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Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation: The
American Experience
Author(s): Gary Gerstle
Source: International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 78 (FALL 2010), pp. 110-117
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Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on
Immigrant Political Incorporation: The American
Experience
Gary Gerstle
Vanderbilt University
Abstract
This essay offers a historical overview of processes of immigrant political incorporation in
the United States. It identifies three dimensions of incorporation- legal, cultural, and
institutional - and argues that the unevenness of progress among these three
dimensions has rendered the process of incorporation fraught and frequently marked
by contradiction. It also distinguishes between "acquiescent" and "transformational"
modes of incorporation and stresses that the latter, though often perceived as
threatening by the native-born, is often the more enduring and meaningful way of
becoming American. Finally, it assesses the prospects for incorporation among
immigrants in the United States today.
Political incorporation is the process through which immigrants and their descendants come to think of themselves as Americans with political rights and
with a voice in politics, should they choose to exercise it. It is a process that,
while central to the republic's past, present, and future, has been complex and
frequently marked by contradiction. On the one hand, the United States has
incorporated tens of millions of immigrants across its history, a significant
achievement. On the other hand, the United States has almost always barred
some immigrant groups from either entering the country or from becoming citi-
zens. Groups of native-born Americans, meanwhile, have often discriminated
against members of racially or religiously "suspect" immigrant groups, making
the process of political incorporation more fraught, and more complicated,
than it otherwise would have been.
Political incorporation operates in three dimensions: legal, cultural, and
institutional. The legal dimension entails immigrants becoming citizens of the
United States and thereby gaining the right to vote, to sit on juries, to serve in
the military, and to hold elective office. Citizenship in the United States has
always been relatively easy to acquire for immigrants defined as white, but for
immigrant groups defined as non white, citizenship was often out of reach.
Between 1870 and 1952, for example, this category included immigrants from
East and South Asia (but not from Latin America), effectively barring them
from the most elementary dimension of political incorporation.1
The cultural dimension refers to the acculturative process through which
individuals come to feel as though they belong in and to the United States
International Labor and Working-Class History
No. 78, Fall 2010, pp. 110-117
© International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc., 2010
doi:10.1017/S0147547910000165
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The American Experience 111
and can play a part in its democratic p
formal naturalization and political chan
itical party, voting, and enlisting in the m
more multifaceted and diffuse ways
exposure to American culture; among t
absorbing both the manifest curricu
latent one (introducing schoolchildr
beauty, dress, male-female courtship, m
pating in American holidays, both s
Fourth, and, at one point, Memorial
Super Bowl, American Idol, and spring
vering powerful affinities between Am
one's Old World roots. Because of th
this process, it has sometimes unfolded
surprised both immigrants and their
United States, for example, the childre
English more quickly and thoroughly
this second-generation Mexican linguis
sion of incorporation can often operat
processes. It has almost always involved
their children choosing to embrace Am
(public or private authorities compellin
The institutional dimension of politi
tutions that immigrants and their o
which they seek political influence.
sorts of institutions; so are political ma
oped by professional politicians betw
politics through alliances with private
ethnic constituencies on the other. Imm
institutions such as labor unions and small business associations to voice their
political concerns, and they were also active in establishing new ethnic or
religious institutions to promote their interests. Churches, synagogues, and
mosques have sometimes functioned in this role as have fraternal, civil rights,
and lobbying organizations. Sometimes these institutions have worked to
integrate immigrants and their offspring into established patterns of American
politics. At other times they operated in ways that have shaken up and even
transformed those established patterns. We thus need to be alert to both
"acquiescent" and "transformational" modes of incorporation. Native-born
Americans can be quick to celebrate the acquiescent and condemn the transformational forms of incorporation. But the latter is often the more enduring and
meaningful way in which immigrants become Americans.
Both acquiescent and transformational modes of incorporation arise out of
situations in which immigrants possess formal citizenship rights but, for reasons
of religion, nativity, or race, have not been fully accepted as Americans. Mae
Ngai has used the phrase alien citizen to describe Japanese Americans and
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112
ILWCH,
Chinese
78,
Fall
Americans
2010
caught
in
groups - Mexican American
even Irish Americans - who
rights and citizenship status
rights
The
and
membership
quiescent
in
response
the
to
c
and marginality as a fact of l
reflects a calculation that one
ing will only make things wo
responses of eastern and sou
Restriction Act of 1924 and
War internment. Some schol
repeated
challenges to their wh
early in the twentieth centur
away from politics.4
Acquiescent incorporation s
ability to enforce a submiss
The American Jewish Comm
and the League of United L
organization) all represented
assimilated immigrants/ethni
ations were keen to show mai
hard-working
and
patriotic
Within their own groups, the
they believed were not doing
They invariably came up again
not want to be Americanized at all or at least not Americanized on the
terms that these organizations set forth. Projects of transformational incorpor-
ation often emerged first out of these intraimmigrant and intraethnic group
struggles.5
One example of such a project is the 1930s labor movement, whose ranks
were full of immigrants and their descendants - Irish, German, Italian, Jewish,
Polish, Greek, Arab, French-Canadian, Mexican, and others - united by their
poverty and marginality and by their conviction that, as Americans, they
deserved better. The Great Depression had weakened the power of traditional
ethnic elites within these communities, allowing the immigrant masses more
autonomy in fashioning their American identities. In the labor organizations
they joined, ethnics were encouraged to infuse the first principles of the
American republic - freedom, democracy, and opportunity - with insurgent
and working-class meaning.6
Ethnic workers mobilized not just in unions but in politics. Millions of
immigrant Americans and their children voted for the first time in the 1930s,
and most of them cast their votes for the Democratic candidate, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. They not only helped to carry him to victory in four elections,
but also helped to shift the balance of power in the United States from
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The American Experience 113
conservatism to liberalism, and from a
one that celebrated the role of governm
seemed unable to right itself. Rhetoric
and incorporative language of America
These voters also began to engineer a
conceptions of belonging by insisting
claim on the United States as did th
settlers who had wanted to make the United States a Protestant land. The
New Deal did not self-consciously promote religious pluralism or multicultura
ism and did not describe its supporters as a "rainbow coalition" of differe
ethnic and racial groups. Indeed, in important ways that I and others ha
written about, the New Deal reinvigorated older cultural and racial prejudices
The groups pouring into the Democratic Party were a diverse lot, however, a
their very presence began to disrupt accepted ways of defining and representin
the American nation.8
This disruption became abundantly clear during the Second World Wa
when the dominant and most honored image of the nation became that of th
multiethnic platoon, with its Protestant, Irish, Polish, Italian, and Jewish soldie
fighting side by side to preserve American democracy and freedom. And even
that platoon image frequently reaffirmed the identity of America as a racial
supremacist society, the lines dividing race from race, and full citizens from
alien citizens, had become unstable. In these and other ways, the incorporatio
of immigrants had convulsed and changed American politics and culture.9 On
sign of this convulsion was the delegitimation of racial barriers to citizenship an
of prevailing forms of alien citizenship, including Jim Crow.10 Such convulsio
reveal that the labor movement and the New Deal were sparking a transform
tional moment of incorporation. We can interpret in similar ways the multicul
tural upheavals of the 1970s and 1980s that substituted an ideal of cultu
diversity for one of cultural homogeneity as a defining feature of America.1
These incorporative moments promised not only inclusion, but also transform
ation. They allowed, even encouraged, immigrants who became Americans
become advocates for changing America. In the process, they generated unexpectedly powerful cultural and political affiliations to America. They gave imm
grants and their offspring reason to believe in the idea of America and to enga
deeply in its democracy.
Those worried about the incorporation of today's immigrants, in addition
to underestimating the complexities of past incorporation, commonly identif
four issues that they regard as new: first, that the "new immigrants" are m
different from "Americans" than past waves of immigrants have been (an argu
ment strongly associated with the work of Samuel Huntington);12 second, th
the United States has never confronted a problem of illegal immigration on a
scale that we face today; third, that our global age has rendered the pursuit
citizenship an instrumental process, devoid of incorporative meaning; an
fourth, that the institutions that once guided the incorporation of immigran
have declined, and that no replacements have arisen to take their place.
