Richard D. Alba

Rethinking assimilation theory for a new era of immigration.

Assimilation theory has been subject to intensive critique for decades. Yet no other framework has provided the social science community with as deep a corpus of cumulative findings concerning the incorporation of immigrants and their descendants. We argue that assimilation theory has not lost its utility for the study of contemporary immigration to the United States. In making our case, we review critically the canonical account of assimilation provided by Milton Gordon and others; we refer to Shibutani and Kwans theory of ethnic stratification to suggest some directions to take in reformulating assimilation theory. We also examine some of the arguments frequently made to distinguish between the earlier mass immigration of Europeans and the immigration of the contemporary era and find them to be inconclusive. Finally, we sift through some of the evidence about the socioeconomic and residential assimilation of recent immigrant groups. Though the record is clearly mixed, we find evidence consistent with the view that assimilation is taking place, albeit unevenly.

Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles

The predominant post-1965 immigrant groups have established distinctive settlement areas in many American cities and suburbs. These areas are generally understood in terms of an immigrant enclave model in which ethnic neighborhoods in central cities serve relatively impoverished new arrivals as a potential base for eventual spatial assimilation with the white majority. This model, and the ethnic community model, are evaluated here. In the ethnic community model, segregated settlement can result from group preferences even when spatial assimilation is otherwise feasible. Analysis of the residential patterns of the largest immigrant groups in New York and Los Angeles shows that most ethnic neighborhoods can be interpreted as immigrant enclaves. In some cases, however living in ethnic neighborhoods is unrelated to economic constraints, indicating a positive preference for such areas. Suburban residence does not necessarily imply living outside of ethnic neighborhoods. Indeed, for several groups the suburban enclave provides an alternative to assimilation-it is an ethnic community in a relatively high-status setting.

Immigrant groups in the suburbs : A reexamination of suburbanization and spatial assimilation

For a number of contemporary immigrant groups, suburbanization is occurring at high levels, and either increased or remained stable during the 1980s, a decade of high immigration. We investigate whether these settlement patterns are consistent with spatial-assimilation theory. Using Public Use Microdata from the 1980 and 1990 U.S. censuses, we examine the link between suburban residence and life-cycle, socioeconomic, and assimilation characteristics for 11 racial/ethnic groups, including those growing most from contemporary immigration as well as non Hispanic whites. We find support for some aspects of the theory. The determinants of suburban residence are consistent between the 1980 and 1990 models, with some important exceptions: Among several groups, especially Asian groups, the effects of very recent immigration and linguistic assimilation have weakened. Our findings indicate that barriers to the entry of new immigrants to suburbia are nov lower than before. The growing numbers of recent immigrants there suggest the emergence of new ethnic concentrations and infrastructure

Variations on Two Themes: Racial and Ethnic Patterns in the Attainment of Suburban Residence*

To investigate racial and ethnic diversity in suburbanization, we draw on two complementary theoretical traditions, which we label “assimilation” and “stratification.” Our analytic model is multilevel, and includes variables characterizing individuals, households, and metropolitan contexts. We use it to analyze the determinants of suburban versus central-city residence for 11 racial/ethnic groups. The analysis reveals that family status, socioeconomic, and assimilation variables influence the suburbanization process rather consistently. We take this finding as evidence in favor of the assimilation model. These effects display group variations, however, in a manner predicted by the stratification model. There are also suburbanization differences among metropolitan areas, particularly related to the relative economic status of cities and their suburbs, and between the northeast/north central regions and the south/west. Finally, we conclude that suburbanization is variable across the groups in a way that is not captured by broad categories such as “Asian” or “Hispanic.”

Only English by the Third Generation?: Loss and Preservation of the Mother Tongue Among the Grandchildren of Contemporary Immigrants

We investigate whether a three-generation model of linguistic assimilation, known from previous waves of immigration, can be applied to the descendants of contemporary immigrant groups. Using the 5% Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample 1990 file, we examine the home languages of second- and third-generation children and compare the degree of their language shift against that among the descendants of European immigrants, as evidenced in the 1940 and 1970 censuses. Overall, the rates of speaking only English for a number of contemporary groups suggest that Anglicization is occurring at roughly the same pace for Asians as it did for Europeans, but is slower among the descendants of Spanish speakers. Multivariate models for three critical groups—Chinese, Cubans, and Mexicans—indicate that the home languages of third-generation children are most affected by factors, such as intermarriage, that determine the languages spoken by adults and by the communal context.

