Prospects for the children of immigrants in the twenty-first century

During the first decade of the twenty-first century, immigrants continued to significantly contribute to the population growth in many developed nations in Europe, North America, and Australia. Although immigrants make up nearly 20-25 percent of the population in countries like Australia, Switzerland, and Canada, the United States has the largest number of foreign-born persons with 3.5 times more immigrants than the country with the second largest immigrant population (UN 2009). The United States is home to nearly 40 million foreign-born people according to the 2010 American Community Survey, which translates to more than one in eight persons. More importantly, almost one in four children in the United States are living with foreign-born parents. In some states with a significant immigrant population like California, nearly half of all children live in immigrant families (Mather 2009). Beyond the demographic importance of immigrants and their children in the United States, much of the previous research on the children of immigrants and their assimilation has been conducted in the US context. Therefore, much of this chapter will focus on the socioeconomic prospects for the children of immigrants and the assimilation literature in the US context. With so many children living in immigrant families, researchers and policy-makers are

interested in the various aspects of their well-being and achievements in the present as well as in the longer term. To appreciate the contexts that directly produce or at least influence these outcomes, it is particularly important to better understand the families in which they grow up, the schools in which they begin their socioeconomic attainment, and the community contexts in which they live. The primary focus of this chapter is on all children of immigrants, but it is important to note that there are differences between immigrant children who are foreign born and have a migration experience of their own and the second generation, namely the native-born children of immigrants. The children of immigrants today may face much of the same challenges and opportunities as their

predecessors in the past century; however, the twenty-first century may also introduce circumstances that diverge from the past. The past century of research has shown that, compositionally, the post-1965 children of immigrants in the United States differed from those growing up during the earlier half of the century. They came from racially and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds with the vast majority arriving from Latin America and Asia as well as increasingly from

other parts of the world. Unlike the turn of the twentieth century, immigrant parents are arriving with increasingly varied immigration statuses (temporary worker, undocumented, or refugee/ asylee status) which fundamentally impacts the life chances of their children. More specifically, the circumstances for the turn of the twentieth-century children of immi-

grants differ from those of the post-1965 era in several ways. First, they entered in a relatively narrow window of time with most arriving during the 1900s and 1910s. The Johnson and Reed Act of 1924 ushered in the silent era of immigration when very few immigrants arrived for several decades. Therefore, there is a distinct cohort of the second generation that came of age together through the same economic and social circumstances. On the other hand, among those in the post-1965 era, there is a constant replenishment of immigrants and their children. Therefore, it is difficult to make generalizations about the new second generation because different cohorts are facing different contexts and socioeconomic circumstances. Second, earlier children of immigrants came of age at a time of rapid economic and educa-

tion expansion in the United States. On the other hand, post-1965 children of immigrants have been arriving or growing up during an era of economic restructuring toward an hour-glass economy. Zhou (1997) argues that there are very few opportunities within this economic structure for upward mobility. Most recently, children of immigrants are growing up during an era of intensified globalization and continued economic restructuring. Many scholars have speculated that the changing economic and social contexts in the last few decades generate more socioeconomic uncertainty for immigrant families and their children. The sociohistorical context’s impact on the socioeconomic prospects of the children of

immigrants is not only important in the United States but in any country experiencing mass immigration and settlement. For instance, Crul and Vermeulen (2003) find that different European national contexts of reception can yield different socioeconomic outcomes for the Turkish second generation. The Turks may have higher education levels in France than in Germany, which reflects the broader differences in educational attainment between the two countries. However, the unemployment rate of second-generation Turks is also higher in France than in Germany because the German apprenticeship system yields higher employment among youth. This kind of comparative or cross-national research provides invaluable insights into the importance of the context of reception. As Boyd (2002) points out in her research on the second generation in Canada, it is with cross-national research that we begin to uncover differences in structural contexts and their consequences on the children of immigrants as well as on the applicability of theories of assimilation across time and space. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the children of immigrants are once again

situated in a unique context that may again alter their prospects for long-term socioeconomic attainment, acculturation, or assimilation. This chapter first lays out the various ways in which immigration scholars have conceptualized the socioeconomic prospects for children of immigrants. Second, I review the various contexts in which these children are being socialized and to what extent they may impact the various aspects of their well-being and prospects for socioeconomic advancement or upward mobility. Third, I examine the ways in which the familial, social, and geographic contexts that the immigrant children of today are diverging from contexts of the past.

As the second generation of the turn of the twentieth-century immigration era in the United States was coming of age, many scholars began to speculate how immigrant generations would eventually fare. Park and Burgess (1921) offered an ecological model of assimilation that assumed

each successive generation would be more culturally, socioeconomically, and spatially integrated with the mainstream. Their concept of assimilation is nested in cultural terms as spatial (residential) and temporal dimensions measure the pace of assimilation. Warner and Srole (1945) further expanded this linear upward progression of immigrants, or straight-line assimilation, by going beyond culture to explicitly include racial and ethnic subsystems in mediating the pace of assimilation. They linked the upward social mobility of eight immigrant groups to assimilation with “ethnic-ness” dissipating especially for the second generation. However, ethnicity was still defined in very cultural terms (religion and language) with upward mobility necessarily meaning becoming less ethnic. They also distinguished race from ethnicity by arguing that race groups least like white “old Americans” may be “doomed to a permanent inferior ranking” (Warner and Srole 1945: 284). This distinction becomes quite salient as immigrants went from being ethnically diverse in the beginning of the twentieth century to being racially diverse in the latter part of the century. Gordon (1964) refined this straight-line assimilation theory by laying out seven stages or