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114
ILWCH,
78,
Fall
2010
The first issue can be addr
history is full of groups wh
because their cultural and/o
too great a distance from t
groups includes the Irish, ea
in the early twentieth cent
charge of unassimilability h
again
in
regard
to
today's
imm
The second issue, the prese
documented immigrants, is
full of hazards. Maintaining th
itical shadow land damages bo
democracy. A democratic syst
the population is categorically
course,
the
that
American
today's
undocum
republic,
due
to
t
mission; and it can be argued
borders. But even if these arg
to the presence of so many
United States? Maintaining the
caste status to soft-caste statu
interests of a society that v
The mere contemplation of
extraordinary
to
see
that
already
hardships
the
deeply
lives
woven
and
of
d
the
into
the
just of the immigrants but
better served by a policy of
should
start by opening to im
what legislators have called,
a path for existing undocum
bilateral negotiations with M
position to regularize the f
Mexican border.14
Some who might otherwise f
such a policy because they fea
such a path only for instrume
social welfare benefits in the U
tation;
to
enjoy
the
persona
provide. The deeper anxiety is
ship rights not to incorporate
their
affiliation
Southern
with
California
their
would
fig
and Miami would be transfo
incorporation would not lea
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The American Experience 115
incorporation - those that occur in the
grants culturally and emotionally to th
We should not underestimate, even i
grative power of the United States at a
gies that immigrants' engagement with
former is evident in the fact that the c
today possess levels of fluency in Engli
of immigrants; by no means have we p
tation as a graveyard for foreign langu
The latter - the incorporative energy
is abundantly clear in the experience of
often thought that they themselves we
ist reasons: to protect themselves and t
stop the teaching of foreign languages
deportation; to reverse restrictive le
from their home countries from ever e
sion from desirable jobs and careers. In
fighting for their rights as citizens, h
citizens" deepened their engagement w
To take one example from that earlie
Smith, the grandson of immigrants, p
immigrant communities throughout th
an America that had chosen an Irish
American family, as their leader. They
become a different place - and their
an example from our own period, the
witnessed a hard-fought struggle ove
the exclusive use of English in all o
broad coalition of pro-immigration for
cant margin. From a distance, this def
the right of immigrants to be foreign
that the struggle brought together m
area, some immigrant, some native bor
and the participation in a broad coa
enabled many more of Nashville's recen
could become their enduring home. Th
well be to promote, rather than stymi
the city's foreign-born populations - an
grant incorporation in the city.18
I am not suggesting that Nashville
America, is at the cusp of an effortless
ing America. Incorporation is rarely eff
It requires not just changes from imm
This two-way process is not, however,
incorporation often works best when i
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116
ILWCH,
78,
Fall
2010
What about the fear, then,
incorporation - political part
police
its
Obama's
tics
as
an
strong,
borders
2008
and
election
integrative
as
playing an
that form
they
do
enf
demons
process
in
Los
An
important incorpo
their memberships
have shown great potential
variety of local and regiona
strong base among multiple
Clinton's presidency, and cont
istrations, the state has shown
moral, on immigrant populati
the incorporation of immigra
There are, however, reasons
institutions, especially in rega
severe, and many groups, nat
a
bleak
employment
situatio
stuck in jobs that are harsh, p
for institutions to protest thi
it.
If
and
ation
and
such
institutions
ethnic
and
work
origins,
found
workers
the
to
failure
avert.
fail
in
to
their
of
ar
af
effort
Economic
immigrant
issues;
consequences
for
i
but
the
incorporation.20
NOTES
1. For the laws of citizenship, see Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design: Immigr
Policy in the Fashioning of America (New York, 2006); Gary Gerstle, "America's Encou
with Immigrants," in In Search of Progressive America, ed. Michael Kazin, Frans Beck
Menno Hurenkamp (Philadelphia, 2008), 37-53.
2. Gary Gerstle, "Liberty, Coercion, and the Making of Americans," Journal of Amer
History 84 (September 1997), 524-58; Paula Fass, "'Americanizing' the High Sc
New York in the 1930s and '40s," in Outside In: Minorities and the Transformati
American Education, ed. Paula Fass (New York, 1989), 73-111; David Tyack, "Scho
Citizens: The Politics of Civic Education from 1790 to 1990," in E Pluribus Unum?
Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation, ed. Gary
Gerstle and John Mollenkopf (New York, 2001), 331-70; Ruben G. Rumbaut, "Assimilation
and Its Discontents: Ironies and Paradoxes," in The Handbook of International Migration:
The American Experience, ed. Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind
(New York, 1999), 182-85; Alejandro Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, Legacies: The Story of
the Immigrant Second Generation (Berkeley, 2001), 113-46; Tamar Jacoby, "The New
Immigrants: A Progress Report," in Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and
What It Means to Be American, ed. Tamar Jacoby (New York, 2004), 23-24.
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The American Experience 117
3. Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal
(Princeton, NJ, 2004).
4. Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps U
(New York, 1971); Gary Gerstle, American
Century (Princeton, NJ, 2001), chapter 3; Ra
CT, 2006), 45-64.
5. Stuart Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice: A
(New York, 1997); Scott Kurashige, The Sh
Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los
Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mex
(Berkeley, CA, 1995); John J. Bukowczyk, "T
Corporate Control, Americanization, and t
New Jersey, 1915-1925," Labor History 25 (W
6. Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism
1960 (New York, 1989); Lizabeth Cohen, Mak
1919-1939 (New York, 1990); George Sanch
Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Ange
Out of This Furnace (1941; Pittsburgh, PA, 1
Laboring of American Culture in the Twentiet
7. Ibid.; Kristi Andersen, The Creation of
1979).
8. Gerstle, American Crucible, chapters 4-5; Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a
Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998);
Denning, The Cultural Front; Svonkin, Jews Against Prejudice; Kevin M. Schultz,
'"Favoritism Cannot Be Tolerated': Challenging Protestantism in America's Public Schools
and Promoting the Neutral State," American Quarterly 59 (2007): 565-91.
9. Gerstle, American Crucible, chapter 5; Denning, The Cultural Front.
10. On challenges to Jim Crow and racial inequality in the South and the North m the
1930s and 1940s, see Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil
Rights, 1919-1950 (New York, 2008) and Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The
Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North (New York, 2008).
11. For one such interpretation, see Gerstle, American Crucible, chapter 8 and epilogue.
12. Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity
(New York, 2004).
13. For an argument in favor of a guest worker program framed in progressive terms, see
Alejandro Portes, "The Fence to Nowhere," The American Prospect, September 24, 2007, http://
www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fence_to_nowhere, accessed June 10, 2010.
14. For an argument for the importance of bilateral negotiations, see Jeff Faux, "What to
Really Do about Immigration," The American Prospect, January 17, 2008, http://www.prospect.
org/cs/articles?article=what_to_really_do_about_immigration, accessed June 10, 2010.
15. For an intriguing exploration of the influence of globalization on the cultural and affec-
tive experience of immigrants in contemporary America, see Peggy Levitt, God Needs No
Passport: Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape (New York, 2009).
16. See Portes and Rumbaut, Legacies, 113-46.
17. Andersen, The Creation of a Democratic Majority.
18. A comprehensive account of the Nashville English-only battle has yet to be written,
but one can glimpse the different groups involved and the issues at stake in the reporting
done by local newspapers. See, for example, Chris Echegaray, "Nashville's English-Only
Measure Defeated," The Tennessean, January 23, 2009, http://www.tennessean.com/article/
20090123/PROMO/101230008, accessed June 10, 2010.
19. Some of the arguments for this point of view are set forth in Gary Gerstle and John
Mollenkopf, "The Political Incorporation of Immigrants, Then and Now," in E Pluribus
Unum? ed. Gerstle and Mollenkopf, 1-30.
20. For a classic statement about the effects of poverty on the assimilation of the children
of immigrants in contemporary America, see Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou, "The New
Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants," Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (November 1993): 74-96.
