Mary C. Waters

Ethnic and Racial Identities of Second-Generation Black Immigrants in New York City

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandi...

The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration since 1965

Salsa has replaced ketchup as the most popular condiment. A mosque has been erected around the corner. The local hospital is staffed by Indian doctors and Philippine nurses, and the local grocery store is owned by a Korean family. A single elementary school may include students who speak dozens of different languages at home. This is a snapshot of America at the turn of the 21st Century. The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, shaped by successive waves of new arrivals. The most recent transformation began when immigration laws and policies changed significantly in 1965, admitting migrants from around the globe in new numbers and with widely varying backgrounds and aspirations. This comprehensive guide, edited and written by an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars, provides an authoritative account of the most recent surge of immigrants. Twenty thematic essays address such topics as immigration law and policy, refugees, unauthorised migrants, racial and ethnic identity, assimilation, nationalization, economy, politics, religion, education and family relations. These are followed by comprehensive articles on immigration from the 30 most significant nations or regions of origin. Based on the latest U.S. Census data and the most recent scholarly research, The New Americans is an essential reference for students, scholars, and anyone curious about the changing face of America.

Segmented assimilation revisited: types of acculturation and socioeconomic mobility in young adulthood

Abstract This article examines the debate between key theories of immigrant assimilation by exploring the effect of acculturation types – dissonant, consonant and selective – on socioeconomic outcomes in young adulthood. Drawing on survey data from the Immigrant Second Generation in Metropolitan New York, we show that, while all three types occur, dissonant acculturation is the exception, not the norm, among second-generation young adults. Our results also suggest that neither the type of acculturation nor the level of ethnic embeddedness can account for the variation in mobility patterns both across and within second-generation groups. These findings lead us to question assumptions about the protective effect of selective acculturation and the negative effect of dissonant acculturation.

Becoming American/Becoming New Yorkers: Immigrant Incorporation in a Majority Minority City

Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nations 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states – California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced.

The impact of hurricane Katrina on the mental and physical health of low-income parents in New Orleans.

The purpose of this study was to document changes in mental and physical health among 392 low-income parents exposed to Hurricane Katrina and to explore how hurricane-related stressors and loss relate to post-Katrina well-being. The prevalence of probable serious mental illness doubled, and nearly half of the respondents exhibited probable posttraumatic stress disorder. Higher levels of hurricane-related loss and stressors were generally associated with worse health outcomes, controlling for baseline sociodemographic and health measures. Higher baseline resources predicted fewer hurricane-associated stressors, but the consequences of stressors and loss were similar regardless of baseline resources. Adverse health consequences of Hurricane Katrina persisted for a year or more and were most severe for those experiencing the most stressors and loss. Long-term health and mental health services are needed for low-income disaster survivors, especially those who experience disaster-related stressors and loss.

Introducing the Issue

That the schedule for coming of age has been rather sharply revised both in the United States and more broadly throughout the industrialized world is by now widely recognized. Over the past decade, especially, the mass media have trumpeted the findings of a growing body of research showing that young people are taking longer to leave home, attain economic independence, and form families of their own than did their peers half a century ago. The forces behind this new timetable have been evident for several decades, but social science researchers, much less policy makers, were slow to recognize just how profound the change has been. A trickle of studies during the 1980s about the prolongation of young adulthood grew to a steady stream during the 1990s and then to a torrent during the first decade of the new millennium. (1) Now that researchers have shown how and why the timetable for becoming an adult has altered, policy makers must rethink whether the social institutions that once successfully educated, trained, and supported young adults are up to the task today. Changes in the coming-of-age schedule are, in fact, nothing new. A century or more ago, the transition to adulthood was also a protracted affair. In an agriculture-based economy, it took many young adults some time to gain the wherewithal to leave home and form a family. Formal education was typically brief because most jobs were still related to farming, the trades, or the growing manufacturing sector. By their teens, most youth were gainfully employed, but they frequently remained at home for a time, contributing income to their families and building resources to enter marriage and form a family. By contrast, after World War II, with opportunities for good jobs abundant, young Americans transitioned to adult roles quickly. In 1950, fewer than half of all Americans completed high school, much less attended college. Well-paying, often unionized jobs with benefits were widely available to males. The marriage rush and baby boom era at mid-century was stimulated not only by a longing to settle down after the war years but also by generous new government programs to help integrate veterans back into society. Today young adults take far longer to reach economic and social maturity than their contemporaries did five or six decades ago. In large part, this shift is attributable to the expansion of higher education beginning in the late 1960s. Employers have become increasingly reluctant to hire young people without educational credentials. Failing to complete high school all but relegates individuals to a life of permanent penury; even completing high school is hardly enough to ensure reasonable prospects. Like it or not, at least some postsecondary education is increasingly necessary. In short, education has become an ever more potent source of social stratification, dividing the haves and the have-nots, a theme in this volume to which we will return. The boom in higher education is not the only reason why young adults are taking more time to gain independence from their families and establish themselves in adult roles. The schedule for growing up, no doubt, has been affected by the lengthening of the life span over the past century. Most young adults today can expect to live into their late seventies, a decade longer than their counterparts even fifty years ago. It makes sense to continue investing into the third and even fourth decades of life when one can expect to live another fifty years or more. Cultural changes, such as the post-1960s shift in sexual attitudes and practices, have also slowed what was once a rush into adult roles. Fifty years ago, premarital sex was still highly stigmatized. Although the stigma did not deter many young couples from breaching the norms, marriage served as a safety net in the event of a premarital pregnancy. Today, most young people expect to have sex before marriage and have the means to prevent unwanted childbearing. …

