Ch. 1. Introduction - Who They Are and Why They Come

Immigrants coming to the U.S. have become much more diverse than they have ever been in terms of their cultural, ethnic, economic and demographic characteristics. For one thing, after the WW II the origin of the immigrant population shifted from being predominantly from Europe to Asia and Latin America. Theories developed to explain the earlier pattern of immigration flow and immigrants' adaptation have become increasingly obsolete in this light. It is this diversity that is the focus of this book.

The Origins of Immigration

In spite of the aforementioned diversity, the stereotypical image of immigrants as poor and destitute peasants escaping the hopeless conditions of the origin country remains. The substantive argument the authors develop in this chapter counters this negative stereotype, and place our understanding of what kinds of people immigrants tend to be in proper perspective. That is, on the whole they are more educated than the average population of their origin nations. They are also likely to be of fairly high socioeconomic status in their origin nation. In short, it is not the poorest of the poor who migrate - and the main reason these segments of the population do not is that they lack resources to migrate. This relatively high socioeconomic characteristics of immigrants in their origin nation points to the important insight that it is not the absolute deprivation that drives immigration, but rather the relative deprivation. Further, this relative deprivation does not stem from nowhere but has roots in structural arrangement of the world economy and the pattern of cultural diffusion. That is, the process of global diffusion of the culture and consumption pattern of the developed world to the less well-off to do nations has taught certain segments (those with needed socioeconomic characteristic and technical expertise) in the latter that the former is the place where they could realize the lifestyle and occupational goals they desire.

Immigrants and Their Types

There are basically four different types of immigrants coming to the U.S. contemporaneously, each associated with different pattern of motives as to why they come, socioeconomic characteristics they bring, different pattern of adaptation, and so forth.

Labor Migrants

As their label implies, they are laborers who generally fit most well to the stereotypes held of the immigrants as a whole. This type of immigrants come in three patterns. First, they come as illegal immigrants by simply crossing the border on foot (for great majority of this group are Mexicans), with the help of a smuggler, or overstay with a tourist visa. A second means is to come legally as a relative of a U.S. citizen or legal resident. The third is to come as a contract laborer. It is important to note these labor migrants cannot come in large number unless there is a sizable demand for them in the receiving country. And indeed, in the U.S. there is this demand existing. Employers value the dependability, reliability and willingness to work for low pay under rather strenuous condition highly. It is the congruence of the interests of immigrants who seek a chance to make much larger amount of money than they could in the origin country and those of employers that drive the large influx of labor migrants.

Professional Immigrants

These come legally and, in fact, are the group who are given preferential treatment under the U.S. visa allocation system. They do not migrate because of unemployment back home; rather they come as a result of the discrepancy between available salaries and work conditions in their own countries and those regarded there as acceptable for people with their education. In short, it is the lack of opportunity deemed acceptable for people of high socioeconomic characteristics in the origin nation that is the driving force behind immigration - so the factor is again that of the relative deprivation. Overall, they tend to be remarkably successful economically once in the U.S. They also tend to be inconspicuous - that is, they seldom form tightly knit ethnic communities, and are usually rapidly assimilated.

Entrepreneurial Immigrants

Their advent is largely fortuitous. There is no visa provision that favors them particularly, and usually this group consists of people who have originally arrived for some other ostentatious reasons as political refugee. But anyway, once in the U.S. they have ended up forming an entrepreneurial ethnic enclave, or else they have become "middleman minorities" for low-income groups when concentration of their compatriots is less dense.

Refugees and Asylees

Whether one can attain the status of a political refugee or not is not one of personal choice but has a lot to do with the political choice and expediency of the U.S. government. That is, depending on the relationship between the U.S. government and that of the origin nation, individuals under basically similar condition can be regarded as either a political refugee or illegal aliens coming for economic reasons. This is especially the case for the later generations of political refugees majority of whom are from the rank and file of the origin nation, following the elite segments of the origin country who were designated as political refugees for more overt political reasons.
 