Locational returns to human capital: minority access to suburban community resources.

The suburbanization of racial and ethnic minorities is analyzed in terms of the locational resources provided by their communities of residence. In suburbs in the New York CMSA, non-Hispanic whites and Asians, on average, live in communities with higher average socioeconomic status, while Hispanics and blacks live in the less desirable suburbs. Models predicting suburban socioeconomic status for each racial/ethnic group show that whites and Hispanics receive consistent returns on income, acculturation, and family status. Asians’ locational patterns differ because they are unrelated to measures of acculturation; for blacks, locational outcomes correspond least to any of these human capital characteristics.

The New Second Generation in the United States

Immigration to the United States accelerated in the late 1960s. Since many migrants are young people who form families shortly after arrival, there is now a large and rapidly growing second generation - many of them now young adults who recently completed school and started their careers. There is much speculation about whether this second generation will assimilate into the middle class rapidly or form a new urban underclass. The last census to ask parental birthplace questions was 1970, so an absence of data precluded testing hypotheses about the social and economic progress of the new second generation. In 1994, the Census Bureau returned an inquiry about parental birthplace to the Current Population Survey so there is now an annual national sample of about 16,000 second-generation Americans. Data from the 1998 and 2000 surveys were pooled and analyzed. This investigation demonstrates that these comprehensive new data provide valuable descriptive information about todays second generation and permit the cautious testing of hypotheses concerning social and economic assimilation. They reveal a great diversity among the second generation depending upon country of origin but, in most comparisons, todays second generation exceed their first-generation parents in educational attainment, occupational achievement and economic status. In many comparisons, second-generation groups have educational attainments exceeding those of third- and higher-generation whites and African Americans. These data refute the hypothesis that todays second generation will languish in poverty. Nevertheless, intergenerational progress was less for persons of Puerto Rican and Mexican heritage than for those of Asian, European or South American heritage.

The meaning and measurement of race in the U.S. census: Glimpses into the future

The 1996 Racial and Ethnic Targeted Test (RAETT) was a “mail-out mail-back” household survey with an experimental design of eight alternative questionnaire formats containing systematic variations in race, instructions, question order, and other aspects of the measurement. The eight different questionnaires were administered to random subsamples of six “targeted” populations: geographic areas with ethnic concentrations of whites, blacks, American Indians, Alaskan natives, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics. The major conclusion is that allowing multiple responses to the “race” question in the 2000 census (and other variations in measurement that were considered in RAETT) had only a slight impact on the measured racial composition of the population. Another finding was a dramatic reduction in nonresponse to the combined race/Hispanic-origin question relative to all other questionnaire formats. We conclude that the concept of “origins” may be closer to the popular understanding of American diversity than is the antiquated concept of race.

Social Assimilation Among American Catholic National Origin Groups.

The current resurgence of interest in white ethnicity largely has taken the form of asserting the continued vitality of ethnic communities. Current scholars, following Gordons (1964) well-known distinction between acculturation and social or structural assimilation, acknowledge the great extent of acculturation but maintain that, nonetheless, social assimilation has not taken place. They claim, in other words, that primary relationships are generally between individuals of like ethnicity. This paper, using data about Catholic national-origin groups in the early 1960s, finds little support for these present assertions of ethnic vitality.

Neighborhood Change under Conditions of Mass Immigration: The New York City Region, 1970-1990.

This article investigates the shifting racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods in the Greater New York metropolitan region in the 1970–1990 period, during which the region has been one of the nations major receiving grounds for new immigrant groups. Neighborhoods are defined in terms of census tracts, and changes in neighborhood composition are tracked with data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 censuses. Four racial/ethnic groups are considered: non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics and Asians. The analysis, which exploits the neighborhood transition table (Denton and Massey, 1991), reveals a somewhat paradoxical set of developments. On the one hand, there is increasing racial and ethnic complexity in neighborhoods throughout the region: more and more neighborhoods contain multiple groups; fewer and fewer are ethnically or racially homogeneous. On the other hand, there is a crosscutting trend: all-minority neighborhoods, occupied by blacks or blacks and Hispanics, are growing in number. We demonstrate further that these two patterns are associated with other characteristics of neighborhoods, such as the median incomes of their households and whether they are located in cities or suburbs.