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McGill-Queen's University Press
Chapter Title: Assimilation and Its Discontented
Chapter Author(s): Kay Deaux
Book Title: Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America
Book Subtitle: Newcomers in Turbulent Times
Book Editor(s): VICTORIA M. ESSES, DONALD E. ABELSON
Published by: McGill-Queen's University Press. (2017)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1w6tdzn.10
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pa r t t h r e e
Socio-Cultural Aspects
of North American Immigration
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6
Assimilation and Its Discontented
Kay Deaux
introduction
The United States is, like Canada, a country defined in fundamental
ways by immigration, both past and present. Yet, although immigration has always been with us, there are important differences between immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century and
immigration now at the beginning of the twenty-first century. After
briefly reviewing the new demographics, I will focus on the social
behaviour of contemporary immigrants, and in particular on some
differences between first- and second-generation members of ethnic
groups.
Background: Demographics, Assimilation, and Generation
In sheer numbers, consider the trends shown in Table 6.1, which
charts the flow of immigrants to the United States between 1850 and
2015. In 2015, there were an estimated 43.3 million immigrants in
the United States, representing 13.5 per cent of the total 320.1 million US population (mp i 2016). Strikingly, almost 40 per cent of
these immigrants entered the country since 2000 (m p i 2016), a number that would seem to resonate with the “turbulence” in the title of
this volume. Of historical interest is the fact that while the number of
immigrants entering the United States in the past decade is substantially higher than ever before, the percentage of the US population
represented by immigrants has still not reached the level that existed
in the early part of the twentieth century. Together, the numbers, the
percentages, and the clear trend of the past fifty years establish a
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184
Kay Deaux
Table 6.1 Number of immigrants and immigrants as percentage of the US
population, 1850 to present
Number of immigrants
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2,244,600
4,138,700
5,567,200
6,679,900
9,249,500
10,341,300
13,515,900
13,920,700
14,204,100
11,594,900
10,347,400
9,738,100
9,619,300
14,079,900
19,767,300
31,107,900
39,955,900
40,377,900
40,824,700
41,348,100
42,391,800
43,290,400
Immigrants as a percentage
of the US population
9.7
13.2
14.4
13.3
14.8
13.6
14.7
13.2
11.6
8.8
6.9
5.4
4.7
6.2
7.9
11.1
12.9
13.0
13.0
13.1
13.3
13.5
Note: The term “immigrants” refers to people residing in the United States who were
not US citizens at birth. This population includes naturalized citizens, lawful
permanent immigrants, refugees and asylees, legal nonimmigrants (including those
on student, work, or other temporary visas), and persons residing in the United States
without authorization.
Source: Migration Policy Institute tabulations of the US Census Bureau’s 2010–15
American Community Surveys and 1970, 1990, and 2000 census data. All other data
are from Gibson, Campbell and Emily Lennon, US Census Bureau, Working Paper
No. 29, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United
States: 1850 to 1990, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1999.
particular framework for viewing immigration in the United States at
the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Summary figures of immigrant populations are only part of the
picture, however. Who is coming can be at least as salient in public
discourse as how many are coming, and the characteristics of “who”
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Assimilation and Its Discontented
185
have changed substantially over the years. In the nineteenth century,
immigration to the United States was primarily a northern European
affair, with certain exceptions (e.g., Chinese labourers, who were
subject to specific bans and legal restrictions prior to the development of any systematic federal immigration policies). The change in
the demographic base in the early twentieth century, to include more
immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, was in fact seen as
a cause for alarm and influenced legislation in the 1920s that restricted immigrant flow to the United States. Europe – whether
northern, eastern, or southern – accounts for a relatively small minority of the immigrant population in the United States today. More
than half of the contemporary foreign-born population is from the
Americas (which includes Canada, representing 3 per cent of the
Americas’ total immigrants to the United States). Current figures
indicate that 47 per cent of the total immigrant population reports
having Hispanic / Latino backgrounds (mp i 2013). Asia is the other
major source of current immigration to the United States, constituting approximately one quarter of the foreign-born population.
These demographic patterns have several implications for understanding the situation of immigrants in the United States today. First,
the fact that immigration is an ongoing process that has been increasing for more than forty years results in a continuing presence of ethnic enclaves. Although some immigrants move up and out, following
past practice, others continue to live in inner-city areas that are defined by their ethnic concentration; still others move directly to suburban and rural areas and create new ethnic enclaves there. As a
consequence, multiple generations of immigrants can often be found
in the same location, providing a continuing source of connections to
the culture of origin. Second, the remarkable ethnic diversity of contemporary immigrants creates a more complicated attitudinal and
intergroup climate. Some ethnic groups are viewed as less desirable
than others, and members of those groups are likely to experience
more discrimination and negative treatment. The varying amounts of
capital that immigrants bring, in terms of education and economic
status, further contribute to the diversity. Documentation status –
whether real or perceived – also serves as a key marker in the attitudes of the receiving country, with undocumented immigrants falling
to the bottom on most attitudinal measures (e.g, Fiske and Lee 2012).
Others in this volume speak to the influence of state and federal
immigration policy on the conditions of immigrant lives. Suffice it to
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186
Kay Deaux
say, the current jumble of inconsistent and unevenly enforced policies
and practices in the United States today creates a climate of uncertainty for many immigrants, particularly for those who either are
undocumented or who, in a process of guilt by association, are treated as if they were. My concern in this chapter is not directly with
policy, but rather with the social context in which immigrants carry
out their lives. In particular, I will consider differences between firstand second-generation immigrants, as they speak to the process of
assimilation and incorporation in the United States today.
a s s i m i l at i o n : c o n c e p t a n d c h a l l e n g e
“America is God’s crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of
Europe are melting and reforming.”
Israel Zangwill, The Melting Pot, 1909
The concept of a great melting-pot, introduced by a young British
playwright and enthusiastically adopted by President Theodore
Roosevelt, has served as a popular representation of American attitudes toward immigration for decades. (See Deaux 2006 for a more
extended discussion.) The concept finds its academic parallel in
assimilation theory, first introduced by Robert Park and the Chicago
School of Sociology in the 1920s (Park and Burgess 1921, 1969; Park
and Miller 1921) and continuing to the present day, albeit with elaboration and modification, most prominently by Richard Alba and
his colleagues (Alba 2008; Alba and Nee 2003). More commonly
accepted in the United States than in Canada, the assumptions of
assimilation theory have nonetheless been challenged by US writers
as well. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco (2002, 27), for example, argues that
“to assume that immigrants today are joining a homogeneous society
dominated by the white middle-class European American Protestant
ethos … may no longer be useful.” In addition to challenging the
assumption of homogeneity, Suárez-Orozco also questions the idea
that immigrants make a “clean break” from their country of origin,
pointing to the existence of extensive transnational networks, and,
most relevant to the present discussion, disputes the assumption of
steady upward mobility and generally improved conditions with successive generations. Some sociological scholars have proposed an
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alternative theory of segmented assimilation (Portes and Zhou 1993;
Zhou 1999). In this model, three alternative paths are recognized for
the children of immigrants: the traditional upward assimilation path;
a downward path that leads to integration with the underclass; and
a pattern of economic achievement combined with maintenance of
the ethnic community and its values. The likelihood of following one
path versus another varies by immigrant group, depending on factors
such as financial and social capital, and racial discrimination.
Among psychological scholars, as well as in much socio-political
discourse, patterns of incorporation are more often discussed in
terms of multiculturalism rather than assimilation (Deaux and
Verkuyten 2014). This concept, however, is not very tightly defined
and is used in many different ways, from a normative framework for
specific (and often disputed) policies to individual psychological processes that allow for multiple ethnic and national identities. However,
although the concept of multiculturalism by definition recognizes the
existence of various ethnic groups, it offers little guidance for exploring differences between ethnic groups, nor does it account for the
generational differences that are increasingly apparent (Deaux and
Verkuyten 2014; Zhou 1999).
d o i n g a g e n e r at i o n a l a n a ly s i s
In the mid-1950s,when new immigration to the United States was
at a low point, Gordon Allport (1954, 1958) understood that the
impact of immigration could extend beyond the first generation. He
noted that “in the second generation the assimilation was partly,
though not entirely, complete” (237) and suggested that the children of immigrants had “certain (gradually diminishing) handicaps.” His pessimistic argument continued: “They are ashamed of
their parents, who still seem foreign. The sense of social inferiority
in status is haunting. Usually they lack a reassuring pride in the
ethnic traditions and culture of the parent” (237). Further building
his case for negative effects, Allport pointed to sociological evidence
of high crime rates and maladjustment among second-generation
immigrants. Allport’s account of the second-generation experience
is quite bleak, emphasizing pathological outcomes and a lack of
social ballast. He did, however, also note the variety of experiences that immigrants can encounter and the greater likelihood for
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discriminatory experiences among some groups (including “Negroes,
Orientals, and Mexicans” in his telling) than others. Now sixty
years later, how well do Allport’s observations match contemporary realities?
