Dreams Fulfilled, Dreams Shattered: Determinants of Segmented Assimilation in the Second Generation

Abstract

We summarize prior theories on the adaptation process of the contemporary immigrant second generation as a prelude to presenting additive and interactive models showing the impact of family variables, school contexts and academic outcomes on the process. For this purpose, we regress indicators of educational and occupational achievement in early adulthood on predictors measured three and six years earlier. The Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), used for the analysis, allows us to establish a clear temporal order among exogenous predictors and the two dependent variables. We also construct a Downward Assimilation Index (DAI), based on six indicators and regress it on the same set of predictors. Results confirm a pattern of segmented assimilation in the second generation, with a significant proportion of the sample experiencing downward assimilation. Predictors of the latter are the obverse of those of educational and occupational achievement. Significant interaction effects emerge between these predictors and early school contexts, defined by different class and racial compositions. Implications of these results for theory and policy are examined.

From Parent to Child? Transmission of Educational Attainment Within Immigrant Families: Methodological Considerations

“…On the one hand, Alba and Nee developed an analytical model that distinguished individual-level socioeconomic mobility, intermarriage, and residential assimilation (boundary crossing) from collective changes in the salience of ethnicity for immigrant groups as a whole (boundary blurring or shifting). On the other hand, segmented assimilation scholars (Haller et al 2011;Portes and Rumbaut 2001;Zhou et al 2008) have distinguished individual-and group-level processes and demonstrated how opportunities for socioeconomic advancement for immigrant families are contingent on the characteristics and opportunities available to their ethnic group as a whole: the context of reception. For immigrant groups on the upper end of the bifurcated educational distribution, most of whom enjoy positive or neutral societal perception and documented legal status, the status transmission process is expected to unfold in a pattern similar to that of the native population.…”

“…Some of these studies have focused on the "immigrant effect," comparing the children of immigrants to children of natives of the same (pan)ethnicity and generally documenting better outcomes among the foreign-born and children of the foreign-born (Harris et al 2008;Thomas 2009;Xie and Greenman 2011). Others have focused on context of reception and cultural impacts, comparing the children of immigrants of different national origins; these studies have found large differences in the educational outcomes of Asian and Hispanic immigrants, for instance, or between the children of immigrants with more positive versus more negative contexts of reception (Haller et al 2011;Kasinitz et al 2008;Waters et al 2010). Finally, many authors have sought to find the specific mechanisms underlying variation in educational outcomes among the children of immigrants, employing national origins merely as controls and focusing instead on gender (Feliciano 2012), neighborhood context (Xie and Greenman 2011), or attitudes and peer school context (Greenman 2013).…”

“…Instead, researchers relied on aggregate data, using national origin or self-reported ethnicity to link generations by regressing the average years of educational attainment of the children of immigrants on the average years of educational attainment of immigrants of the same origins in previous survey years (Borjas 1993(Borjas , 2006Card 2005;Card et al 2000;Park and Myers 2010;Smith 2003). Even as individual-level data on immigrants and their children became available, the majority of the literature on second-generation attainment has focused on differences in attainment controlling for parental background rather than examining the relationship between parental and child educational attainment itself (for research from the past five years, for instance, see Feliciano 2012;Greenman 2013;Haller et al 2011;Harris et al 2008;Kasinitz et al 2008;Keller and Tillman 2008;Thomas 2009;Waters et al 2010;Xie and Greenman 2011).…”

Age at immigration and crime in Stockholm using sibling comparisons

“…Instead, the likelihood of crime is "largely [dependent] on the ways that family and ethnic community resources are deployed to confront the challenges faced by second-generation youths" (Portes and Rumbaut, 2006, p. 255;Haller et al, 2011;Rumbaut, 1997;Zhou, 1997). According to SAT, the family can mobilize against negative forces, or is perhaps privileged enough to avoid them entirely, and impede criminality.…”

Connecting Transnationalism to the Classroom and to Theories of Immigrant Student Adaptation

“…Even as recent empirical work showed the results of a DAI or Downward Assimilation Index (Haller, Portes, & Lynch, 2011), we believe it is important for those of us who study and work with immigrant populations to recognize transnational practices and their significance. Segmented assimilation, and its accompanying DAI, often obscures this.…”