internationally versus internally.

Adolescents’ ACEs are only marginally significantly associated with their internal and international migration aspirations, compared to wanting to remain in their home communities (p < .1). Thus, we do not find support for our second hypothesis (H2). Mothers’ ACEs, on the other hand, are positively associated with adolescent migration aspirations, consistent with our third hypothesis (H3). Specifically, adolescents whose mothers reported 3 ACEs had odds of wanting to migrate either internally or internationally over 3 times higher than their peers whose mothers reported no ACEs (p<.05).

No family structure indicator is significantly associated with adolescent migration aspirations, net of family resources and controls. In contrast, all measures of household resources except primary caregiver education are significantly associated with migration aspirations. Adolescents living in households that received remittances in the last six months have higher odds of wanting to migrate internally (versus remaining in their current location) than their peers who did not recently receive remittances (p<.01). The odds of desiring to migrate internationally rather than internally, however, were not significantly different between adolescents whose households did and did not recently receive remittances. Household wealth is positively associated with wanting to migrate internationally versus staying (p<.01), as well as wanting to migrate internationally versus internally (p<.01). Adolescents who live in rural areas have significantly lower odds of wanting to migrate within Nicaragua rather than stay in their current communities than their peers who live in urban areas (p<.01). Age is also positively associated with wanting to migrate internationally rather than remaining in one’s home community (p<.05). School enrollment is not significantly associated with migration aspirations.

Sensitivity Analyses

Given the possibility that the association between ACEs and migration aspirations may shape adolescent boys’ and girls’ aspirations differently, we also tested interaction effects between adolescent ACEs and gender, as well as mothers’ ACEs and gender. These interactions were not statistically significant and did not improve overall model fit. We also re-estimated our models including only one ACE measure at a time, either adolescents’ or mothers’. The results of these disaggregated models are almost identical to those presented in Table 2. Relatedly, because there are multiple ways of measuring ACEs, we tested various operationalizations of these variables. First, we top-coded adolescents’ and mothers’ ACEs at 3 or more ACEs; models yielded nearly identical results to those presented, with only minimal changes (<.05 RRR) in estimates. Results for models where ACEs are measured continuously also yield the same substantive results.

To better understand whether specific types of ACEs were driving the results presented here, we estimated models that tested the association between individual ACEs and adolescent migration aspirations. Mother’s experience of emotional abuse appears to be the most strongly linked to adolescent migration aspirations (p < .001), though this is primarily true when considering international migration aspirations. This is primarily due to the fact that other specific ACEs are not as common (see Table 1). However, because of the size of the sample, we choose to use a sum of all ACEs in order to capture the most information possible on exposure to ACEs.

In keeping with recent literature on ACEs and adolescent outcomes, the results presented in Table 2 use categorical measures of adolescent and mothers’ ACEs. Moreover, the cumulative frequency of adolescents reporting at least 3 ACEs is 69%, whereas the cumulative frequency of reporting at least 4 ACEs is 79%; frequencies for ACEs reported by mothers are 76% and 85% respectively. To allow for additional specificity and variation in our results, we chose the five-category variable presented in our results.

Discussion and Conclusions

Adolescent aspirations for both internal and international migration reflect their understanding of the personal and financial opportunities available to them as they transition to adulthood. In this article, we examine how gender, intergenerational adverse childhood experiences, and family context shape Nicaraguan adolescents’ migration aspirations.

We find that adolescent girls are more likely than boys to aspire to migrate. These results highlight the importance of examining both young men’s and young women’s migration aspirations, particularly in contexts where migration is common for women (International Organization for Migration, 2013). Moreover, women in Nicaragua face considerable obstacles and hardships, including high rates of intimate partner violence and female-headed households (Altamirano Montoya & Teixeira, 2017; Ellsberg et al., 2020). Given these conditions, young women may see migration as a means to more freedom, safety, and equity – in addition to potential upward mobility. The fact that nearly two-thirds of boys in our sample want to stay in their home communities is also worth highlighting. It is possible that we find this because boys may not experience (or may not fear experiencing) intimate partner violence or violence generally; they may also have better economic prospects. Future research should continue to examine why boys in Nicaragua aspire to stay in their home communities – and whether this holds over time.