The traditional assimilation story is a historically based account,
looking at how successive generations of immigrants make their way
and (by assumption and for the most part by data) improve their lot,
such that children do better in the new country than do their parents.
One limitation of this approach, however, is the confounding of historical context with generation (Telles and Ortiz 2008). This covariation was inevitable in immigration research of the mid-twentieth
century, when government policy and practice severely restricted
new immigration to the United States. However, with the continuing
inflow of immigrants following the immigration reforms of the mid1960s, multiple generations of immigrants now coexist in many
communities and, as Telles and Ortiz recognize (2008, 10), “it is important to disentangle family generational status from generationsince-immigration to understand their immigration experiences.”
Telles and Ortiz specifically apply their analysis to the Mexican population, which in certain parts of the United States, primarily in the
Southwest and on the West Coast, includes newly arrived immigrants
as well as second-, third-, and even fourth-generation immigrants.
Similar conditions are true for other immigrant groups as well, such
as some of the Asian communities throughout the United States.
Consistent with a sociological-demographic tradition, Telles and
Ortiz (2008) direct their attention to intergenerational change between parents and children. As a social psychologist, my interests
are a bit different. While adopting the concept of generation-since-
immigration, I focus not on differences between parents and children, but instead on possible differences between age peers in the
same contexts.1 In my analysis, generation becomes a marker of current experience rather than an interaction of person and historical
period. By shifting the reference point completely to the contemporary setting and equating the age of the immigrants (as well as their
education and social class, to the extent possible), we can home in on
the social-psychological processes that are occurring and identify the
circumstances that lead to different outcomes for first- and secondgeneration immigrants.2
Why might we expect these two generations of immigrants to differ, despite their living in similar conditions in the same historical
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time period? As a social psychologist, I direct my attention to the
specific experiences that immigrants have and to the ways in which
those experiences are interpreted. Are there objective social conditions that differ between first- and second-generation immigrants?
And at the psychological level, do first- and second-generation immigrants have different ways of interpreting what might appear to be
equivalent conditions?
In the category of objective factors that might lead to different
experiences for first- and second-generation immigrants, citizenship ranks high. Specifically, because of birthright citizenship laws
in the United States, second-generation immigrants have full citizenship from their date of birth; first-generation immigrants, in contrast, may or may not become naturalized citizens some years after
they have arrived in the United States (or may live as undocumented
residents for many years). Apart from the legal ramifications of this
generational difference, automatic citizenship might be expected to
have psychological consequences as well, varying from identity definitions to the sense of entitlement to the full spectrum of opportunities and advantages that citizenship presumably entails.
For visible minorities, experiences with discrimination are common
to first and second generation alike (Deaux et al. 2007). Whether members of the first generation experience more discrimination than the
second is a question not fully resolved. It seems quite likely, however,
that the generations will differ in how they interpret and how they respond to discriminatory treatment. Attributions for discrimination
may invoke different factors: for example, the first generation might
attribute their negative treatment to the fact that they are not nativeborn Americans, while second-generation members of visible minorities may see race as the operative category. In the former case, the cause
could be seen as limited in duration, to be eliminated or reduced when
citizenship is obtained, and irrelevant to one’s children and grandchildren. In the latter case, however, the attributional locus could be viewed
as more pervasive and persistent, linking oneself and one’s group to the
existent racial strata in the United States (see Major and Sawyer 2009
for a more general discussion of attributions to discrimination).
To the extent that these circumstantial and experiential differences
exist between first- and second-generation immigrants, we can expect that they will show differences in a number of psychological
processes. In the following section, I review some of the work that I
and others have done to explore this generational divide.
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r e s e a r c h e v i d e n c e f o r g e n e r at i o n a l d i f f e r e n c e s
Although the question itself has only recently been posed in the psychological literature, evidence for differences between first- and second-generation immigrants is steadily accumulating. To the extent
that these comparisons are made between immigrants who are approximately equivalent in age and socio-economic status, as discussed earlier, they point to the importance of social psychological
processes whereby the two generations, though perhaps set in objectively similar circumstances, are framing and interpreting their experiences differently, with different consequences for their actions and
reactions.
In this section, I review findings in three domains: first, issues of
self-regard and self-definition, including the estimate of others’ views
of oneself and one’s group; second, beliefs about the society and the
opportunities or obstacles that it offers, as reflected in beliefs about
meritocracy and social inequality; and third, some examples of the
ramifications of these beliefs for performance and orientation to collective action on behalf of one’s group.
Self-Appraisal and Self-Definition
Some commentators assume that ethnic and national identity is a
zero-sum game: that is, that immigrants must drop their ethnic identity of origin in order to take on a new national identity. Witness the
statements of the late historian Samuel Huntington (2004): “There is
no Americano dream. There is only the American dream.” However,
this position is not supported by the psychological research evidence.
People can and do hold onto two (or more) identities, and further,
there may be some clear advantages of doing so. More easily than
holding two legal citizenships, which is regulated by varying federal
policies, immigrants find ways to hold onto their allegiance to the
ethnic origin group while at the same time taking on a new national identity of their country of immigration (see Berry 1990;
Deaux and Verkuyten 2014; Hong et al. 2000; Wiley and Deaux
2011). Frequently immigrants construct a bicultural identity in
which the old ethnic and the new national identity are fused into a
meaningful combination that accepts both and rejects neither. Even
in first-
generation immigrants, evidence of this fused identity is
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present (see Wiley 2013), but it is more strongly endorsed among
second-generation immigrants (Calcagno and Udugampola 2013).
Labels or categories are a first step at understanding the ways in
which immigrants identify themselves. Identity is a multifaceted concept, however, and can be considered in terms of a number of dimensions, including the importance attached to the identity and the positive
or negative valuation of it (Ashmore, Deaux, and McLaughlin-Volpe
2004). Interestingly, if we compare the ethnic identities of first- and
second-generation immigrants in terms of these two dimensions,
we find no differences. In three studies that included Latino, AfroCaribbean, Asian, and White immigrants from a variety of countries, first- and second-generation immigrants rated the importance
of their ethnic identity equally (Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp
2012; Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008). Nor did first- and second-
generation immigrants differ in how positively they regarded their
ethnic identity (Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008; Perkins, Wiley, and
Deaux 2014). In all cases, average scores fell between four and five
on a seven-point scale, indicating moderately high endorsement.
Although first- and second-generation immigrants are alike in the
ways that they personally evaluate their ethnic group membership,
differences emerge when they are asked to estimate how others view
their group, a dimension that is generally referred to as public regard.
Specifically, second-generation immigrants have a more negative estimate of what other people think of their group.3 These generational
differences are particularly apt to emerge among members of ethnic
groups that are more likely to be devalued in the society at large,
specifically immigrants of African or Latino descent (Wiley, Perkins,
and Deaux 2008; Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012; Perkins,
Wiley, and Deaux 2014).
The correspondence between private regard and public regard has
long been a question of interest for scholars of the self. Since the early
work of theorists such as George Herbert Mead (1934) and Charles
Cooley (1956), social scientists have assumed that reflected appraisal
is inherent to the formation of self, a theme that was picked up by
Winnicott (1971) with his concept of social mirroring. The degree to
which one’s own view of the self corresponds to the view that others
have of oneself or of one’s group depends, however, on the favourability of those other views. In their studies of immigrant children,
Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001) found that the majority of
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Dominican, Haitian, Mexican, and Central American children believed that most Americans had negative views of their group because they were not White. How children responded to this condition
of “negative social mirroring” had consequences for their general
well-being.
