Understanding the education trajectories of Thai young adults: the longer-term impacts of parental migration and caregiving arrangement

The study aims to understand the education trajectories of Thai young adults through sequence analysis from a life course perspective. It further evaluates how the characteristics of childhood parental migration and caregiving arrangements are associated with the education trajectories. The study applied data of families in areas of high outmigration in Thailand. We selected data from 874 young adults, who were first interviewed in 2008/2010 and re-interviewed in 2019/2020 (males: 50.9%; M 𝑎𝑔𝑒 = 21.69 at Wave 2). Four distinctive patterns of their education trajectories were identified: early dropout (27.69%), vocational track (18.76%), academic track (25.86%), and higher education track (27.69%). The gender distributions among the four groups were notably unbalanced. Multivariate analysis highlighted that girls were more likely to be in academic and higher education tracks. International father migration showed benefits for their children’s further vocational training or tertiary education, while no such benefit was observed among young adults with internal migrant fathers. The finding emphasised the importance of mothers as primary caregivers during childhood to protect children from early dropout. This study highlights the gendered pattern of education trajectories in Thailand. It further reveals how education trajectories are influenced differentially by the gender and migration destination of the parents.