The process of ethnogenesis among Haitian and Israeli immigrants in the United States

Abstract This article examines the process of ethnic identity formation among two different groups of recent immigrants to the United States: secular kibbutz‐born Israelis and middle‐class Haitians. While the two groups are different in a number of ways, they share an ambivalence with the identities that American society would assign to them ‐ as Jews and blacks respectively. By contrasting these two case studies we identify the role of the ‘proximal host’, the category to which the immigrants would be assigned following immigration. The determination of the ultimate definition of the ethnic identities of these immigrants is a result of the interaction of the conception of identity the immigrants bring with them from their countries of origin, the definitions and reactions of the proximal host group, and the overall ordering and definitions of American society. The ambivalence of both groups of immigrants towards their post‐immigration identities is a result of both macro‐forces determining the definition...

Five years later: Recovery from post traumatic stress and psychological distress among low-income mothers affected by Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 2005, exposed area residents to trauma and extensive property loss. However, little is known about the long-run effects of the hurricane on the mental health of those who were exposed. This study documents long-run changes in mental health among a particularly vulnerable group-low income mothers-from before to after the hurricane, and identifies factors that are associated with different recovery trajectories. Longitudinal surveys of 532 low-income mothers from New Orleans were conducted approximately one year before, 7-19 months after, and 43-54 months after Hurricane Katrina. The surveys collected information on mental health, social support, earnings and hurricane experiences. We document changes in post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), as measured by the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, and symptoms of psychological distress (PD), as measured by the K6 scale. We find that although PTSS has declined over time after the hurricane, it remained high 43-54 months later. PD also declined, but did not return to pre-hurricane levels. At both time periods, psychological distress before the hurricane, hurricane-related home damage, and exposure to traumatic events were associated with PTSS that co-occurred with PD. Hurricane-related home damage and traumatic events were associated with PTSS without PD. Home damage was an especially important predictor of chronic PTSS, with and without PD. Most hurricane stressors did not have strong associations with PD alone over the short or long run. Over the long run, higher earnings were protective against PD, and greater social support was protective against PTSS. These results indicate that mental health problems, particularly PTSS alone or in co-occurrence with PD, among Hurricane Katrina survivors remain a concern, especially for those who experienced hurricane-related trauma and had poor mental health or low socioeconomic status before the hurricane.

The Location of Ethnic and Racial Groups in the United States

The distinctive regional and urban locational patterns of thirty-three ethnic groups in the United States are analyzed from two different perspectives. First, who are the numerically important groups in each region? Second, from the perspective of the groups themselves, where are they spatially concentrated? We hypothesize that the forces generating distinctive ethnic locational patterns are strongest at the time of the initial settlement; thus the longer a group has been present in the United States, the less geographically concentrated it will be. This is found to be true for most ethnic groups except blacks and American Indians, whose specific social and political situations explain their particular concentrations. However, the early settlement patterns still affect the ethnic makeup of various areas of the nation, even though the concentrations have diminished over time. Moreover, although the 1975–1980 patterns of internal migration (analyzed through a Markov Chain model) are tending to reduce some of the distinctive geographic concentrations in the nation, this will still not fully eliminate distinctive ethnic concentrations. Groups differ in their propensities to leave or enter each area in a way that reflects the existing ethnic compositions of the areas. Thus even with the massive level of internal migration in the nation, there is no evidence that the substantial ethnic linkage to region is disappearing.

Interaction between genetic variants and exposure to Hurricane Katrina on post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth: A prospective analysis of low income adults

BACKGROUND There is considerable variation in psychological reactions to natural disasters, with responses ranging from relatively mild and transitory symptoms to severe and persistent posttraumatic stress (PTS). Some survivors also report post-traumatic growth (PTG), or positive psychological changes due to the experience and processing of the disaster and its aftermath. Gene-environment interaction (GxE) studies could offer new insight into the factors underlying variability in post-disaster psychological responses. However, few studies have explored GxE in a disaster context. METHODS We examined whether ten common variants in seven genes (BDNF, CACNA1C, CRHR1, FKBP5, OXTR, RGS2, SLC6A4) modified associations between Hurricane Katrina exposure and PTS and PTG. Data were from a prospective study of 205 low-income non-Hispanic Black parents residing in New Orleans prior to and following Hurricane Katrina. RESULTS We found a significant association (after correction) between RGS2 (rs4606; p=0.0044) and PTG, which was mainly driven by a cross-over GxE (p=0.006), rather than a main genetic effect (p=0.071). The G (minor allele) was associated with lower PTG scores for low levels of Hurricane exposure and higher PTG scores for moderate and high levels of exposure. We also found a nominally significant association between variation in FKBP5 (rs1306780, p=0.0113) and PTG, though this result did not survive correction for multiple testing. LIMITATIONS Although the inclusion of low-income non-Hispanic Black parents allowed us to examine GxE among a highly vulnerable group, our findings may not generalize to other populations or groups experiencing other natural disasters. Moreover, not all participants invited to participate in the genetic study provided saliva. CONCLUSIONS To our knowledge, this is the first study to identify GxE in the context of post-traumatic growth. Future studies are needed to clarify the role of GxE in PTS and PTG and post-disaster psychological responses, especially among vulnerable populations.