In work that compared first- and second-generation immigrant
college students from three broad ethnic groupings (Asian, Black,
and Latino4), Wiley and his colleagues (Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux
2008) found notable differences in the degree to which private regard
for one’s group corresponded to the perceived views of others (i.e.,
public regard) as a function of both generation and ethnic group. The
most striking generational difference was found for Black immigrants: while the association between public and private regard was
high (r = +.51) for first-generation immigrants, there was virtually
no connection between the two measures in the second-generation
group (the latter pattern corresponding to findings obtained in a nonimmigrant Black group; see Crocker et al. 1994). Latino immigrants
showed a parallel but non-significant pattern, with a weaker link in
the first generation and a less precipitous drop in the second generation. In contrast to these two groups, who generally are valued less
positively by the public at large, Asian immigrants showed high and
constant associations between the two measures of regard.
Although Asian immigrants may benefit from the higher status
that is accorded to their group, as compared to Black and Latino immigrants, they typically are also visible minorities with physical characteristics that make them subject to routine ethnic categorization by
the dominant White majority. For those who have an immigrant
background, but who are born in the United States and have birthright citizenship, the desire is often to be seen first as an American,
and ethnic categorization by others can be a source of stress. In
work by Wang, Minervino, and Cheryan (2013), first- and second-
generation Asian immigrants were asked to imagine scenarios in
which they were questioned by a professor as to whether English was
their native language or asked by a cashier where they were from.
Second-generation participants reported that they would be significantly more angry in such situations than did first-generation immigrants (while the two generations did not differ when imagined
encounters did not involve identity denial). Thus, while first-
generation immigrants may be willing to accept ethnic categorization, the second generation views such treatment as much more
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problematic, challenging their self-definitions and denying their status as full-fledged Americans.
Beliefs in Meritocracy and Social Inequality
People who emigrate typically arrive in the new country with some
ideas about the values and contingencies that the country will offer.
Frequently these ideas have been motivational for their move, as they
see in “the American dream” possibilities and opportunities believed
to be unattainable in their country of origin. Some of these beliefs are
framed in terms of individual probabilities of succeeding on the basis
of one’s own abilities and efforts; others take group position and
status hierarchies into account as immigrants assess the acceptance
of their ethnic group relative to other groups in the society, including
the dominant White American group.
These kinds of beliefs – about social diversity, social equality, and
meritocracy – are relevant to all immigrants, but they are endorsed in
different degrees depending both on generation and on ethnic background. In research by Deaux et al. (2006), first-generation immigrants (all students at a public university in New York City) who
were either White (primarily from Eastern Europe) or Black and
Latino (primarily from the Caribbean) were compared to members
of similar ethnic groups who were born in the United States on measures of support for social diversity and acceptance of social inequality.5 Beliefs in the value of social diversity were predicted primarily
by ethnicity: Blacks and Latinos, whether immigrant or native-born,
were more favourable toward diversity than were Whites, though
all groups scored above the midpoint of the scale. On the measure of
acceptance of social inequality in society (on which all groups scored
below the midpoint of the scale), ethnicity again showed a main effect, wherein Whites were more supportive of social inequality than
were Blacks and Latinos. In this case, however, immigrant status interacted significantly with ethnicity: White immigrants endorsed inequality most strongly, while Black and Latino immigrants were the
least favorable.
Ethnic group differences also are evident in comparisons between
student immigrants of higher status (White and Asian) and lower
status (Black and Latino), even when all might be considered privileged by virtue of their enrollment in a highly selective private university (Feygina and Godfrey 2013). Focusing on the concept of system
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justification (Jost, Banaji, and Nosek 2004) and differentiating
between socio-political justification and economic justification,
Feygina and Godfrey (2013) found that the higher-status White and
Asian students expressed stronger confidence in both the socio-
political and economic aspects of the existent system than did Black
and Latino students. Generation also exerted an effect, independent
of the ethnicity of the students. Whereas the generations did not
differ from each other in justifying the socio-political system, first-
generation immigrant students were more likely to justify the economic system than were second-generation students.6
Generational effects among Black and Latino immigrants have
also emerged consistently in several studies of beliefs about meritocracy, a concept that is similar to system justification but that
focuses more specifically on the perceived likelihood of upward
mobility. In interviews with West Indian immigrants, Waters (1999)
observed that while the first generation believed that barriers could
be overcome with hard work, second-generation immigrants were
more likely to see the problems as systemic and the barriers as insurmountable. Questionnaire data assessing meritocracy (defined as
endorsement of the Protestant work ethic and belief in individual
mobility regardless of ethnic group) reveal similar patterns (Wiley,
Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012): first-generation Dominican and
Mexican immigrants were significantly more likely to endorse these
beliefs than were second-generation immigrants. These generational
effects appear to be driven in part by perceived differences in public
regard: that is, the lower the regard that second-generation immigrants perceive from the majority culture, the less likely they are to
believe in meritocracy.
If immigrants see the system as one in which meritocracy is not
operative, what is likely to be their response? Emerging evidence suggests there are effects both on the strength of ethnic group identification and on willingness to engage in collective action on the part of
one’s group, again moderated by generational status. In the Wiley et
al. (2012) study, for example, belief in meritocracy was significantly
related, in a negative direction, to ethnic identification as a Dominican
or Mexican (i.e., weaker endorsement of meritocracy was associated with stronger ethnic identification) for second-generation immigrants, while the two variables were unrelated among first-generation
immigrants. Further, the orientation toward collective action on behalf of one’s group, although not differing in strength between the
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two generations, was significantly mediated by ethnic identification among second-generation immigrants. Speculating on causal
sequence, we can suggest that the second generation reacts to a perceived lack of meritocracy with a strengthened sense of ethnic group
identification, which in turn motivates an interest in doing something
to change the situation. For first-generation immigrants in this study,
in contrast, a belief in meritocracy directly predicts support for collective action, although that link is relatively weak and, we suspect,
less concretely realized.
G en er at io n a nd B e h av i o ur al Ou t c o m e s
For several decades, investigators have pointed to what is variously
termed an “immigrant paradox,” an “integration paradox,” or an
“epidemiological paradox,” referring to the unexpectedly disadvantageous outcomes for second-generation immigrants compared to
first-generation immigrants in areas such as infant health, adolescent
health and risk behaviours, and educational attainment (Rumbaut
1999). These negative consequences are not invariant, however, as
more recent research shows, nor are they consistent across all forms
of health behaviour nor all ethnic groups (Lara et al. 2005). At the
same time, it is clear that acculturation to the United States is not
without its downside.
Psychological choices are necessarily part of the story. As is well
known by now, the typical US diet is high in sugars and fats and can
be linked to the increasing obesity rates in the US population, as well
as the increase in chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension.
Newly arrived immigrants on average have lower levels of obesity
than the average US citizen, but their rate of obesity increases with
length of time in the United States (Goel et al. 2004), and secondgeneration children match US children of non-immigrant parents in
their likelihood of being obese (Harris, Perreira, and Lee 2009). This
greater propensity to eat fattening food could simply be due to its
greater availability in the environment. However, the choice might
also be a deliberate attempt on the part of immigrant youth to demonstrate their commitment to being American, particularly when
that identity claim is threatened (Gundelman, Cheryan, and Monin
2011). In an experiment carried out on a university campus, students
believed to be Asian on the basis of physical appearance (and later
confirmed to be US-born) were approached by a White American
researcher and asked if they spoke English. This seemingly simple
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request was hypothesized to constitute a threat to the student’s
American identity (while being neutral for White American students
who were approached in a similar manner). The researcher’s next
request to the participants was simply to write down the name of
their favourite food. In a control condition, the researcher only asked
for the food preference without inquiring about English facility. The
results were striking: although the language question had no effect
on the stated food preference of White Americans, the Asian American
students showed a sharp shift to American foods when their identity
had been questioned. In this condition, 75 per cent of the students
named a typically American food (e.g., steak, vanilla ice cream); in
the control condition, only 25 per cent named an American food,
stating a preference instead for more typically ethnic food (e.g.,
Peking duck, sushi). Thus the desire to assert a particular identity can
possibly lead to behaviours that have negative consequences for one’s
health.