We also find that mothers’ ACEs are positively associated with both internal and international migration aspirations, though this same association does not exist for adolescents’ ACEs. There is a paucity of research on the relationship between ACEs and migration, but we suggest a few potential explanations for our results. Recent research highlights that the intergenerational transfer of parental ACEs to their children can lead to worse mental health, physical health, and behavioral problems (Narayan et al., 2021; Schickedanz et al., 2018). Parental ACEs shape parents’ own health, their parenting, and their aspirations for their children. These factors may contribute to adolescents’ aspirations to migrate, in hopes of escaping the conditions where these ACEs originated. Relatedly, if parental ACEs lead to parenting behaviors and material conditions that negatively affect parent-child relationships, adolescents may be more likely to want to move from their home communities. Additional research should continue to examine the link between ACEs and migration, paying special attention to the intergenerational transmission of adverse experiences.

Family economic resources are associated with adolescents’ desires to migrate. Household wealth is positively associated with international migration aspirations, compared to staying in one’s home community or migrating internally. That is, international migration seems increasingly possible and desirable for adolescents in households with the resources available to offset the costs of migration. Recent receipt of remittances, however, is more strongly associated with internal than with international migration aspirations. This may reflect the use of remittances to support adolescents’ social mobility through education or work opportunities in Nicaragua rather than abroad. To the extent that household remittances improve living conditions (Sikder & Ballis, 2013), they may minimize adolescents’ perceived need or desire to eventually internationally migrate.

Family structure is not significantly associated with adolescent migration aspirations, net of family resources and other sociodemographic factors. Though existing research shows a strong connection between the distribution of resources and family structure (Berger & Carlson, 2020; Osborne et al., 2012), it is possible that income and wealth inequality primarily operate through mechanisms other than family structure. Future research should continue to examine these associations.

Our study is not without limitations. First, our use of cross-sectional data precludes us from making claims about change over time. However, our use of data from 2020 allows us to capture a recent snapshot of adolescent migration aspirations for Nicaraguan adolescents. Second, the data was collected in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which shaped economic, family, and mobility opportunities and outcomes globally. The data were also collected at a time of severe political unrest and state violence. These conditions may shape adolescents’ desires for migration and likely increase their desires to leave their home communities. Thus, our estimates of adolescents’ migration aspirations may be shaped by current sociopolitical conditions that we are unable to capture with the current data. Even so, our study provides an important and recent snapshot into what adolescent migration aspirations look like in the midst of ongoing social change. Third, the data do not include information on household migration history or the community prevalence of migration. Other research has shown that these are often associated with adolescents’ desires to migrate (see, for example, Kandel & Massey, 2002). Fourth, we cannot infer that our sample of adolescents living in Leon can be generalized to the national level. However, given the lack of data on Nicaraguan adolescents, this is an important first step in providing statistical data related to their childhood adversities, current socioeconomic conditions, and migration aspirations. Lastly, data collected on ACEs in this study relied on the original CDC-Kaiser ACEs study. Scholars who study ACEs have in recent years called for more holistic and culturally competent measures of ACEs (Barajas-Gonzalez et al., 2021; Solberg & Peters, 2020). We join these calls for better, more comprehensive ways of measuring exposure to early adversity.

Despite these limitations, this article contributes to the growing literature on adolescent migration aspirations and the relationship between ACEs and migration. Our focus on the Nicaraguan context and attention to gender differences in desires to migrate increase our understanding of how migration aspirations vary at a key stage of the life course. The inclusion of young women to the study of young people’s aspirations is of particular importance, especially in contexts where migration for women is highly normative. We also respond to growing calls for research on the relationship between migration and ACEs (Barajas-Gonzalez et al., 2021; Solberg & Peters, 2020; Vaughn et al., 2017), providing new insight into how early exposure to adversity shape aspirations for migration. Study results highlight the importance of household economic resources and adolescent gender in understanding why adolescents might opt to leave rather than stay in their home communities. Our findings allow us to get a snapshot understanding of how contemporary societal conditions shape adolescent migration aspirations in Nicaragua, a country undergoing rapid social change. Future research should continue to study adolescent migration aspirations in Nicaragua, as well as similar countries in Central America, to better understand both existing and potential future migration streams from this area.