Chapter 7 - Growing Up American

Adaptation to the U.S. society and culture is no longer that of the straightforward, uniform, and gradual acquisition of mainstream middle class American culture by the children of immigrants and consequent loss of the parental culture. Because of the increasing diversity in the demographic, economic and cultural characteristics of immigrants, and the difference in the context of reception for these immigrants (difference in the social environment in terms of the presence/absense of ethnic community, the socioeconomic and cultural characteristics of native Americans in the places immigrants have settled), the pattern of adaptation for the offspring of immigrants has become increasingly complex. Nevertheless, by looking at several important variables as the respective level of acculturation of parents and children, and the social context of reception for immigrants, the several representative path of adaptation immigrants' children might follow can systematically be categorized. It is this task of categorization that is being carried out in this chapter.

First, the authors try to categorize different patterns of "acculturation" - acquisition of culture and language - and subsequent social consequences for parents and children based on the combination of two different variables. These are the respective level of acculturation by parents and children, and the respective level of insertion of parents and children into ethnic community. Using this scheme, first, "consonant acculturation" occurs when both parents and children acculturate at about the same rate. If the family is not inserted deeply into the ethnic community, then the result would likely be that entire family would be fairly acculturated rapidly and they would start seeking acceptance into the mainstream culture. On the other hand, when the family is immersed quite deeply into the ethnic community, selective acculturation is likely to occur. This situation is usually quite ideal. This form represents the preservation of parental language and culture while at the same time making a fairly smooth adaptation to the American culture. In contrast, when children acculturate faster than their parents do, then this situation leads to what the authors call the "dissonant acculturation". If parents are inserted into the ethnic community deeply (with the assumption that children are not, as they are more identified with the American culture), then this situation are likely to lead to the rupture of family ties and children's abandonment of ethnic community. When neither parents nor children have strong ties to the ethnic community, then the result is likely that of the "role reversal" and loss of parental authority.

All in all, this categorization already reveals that the simple picture of the faster the rate of cultural adaptation for children, the better no longer holds true. That is, often selective acculturation, involving preservation of parental language and ethnic community ties, may lead to much better results than the processes of dissonant acculturation.

If the process of acculturation is the first step in adaptation to the American language and culture, then the ending stage of this process may be called assimilation. However, here the authors use this term assimilation to designate not the uniform adaptation by all immigrants to the American society, but rather the opposite. That is, assimilation outcomes have become segmented as a consequence of the interaction between the social context in which children of immigrants grow up in and the acculturation patterns mentioned above. In effect, here the authors try to add the elements of the social context of the reception side in order to complete the categorization of different adaptation patterns for the children of immigrants. The authors note that three outside factors are particularly important in influencing the outcome of the adaptation pattern: race, geographic location, and changes in the structure of labor markets. As the empirical example part after the page 253 shows, these three contextual variables each have important ramifications of their own right. For instance, race seems to be of continuing significance as black immigrants consistently report highest rate of having ever felt discrimination, followed by Asians; while those of the white feature as Cubans have experienced least discrimination. Geographical location has increasingly become one of the crucial factor, as the contact with the native inner-city underclass often results in the unexpected pattern of acculturation for immigrants' children. That is, for them adaptation would start to mean adopting the adversarial outlook toward middle-class culture that the native inner-city underclass of predominantly minority population often have. The ramification is that those children coming to live among the inner-city underclass without the support of ethnic community that can at least partly offset the negative effects of it are particularly bad off. On the other hand, those who do have strong support of ethnic community and parental support increasingly feel the contradiction of conforming to the parental and communal pressure and assimilation into the American (in this case, underclass) culture. Next, changing structure of the economic market means that the middle layer of jobs providing mobility chances is thinning, as jobs become polarized into the higher jobs requiring advanced training and lower, often part-time jobs with almost no chance of mobility. The result is the increasing level of pressure for children to acquire the needed educational attainment within single generation. Finally, the authors map out the systematic categorization of the pattern of adaptation for children by combining the acculturation patterns introduced above and the contextual variables now introduced. This is summarized in the table on p. 252. Two situations are noted of as particularly important for both theoretical and practical reasons: First, when the outside context is highly adverse, consonant acculturation may not lead to a desirable outcome. Conversely, even with a hostile external context, selective acculturation can lead to upward mobility - as a cohesive community can still marshall enough resources to avoid role reversal and provide encouragement required for educational achievement.