In the food preference study, students had the option to present
themselves in ways that brought an American identity to the fore; in
other situations, however, the implications of the ethnic identity –
and the regard that others have for that identity – cannot be so easily
circumvented. Research on stereotype threat (Steele 1997, 2010) has
consistently and dramatically shown how awareness of the unfavourable stereotypes that others hold about your group, and by implication about you as a member of that group, can have detrimental
effects on performance in domains related to those stereotypes. In the
case of African Americans, for example, the stereotype of lesser ability in academic domains has been shown to elicit lower performance
when group membership is salient (compared to equivalent performance with Whites when group membership is not salient).
We extended the logic of this theory to the circumstances of firstand second-generation Afro-Caribbean immigrants, to whom the assumptions of the Black American stereotype are often applied (Deaux
et al. 2007). Although both first- and second-generation immigrants
from countries of the West Indies would be aware of the stereotypes,
we assumed, due to the pervasiveness of these stereotypes in the US
culture, we predicted that first-generation immigrants would not be
susceptible to stereotype threat in an academic performance situation because they do not identity as African American. As first-
generation immigrants, their primary identification would be with
their ethnic / national group, one that is clearly distinguished from
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African American by most West Indian immigrants (Waters 1999). In
contrast, second-generation West Indian immigrants are more likely
to have taken on an African American identity, instead of or in some
combination with their ethnic identity of origin, and in doing so
would have become more susceptible to the stereotype threats associated with that category.
Using standard stereotype threat procedures, we compared a condition in which a verbal achievement test (items from a g re preparation manual) was presented with instructions that emphasized its
diagnosticity as a measure of intelligence (see Steele and Aronson
1995) with a non-threat condition in which the test was described as
an exercise in test development rather than a measure of individual
ability. First- and second-generation immigrants, all students at public universities in New York City, were randomly assigned to one of
the two conditions. Although the performance of the two groups
was equivalent when stereotype threat was not aroused, our results
showed that the generations reacted quite differently to the stereotype threat condition. Second-generation West Indian immigrants
performed worse when confronting the threat, while first-generation
immigrants did better. In another sign of the influence of circumstances on the two generations, results showed that the race of the
experimenter made a difference as well: first-generation immigrants
did better when the experimenter was White, while second-generation immigrants did better with a Black experimenter. Thus, the conditions that might facilitate performance by the first generation (a
challenge to their group’s ability and the presence of a representative
of the White majority) are reacted to quite differently by the secondgeneration Afro-Caribbean immigrants, who do better when they are
with a same-race experimenter in a non-threatening situation.
The P syc hol ogi c a l Stat e of t he Se co n d G e n e rat i o n
A generational analysis in which age and history are held constant
and immigrant groups are defined by generation-since-immigration
allows a more contemporaneous view of the status of immigrants in
the United States (and perhaps in Canada as well) in these early years
of the twenty-first century. The perspective adopted here does not
assume that the children of immigrants will do better than their parents, as basic assimilation theory would suggest, nor does it even use
parents and their children as the basis of comparison. Rather the
question is how people of the same age in the same circumstances
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may be shaped in different ways by their immigrant status and the
psychological processes associated with that status.
Using this framework, we see numerous differences between the
first and second generations. Ethnic identity is often no less important to the second generation, but it is typically combined with a
developed US national identification and sense of entitlement that
the first generation does not have. At the same time, members of the
second generation often believe that the dominant society is less accepting of their ethnic group, as compared to the first generation, and
their belief in meritocracy is often diminished as well. These perceptions have behavioural consequences, both for health and for academic performance, to the detriment of the second generation.
Almost all of the differences we find between the generations
are amplified for immigrants of colour. Immigrants of Asian and
European ancestry are not immune to discrimination and unforeseen
barriers to their anticipated paths to incorporation, but Black and
Latino immigrants show more negative effects. They are more likely
to believe that the native White majority views their group unfavourably and they are less likely to find these views a useful gauge for their
own group evaluation (Wiley et al. 2008, 2012; Perkins et al. 2014).
At the same time, they are more favourable toward conditions that
might change their status, in their endorsement of social diversity and
their non-acceptance of social inequality (Deaux et al. 2006). For
Black immigrants, whether from the Caribbean or from Africa, the
path to incorporation often entails being categorized as African
American, with the negative evaluations that can accompany that
categorization. For Latino immigrants, the dominant image is one of
an undocumented Mexican, again a stigmatized category that brings
few benefits to its occupants. Asian immigrants may, on the whole, be
free of these negative attributions, yet their legitimacy as Americans
can still be questioned and create psychological threat (Wang et al.
2013). The United States is a diverse society, but it is certainly not a
colourblind society.
i m m i g r at i o n a n d g e n e r at i o n
in the twenty-first century
As I write this chapter in 2014, conditions for immigration are quite
unsettled in the United States and predictions for the future are highly uncertain. On the one hand, demographic analyses show that
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immigration has levelled off, with the yearly increases evident in recent decades no longer occurring. At the same time, the total number
of immigrants in the United States continues to increase, assuring that
at least in the short run, immigration will continue to be an important
element of the United States’ demographics. Further, as the 2012
presidential election results demonstrated, the political impact of the
immigrant population, and in particular the Latino population, has
increased markedly. Immigration reform, debated and derailed for
many years, is in the spotlight again, but the resolution of contentious
issues is still problematic and as of this writing, no concrete progress
has yet been achieved (see Martin, ch. 2 in this volume).
Will generation continue to be a marker of psychological experiences in the coming decades? No answer to this question can be offered without some caution, but it seems reasonable to assume that
issues of ethnic and national identification, prejudice and discrimination, and shifting ideological beliefs will be staples for many years to
come. Not only do these issues need to be addressed with respect to
first- and second-generation immigrants, but to later generations as
well, as the reservoir of migrants continues to expand. Will members
of a third generation continue to show the discontent that has been
found among second-generation immigrants? Very little research yet
exists to answer this question, and virtually none in terms of psychological processes. Some evidence from the sociology literature, however, suggests that problems can persist in the third generation and
beyond (Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008).
Data already at hand suggest the complexity of assessing the assimilation of immigrant populations. On some dimensions of analysis, such as indices of education attained or economic condition,
evidence for progress in the second generation seems quite clear (see,
for example, immigrant groups in New York City studied by Kasinitz
and his colleagues, 2008). Yet these tangible gains do not rule out the
more subtle but influential psychological processes that can co-occur,
as our evidence shows. Such processes are important to understand,
not only as an index of psychological well-being and commitment to
the community and the nation, but also as they influence concrete
action. Civic engagement and collective action, for example, are outcomes that depend on psychological process and social position
(Wiley, Deaux, and Hagelskamp 2012).
Existing research also shows great variation in attitudes and behaviours as a function of ethnic group (e.g., Kasinitz et al. 2008;
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200
Kay Deaux
Wiley, Perkins, and Deaux 2008). A term such as “average immigrant” probably has little predictive power; even further, though my
own research has frequently used pan-ethnic categories for classification, such as Latino or Asian descent, a compelling case can be made
for making sharper distinctions that will more accurately capture the
different experiences and resources that different ethnic groups have.
Similar caution should be exercised in making generalizations between the United States and Canada, as even the same ethnic group
may differ between sites as a function of government policies and
immigration history.
At least within the United States, one major factor that predicts
differences in the immigrant experience is the ethnicity of the group
and its position on the prevailing status hierarchy. Black and Latino
immigrants are typically judged more harshly and experience more
discriminatory treatment. For the second-generation immigrant who
is a full citizen in legal standing, the downgraded social status can be
particularly aversive and a source of the different reactions that we
find when comparing first- and second-generation immigrants. Thus,
it is important to recognize that differential outcomes among various
immigrant groups cannot be fully attributed to characteristics of the
group per se (e.g., their level of education, their financial resources),
but also must also take into account the climate of reception for a
particular group. Both research and policy need to take these specific
intersections into account.
Also relevant to the issue of discriminatory treatment is the proposal by some politicians in the United States to give legal status, but
not full citizenship, to currently undocumented immigrants. Substantial bodies of research on categorization and stigmatization recommend against this strategy, which would be likely to create a distinct
category for disparagement. Although such a policy might provide
some legal protections, it would be unlikely to alleviate the social and
interpersonal discrimination that immigrants experience today.