types of assimilation. They include cultural or behavioral assimilation (change of cultural pattern to those of host society), structural assimilation (large-scale entrance into cliques, clubs, and institutions of host society, on primary group level), marital assimilation (large-scale intermarriage), identificational assimilation (development of sense of peoplehood based exclusively on host society), attitude receptional assimilation (absence of prejudice), behavior receptional assimilation (absence of discrimination), and civic assimilation (absence of value and power conflict). Distinguishing acculturation from structural assimilation, Gordon conceived that acculturation could occur without being subsequently followed by structural assimilation. This partitioning of how immigrant generations assimilate becomes particularly useful in conceptualizing how the children of immigrants can grow up completely immersed in the host country’s culture and yet can remain unassimilated. According to this straight-line assimilation model, each subsequent generation should

experience more upward mobility and assimilation than the previous generation. However, many researchers consistently found evidence to the contrary. In fact, some researchers observed that the second generation is not doing much better than the first generation in what has been termed by Herbert Gans (1992) as the “second-generation decline.” This decline occurs as the children of immigrants become Americanized enough to expect upward mobility out of lowpaying, low-status jobs that their parents hold. However, with pervasive economic restructuring and limitations to their educational achievement, their expectations clash with the kinds of jobs that are made available or accessible to them. These children of immigrants do not see opportunities in the mainstream economy and yet they are not willing to take the same jobs as their parents leaving them to be marginalized and excluded from upward mobility. The mismatch between rising aspirations and socioeconomic opportunities may lead to a “second-generation revolt” (Perlmann and Waldinger 1997) by which these children of immigrants might end up with a chronically tenuous position in the labor market, engage in criminal activities or drug/ alcohol abuse, or other detrimental activities. A poignant example of this is illustrated by the 2005 riots in France by second-generation youth who were particularly vulnerable in a labor market riddled by high unemployment (Silberman 2011). Beyond unmet aspirations and expectations, there are other factors that may also hinder upward mobility or assimilation. Growing up in poor or unsafe neighborhoods, having undocumented status, or being racialized in certain ways can contribute to what has also been termed downward mobility or downward assimilation (Gans 1992; Portes and Zhou 1993; Waters 1999). With evidence refuting the straight-line assimilation model and with findings such as second-

generation decline, Portes and Zhou (1993) introduced the segmented assimilation theory that is widely accepted and used in the immigration literature today. Instead of assuming that

upward mobility is experienced by all children of immigrants, Portes and Zhou argue that the new second generation is incorporated in the US system of stratification that tracks them on divergent trajectories. Three possible patterns of adaptation are most likely to occur among contemporary immigrants and their children. One of them replicates the time-honored portrayal of growing acculturation and parallel integration into the white middle class; a second leads straight into the opposite direction to permanent poverty and assimilation into the underclass; still a third associates rapid economic advancement with deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s values and solidarity (Portes and Zhou 1993: 82). Segmented assimilation theory highlights the importance of the context of reception or what they refer to as the modes of incorporation. The outcomes for the children of immigrants are contingent upon the policies of the host government, the strength and resources of the co-ethnic community, and the values and prejudices of the receiving society (Portes and Zhou 1993). In earlier conceptions of assimilation, the context of reception was largely assumed or ignored but Portes and Zhou contend that the locational context as well as race-ethnicity varies across immigrant groups. Therefore, upward mobility and entrance into the white middle class can no longer be assumed for the post-1965 children of immigrants. Alba and Nee (2003) also acknowledge the importance of the context of reception or what

they refer to as mainstream society. However, in their formulation of a new theory of assimilation, the mainstream is also continually altered by immigrants and ultimately, assimilation is a two-way process in which both immigrants and the mainstream change in response to the other. Like other researchers who track the socioeconomic attainment of the children of immigrants (Kasinitz et al. 2008; Park and Myers 2010; Alba and Waters 2011), Alba and Nee (2003) find consistent evidence of upward mobility. Simultaneously, they acknowledge that racial stratification persists in the American context. They just question the extent of its rigidity as suggested by Portes and Zhou (1993). Lastly, Rubén Rumbaut (1997) points out that the concept of assimilation is simultaneously

both descriptive and prescriptive with the implicit assumption that assimilation always produces positive outcomes for immigrants and their children. Rumbaut explains that inherently within the assimilation perspective, there is a “patronizing ethnocentrism built into assumptions about immigrant adjustment that equated ‘foreign’ with ‘inferior’ and the ways of the ‘host or ‘core’ society and culture with ‘superior’” (1997: 487). He describes several examples in which assimilation produces negative results for immigrants or their children and these are referred to as a paradox of assimilation. One of the most well-known examples of this is the epidemiological paradox where numerous studies have shown that immigrants may arrive healthier than the mainstream population. With increasing duration of US residence, immigrant and especially their children may begin to adopt the eating habits and sedentary lifestyles of the mainstream which then results in the deterioration of their health. Other areas include mental health and ethnic self-identity. The conceptions, extensions, and revisions of assimilation theory affords researchers the theor-

etical framework with which to understand the socioeconomic prospects of the children of immigrants as they come of age in the twenty-first century. More recent theoretical contributions have largely departed from earlier conceptions of assimilation that were explicitly normative and prescriptive. Instead, they provide the conceptual tools to understand and explain the patterns of change for immigrant generations with the changing contexts of reception.