Victor Nee

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.

Understanding the diversity of immigrant incorporation: a forms-of-capital model

This article develops the concept of forms of capital as the basis of a model of immigrant incorporation. The model sets out the manner in which the social, financial, and human-cultural capital of immigrant families predict the sorting of immigrants into various labour market trajectories. For example, immigrants arriving with low stocks of financial and human-cultural capital are most likely to find employment in the ethnic economy, whereas immigrants with human-cultural capital that is fungible in the host society tend to gain employment in the broader mainstream economy. Event history analysis is employed to demonstrate the model on four patterns of job mobility common among immigrants: entrepreneurship, professional-managerial-technical jobs, employment in the public sector, and semi- or low-skilled factory work and low-paid service jobs. The findings show that the mix of capital immigrants arrive with, and subsequently accumulate, shapes the trajectory of their incorporation into the host society. The research is based on a field study of Asian immigrants in the greater Los Angeles area.

Comment: Controversies and Evidence in the Market Transition Debate

Despite repeated attempts to integrate competing perspectives (Szelenyi and Kostello 1996; Nee and Matthews 1996), the ongoing market transition debate has shown no signs of resolution. Instead, the 1996 AJS market transition symposium seems to have created more controversy than it settled (Nee 1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Oberschall 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Walder 1996; Fligstein 1996; Szelenyi and Kostello 1996). And subsequent studies continue to reach nearly opposite conclusions (cf. Bian and Logan 1996; Gerber and Hout 1998; with Brainerd 1998; Nee and Cao, in press). When arguments become polarized, it often signals that divisions are falsely drawn (Bates 1997). Although originally made in another context, this observation is applicable here. As principals in this lively debate, we believe that clarification and reevaluation are essential for moving toward a reconciliation of competing viewpoints. In this comment we therefore identify the central issues in the controversy and provide an overall assessment of existing empirical evidence

Problems in Resolving the Enclave Economy Debate

D ebates in the social sciences frequently go unresolved they persist as long as the debating parties sustain independent research programs and secure outlets for their publications (Alexander and Columy forthcoming). In part, this reflects the discursive character of theoretical discourse between and within academic traditions and schools of thought. Yet even when social scientists attempt to verify hypotheses through empirical tests, resolution of differences are often difficult to achieve. Debate over the enclave economy hypothesis exemplifies this dilemma. Notwithstanding, we believe that the current exchange moves the enclave economy debate toward an empirically-grounded resolution. Portes and Jensen (1989) considered four hypotheses in their defense of the enclave economy hypothesis. The first and third of these hypotheses address issues that were previously debated in the ASR. Our comments focus on Hypotheses I and III.

Institutional Change and Economic Growth in China: The View from the Villages

The maoist era of egalitarian collectivism has decidedly come to an end. Although some villages persist in developing cooperative enterprises, the collective is being transformed from a dominant organizational form to one that plays a subsidiary role to the private household sector. In effect, the collective has been relegated to the position formerly held by the private sector. Everywhere the emphasis is on economic growth based on household production and marketlike forces. What is the relationship between these institutional changes and economic growth?

Entrepreneurs Under Uncertainty: An Economic Experiment in China

This study reports findings from the first large-scale experiment investigating whether entrepreneurs differ from other people in their willingness to expose themselves to various forms of uncertainty. A stratified random sample of 700 chief executive officers from the Yangzi delta region in China is compared to 200 control group members. Our findings suggest that in economic decisions, entrepreneurs are more willing to accept strategic uncertainty related to multilateral competition and trust. However, entrepreneurs do not differ from ordinary people when it comes to nonstrategic forms of uncertainty, such as risk and ambiguity. This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics.

Economic Sociology and New Institutional Economics

When economic sociology appeared on the academic scene in the mid-1980s its interactions with New Institutional Economics were soon plentiful as well as productive. Especially the ideas of Oliver Williamson and Douglass North were often discussed and found useful. That this was a fruitful interaction is exemplified not least by the fact that Williamson’s notion of “hybrid” was developed in response to comments on his distinction between markets and hierarchies by some sociologists. The concept of “transaction cost” soon became part of the sociological language, and sociologists suddenly seemed more receptive to ideas of economists than they had been for a very long time.

A Theory of Innovation: Market Transition, Property Rights, and Innovative Activity

The aim of this paper is to specify a theory to explain why transitions to a market economy cause a shift to a higher level of innovation. Marketization increases the power of economic actors relative to political actors, increases inter-firm competition, creates new opportunities for entrepreneurship, and subsequently motivates innovative activity. For our empirical application, we focus on Chinas transition economy, which offers a broad range of institutional environments to examine the relation between market transition and increasing innovative activity by entrepreneurs and firms.

Learning to Trust: From Relational Exchange to Generalized Trust in China

Where does generalized trust—that is, the inclination to place trust in strangers—come from? Our claim is that in economic action, sources of generalized trust may not differ much from the sources of personalized trust. Contrary to a common assumption of a sharp distinction between personalized and generalized trust, we assert a likely spillover effect from relational exchange to a person’s expectations in interacting with an anonymous other. Our research integrates behavioral measures elicited by a novel incentivized trust game with survey data using a random sample of 540 entrepreneurs of private industrial firms in the Yangzi delta region of China. We show that entrepreneurs with more experience in relational exchange display greater trust in strangers. Likewise, we find robust evidence of a positive association between beliefs in the effectiveness of community business norms and generalized trust.

Relational exchange and generalized trust in China

Where does generalized trust, that is, the inclination to place trust in strangers, come from? Our claim is that in economic action sources of generalized trust may not differ much from the sources...