Whatever policies may (or may not) be enacted in the near future, the circumstances and the incorporation of immigrants will
be an important focus for research. The United States is still a
country in which the arrival of new waves of immigrants defines
the country and tests its ideals. How well those ideals are realized
becomes both a challenge to policy-makers and rich soil for scientific exploration.
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Assimilation and Its Discontented
201
acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Nida Bikmen, Nancy Foner, Sarah
Martiny, and Krystal Perkins, together with the volume editors, for
their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.
notes
1 Perhaps a term such as “generation-since-immigration cohort” might
be adopted to emphasize the contemporaneous nature of my comparisons. However, to avoid the awkwardness of repeating that lengthy
term, I will simply use “first and second generation” as my terms of
comparison.
2 The terms “first-generation” and “second-generation” immigrants
are widely used in the US immigration literature (as well as “third
and fourth generation,” in some cases, cf. Telles and Ortiz 2008). Some
investigators prefer to use the term “children of immigrants,” recognizing that birthright citizenship in the United States makes the term
“immigrant” questionable. However, for reasons of common usage
as well as simplicity of language, I will use the terms “first and second
generation” in my discussion.
3 Measures of public regard typically leave “other” unspecified, as exemplified by the public regard subscale of Luhtanen and Crocker’s (1992)
Collective Self-Esteem scale. If the group is specifically defined as the
ethnic group in the country of origin, both first- and second-generation
Black and Latino immigrants rate public regard highly and do not differ significantly from each other (Perkins, Wiley, and Deaux 2014).
4 A group of White immigrants was also included in this study, but
because the sample size was small and there were substantial differences in the ethnic / religious composition of the first- and second-
generation samples, they are not discussed here.
5 These two concepts were assessed with scales originally developed for
a Canadian population by Bourhis, Berry, and Kalin (1999). Statements
were revised to use the term “Americans” rather than “Canadians”: e.g.,
“We should promote equality among all Americans, regardless of racial
or ethnic origin” (Acceptance of Social Inequality) and “Americans
should recognize that cultural and racial diversity is a fundamental
characteristic of American society” (Support for Social Diversity).
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202
Kay Deaux
6 In both cases, the two immigrant groups reported significantly more
confidence in the system than did students without immigrant
backgrounds.
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BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AND THE ALIEN
CITIZEN
Mae M. Ngai*
The alien citizen is an American citizen by virtue of her birth in the
United States but whose citizenship is suspect, if not denied, on account of
the racialized identity of her immigrant ancestry. In this construction, the
foreignness of non-European peoples is deemed unalterable, making
nationality a kind of racial trait. Alienage, then, becomes a permanent
condition, passed from generation to generation, adhering even to the
native-born citizen. Qualifiers like “accidental” citizen, 1 “presumed”
citizen, 2 or even “terrorist” citizen 3 have been used in political and legal
arguments to denigrate, compromise, and nullify the U.S. citizenship of
“unassimilable” Chinese, “enemy-race” Japanese, Mexican “illegal aliens,”
and Muslim “terrorists.”
The idea of alien citizenship has had widespread social currency. Its
influence derives from the idea that non-European peoples are racially or, in
modern expression, culturally backward, that they are unable or unwilling
to assimilate, and that they are unfit for liberal citizenship. Racism thus
creates a problem of misrecognition for the citizen of Asian or Latino
descent and, more recently, the citizen who appears to be “Middle Eastern,
Arab, or Muslim.” 4
In addition to the cultural dimensions of citizenship, 5 alien citizenship
has been expressed in law and official policy. This suggests not only that
alien citizenship is more than a racial metaphor, but also that there is an
important relationship between juridical and cultural citizenship that
warrants greater investigation. Leti Volpp, for example, has suggested that
whereas common juridical status may be the grounds for a culture of
solidarity among citizens, the converse may just as well be true—that racial
* Professor of History, Columbia University.
1. See, e.g., United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, 731 (1898) (Harlan, J.,
dissenting).
2. See, e.g., Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507, 554 (2004) (Scalia, J., dissenting).
3. See, e.g., Padilla v. Rumsfeld, 352 F.3d 695, 728 (2d Cir. 2003) (Wesley, J.,
concurring in part, dissenting in part).
4. See Leti Volpp, The Citizen and the Terrorist, 49 UCLA L. Rev. 1575, 1580-83
(2002).
5. See Linda Bosniak, Citizenship Denationalized, 7 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 447
(2000); Volpp, supra note 4; see also Leti Volpp, Divesting Citizenship: On Asian American
History and the Loss of Citizenship Through Marriage, 53 UCLA L. Rev. 405 (2005).
2521
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FORDHAM LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 75
difference and exclusion from social or cultural belonging may lead to
differential legal treatment of citizens. 6
CITIZENSHIP NULLIFICATION
As a legal matter, alien citizenship involves the nullification of the rights
of citizenship—from the right to be territorially present to the range of civil
rights and liberties—without formal revocation of citizenship status. The
repatriation (territorial removal) of 400,000 ethnic Mexicans during the
Great Depression, half of them U.S. citizens, 7 and the internment of
120,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II, two-thirds of
them U.S. citizens, 8 may be considered instances of official alien
citizenship.
In both cases, alien citizenship derived directly from the legal exclusion
of the citizens’ immigrant forebears from the normative path of
immigration and naturalization (i.e., legal entry to settlement to citizenship).
The advent of a regime of immigration restriction in the 1920s created
unauthorized entry as a mass phenomenon and legal problem, and Mexicans
comprised the single largest group of undocumented migrants by the late
1920s. The real and imagined association of Mexicans with “illegal aliens,”
along with the creation of a landless, migratory agricultural proletariat and
the extension of Jim Crow segregation to Mexicans in the southwest,
stripped all ethnic Mexicans (regardless of legal status) of legitimate
belonging and impelled the construction of Mexican American alien
citizens. 9
Japanese Americans, like other Asian Americans, were excluded from
both immigration and naturalized citizenship on grounds of “racial
unassimilability” from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth
century. 10 Asiatic exclusion was the most complete race-based legal
6. See generally Volpp, supra note 4.
7. See generally Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great
Depression: Repatriation Pressures 1929-39 (1974); Raymond Rodríguez & Francisco E.
Balderrama, Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s (1995).
8. See Mae M. Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern
America 175-201 (2004); Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s
Concentration Camps (1976).
9. See Ngai, supra note 8, at 56-90, 127-66.
10. See Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, ch. 190, 43 Stat. 153 (repealed 1952)
(excluding from immigration all persons ineligible for citizenship); Immigration Act of
1917, ch. 29, 39 Stat. 874 (repealed 1952) (creating barred Asiatic zone from Afghanistan to
the Pacific); Chinese Exclusion Act of 1904, ch. 1630, 33 Stat. 428 (repealed 1943) (barring
all Chinese laborers); Chinese Exclusion Act of 1892, ch. 60, 27 Stat. 25 (repealed 1943);
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, ch. 126, 22 Stat. 58 (repealed 1943); Page Act of 1875, ch.
141, 18 Stat. 477 (repealed 1974) (barring Mongolian prostitutes); Gentlemen’s Agreement,
U.S.-Japan, 1908, acknowledged in Annual Report of Commissioner-General of Immigration
for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30 1908, 125-27 (limiting visas to Japanese laborers)
(effectively ended by Immigration Act of 1924); United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923)
(upholding exclusion of Asians from naturalization); Ozawa v. U.S., 260 U.S. 178 (1922).
2007]
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AND THE ALIEN CITIZEN
2523
exclusion from citizenship since Dred Scott 11 and was instituted,
significantly, in the 1880s, after the Fourteenth Amendment nullified Dred
Scott. The legal and cultural force of Asiatic exclusion was so powerful
that the idea of permanent foreignness continued to adhere to native-born
Asian American citizens even decades after the exclusion laws were
repealed, a racism that literary scholar Lisa Lowe describes as the “material
trace of history.” 12
Alien citizenship is a defining legal characteristic of the racial formation
of Asian and Latino ethnic groups. African Americans also have been
constructed as “foreign,” as evident in early nineteenth century colonization
movements to “return” free blacks to Africa. 13 But after passage of the
Fourteenth Amendment, the birthright citizenship of African Americans
became indisputable, even if demoted to “second class.” Indeed, opponents
of citizenship for Chinese and other Asians often used African American
citizenship as a negative example of the harm that conferring citizenship on
unassimilated, backward races brought to the institution. 14
The concept of alien citizenship is, of course, inherently contradictory.
