Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary ImmigrationHarvard University Press, 2009 M06 30 - 384 pages In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream. |
Contents
1 | |
Assimilation Theory Old and New | 17 |
Assimilation in Practice The Europeans and East Asians | 67 |
Was Assimilation Contingent on Specific Historical Conditions? | 124 |
The Background to Contemporary Immigration | 167 |
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acculturation African Americans Alejandro Portes American society ancestry areas Asian Americans Asian immigrants assimilation Berkeley bilingual boundaries California Press capital census changes Chicago Chinese City contemporary immigration Cuban cultural descendants diversity Dominican Douglas Massey eastern European economic enclave English ethnic and racial ethnic economy ethnic groups ethnic identity German gration Hispanics human-capital immi immigrant groups Indian individuals institutional intermarriage interracial marriage Irish Italian Italian American Japanese Japanese Americans Jews Korean labor market labor migrants language large numbers Latinos mainstream majority marriage Mexican Mexican Americans migration minority Nancy Denton Nathan Glazer nation native-born neighborhoods nomic non-Hispanic whites nonwhite norms pattern percent population race refugees regions residence residential Richard Alba Rumbaut segregation social mobility socioeconomic southern and eastern structure suburban tion transnationalism twentieth century undocumented United University Press urban Victor Nee Vietnamese white Americans white ethnic World War II York