Asian Americans’ and Mexican Americans’ struggles against racial
exclusion and subordination have always included efforts to secure the full
rights of citizenship, which is to say, to eliminate the “alien” from “alien
citizen.” But, from the other direction, there also have been efforts to
resolve the contradiction by formally denying territorial birthright
citizenship to certain groups, that is, to eliminate the “citizen” from the
“alien citizen,” to render her wholly alien. These efforts are diverse but
invariably involve challenges to the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
Exclusion was gradually eliminated between 1943 and 1952. See Chinese Repealer, ch. 344,
57 Stat. 600, 1194 (1943); Luce-Celler Act, ch. 534, 60 Stat. 416 (codified in scattered
sections of 8 and 9 U.S.C.) (amending Nationality Act of 1940 to repeal Indian and Filipino
exclusion from citizenship); McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 8
U.S.C. § 1101 (2000) (repealing all racial barriers to naturalization).
11. See Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856).
12. Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics 26 (1996); see
also Ling-Chi Wang, The John Huang Controversy—A Wake-up Call for Asian-American
Activists,
JINN
Magazine,
Oct.
23,
1996,
http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/2.22/961023-lobby.html; Ling-Chi Wang, China
Spy Scandal Taps Reservoir of Racism, JINN Magazine, Mar. 18, 1999,
http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/5.06/990318-china.html.
13. African colonization and repatriation movements have been promoted by both EuroAmericans wishing to rid the United States of black people and African Americans seeking
freedom via a return to their origins. See, e.g., 10 Anti-Black Thought, 1863-1925: The
American Colonization Society and Emigration (John David Smith ed., 1993); Claude A.
Clegg III, The Price of Liberty: African Americans and the Making of Liberia (2004); see
also Kunal M. Parker, Making Blacks Foreigners: The Legal Construction of Former Slaves
in Post-Revolutionary Massachusetts, 2001 Utah L. Rev. 75.
14. See Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896).
2524
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[Vol. 75
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside.” 15
Since its ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark in 1898, 16 the Supreme
Court has upheld the declaratory force of that clause. Commentators have
generally agreed that the weight of precedent is considerable and have
doubted that it can be overcome. 17 Nonetheless, contemporary concerns
about illegal immigration and terrorism have renewed efforts to strip
birthright citizenship from groups deemed unworthy of it. The Citizenship
Reform Act of 2005, introduced by Republican Representative Nathan Deal
of Georgia, would “deny automatic citizenship at birth to children born in
the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident
aliens,” including children born “out of wedlock” to a mother who is not a
citizen or permanent resident. 18 John C. Eastman, a leading advocate for
exempting children of illegal aliens from birthright citizenship has argued
that a reinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment became urgent “[i]n
the wake of 9/11.” 19
Controversy over the meaning of citizenship also has erupted in England,
where British-born citizens of South Asian descent have been implicated in
terrorist acts and plots. 20 In recent years, Ireland (2004) 21 and New
15. U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.
16. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).
17. See, e.g., Stephen Dinan, GOP Mulls Ending Birthright Citizenship, Wash. Times,
Nov. 4, 2005, at A1; The Stupid Shall be Punished:
“Birthright Citizenship,”
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2006/10/birthright-citizenship.html (Oct. 21, 2006, 23:15
EST). But, as noted by Michele Waslin of the National Council of La Raza, “This was
always seen in the past as some extreme, wacko proposal that never goes anywhere . . . . But
these so-called wacko proposals are becoming more and more mainstream—it’s becoming
more acceptable to have a discussion about it.” ‘Birthright Citizenship’ Debate Set to Begin,
MSNBC.com, Dec. 26, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10609068/.
18. H.R. 698, 109th Cong. § 1 (2005). “Out of wedlock” specifically includes “common
law marriages.” The bill had eighty-seven cosponsors. See Information on H.R. 698,
http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:698:./list/bss/d109HR.lst::|TOM:/bss/109se
arch.html| (last visited Feb. 8, 2007).
19. Hearing on Dual Citizenship, Birthright Citizenship, and the Meaning of Sovereignty
Before the Subcomm. on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims of the H. Comm. on the
Judiciary, 109th Cong. 57-72 (2005) (statement of John C. Eastman, Professor of Law);
John C. Eastman, Politics and the Court: Did the Supreme Court Really Move Left Because
of Embarrassment over Bush v. Gore? 94 Geo. L.J. 1475, 1484 (2006). Constitutional
amendments limiting citizenship to children of citizens and legal residents also were
introduced into the Congress in 1993 and 1995. See H.R.J. Res. 56, 104th Cong. (1995);
H.R.J. Res. 129, 103d Cong. (1993); H.R.J. Res. 117, 103d Congress (1993). Bills
amending immigration and nationality laws to the same effect were introduced in 1995. See
H.R. 1363, 104th Cong. (1995); H.R. 705, 104th Cong. (1995).
20. See Serge F. Kovaleski, Young Muslims in Britain Hear Competing Appeals, N.Y.
Times, Aug. 29, 2006, at A3.
21. See Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, 2004 (Act No. 38/2004) (Ir.) (limiting
grant of citizenship by jus soli to persons with at least one parent who is an Irish or British
citizen or who meets certain criteria of residence or right of residence).
2007]
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP AND THE ALIEN CITIZEN
2525
Zealand (2005) 22 have amended their citizenship laws to confer citizenship
at birth only to children with at least one citizen or permanent-resident
parent. These developments warn us that access to citizenship, including
birthright citizenship in the United States, is not fixed but politically
contingent.
THE CITIZENSHIP CLAUSE
In the United States, the Fourteenth Amendment established (or, more
precisely, made explicit for national citizenship that which had been the
case since the founding of the republic) the rule of jus soli, or citizenship
based on place of birth, a rule derived from the English common law. 23
The United States also has a tradition of jus sanguinus as it grants
citizenship to children born to U.S. citizens abroad (as long as they have
prior residence in the United States), but this is a statutory corollary to the
constitutional principle that assigns citizenship at birth by territory. 24
Opponents of territorial birthright citizenship argue in terms of history,
political theory, and textual interpretation. There has been much discussion
and debate on the question, especially since the publication of Peter Schuck
and Rogers Smith’s Citizenship Without Consent in 1985, so I will only
summarize the debate here. 25 It is argued first that the English common
law of jus soli, which aimed to ensure the allegiance of the monarch’s
22. See Citizenship Amendment Act 2005, 2005 S.N.Z. No. 43 (N.Z.) (limiting
territorial birthright citizenship to children with at least one New Zealand citizen or
permanent-resident parent).
23. See Calvin’s Case, (1608) 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (K.B.), arguing that a person born in
Scotland after James I ascended the throne of England was a “natural-born subject” and as
such was entitled to inherit land in England. The ruling held that the king’s sovereignty
residing in his corporeal body was part of the “divine law of nature” and thus greater than
the discrete political jurisdictions under his sovereignty. In seventeenth century England,
subjecthood was primarily a matter of allegiance as few benefits accrued to natural-born
subjects but these did include the right to inherit land and to sue in the king’s courts. English
opponents of territorial birthright raised the specter of hordes of Scots acquiring property in
England. See Polly J. Price, Natural Law and Birthright Citizenship in Calvin’s Case (1608),
9 Yale J.L. & Human. 73, 95 (1997).
24. See 8 U.S.C. § 1401 (2000). In cases of children born out of wedlock the law grants
citizenship by descent to those born to a citizen mother but not to those with a citizen father
unless additional requirements are met, including “clear and convincing” evidence of
biological parentage and a history of parental support. See id. § 1409. The policy,
presumably aimed at limiting citizenship claims by persons fathered by U.S. soldiers abroad,
has withstood gender-discrimination challenge. See Nguyen v. INS, 533 U.S. 53 (2001).
25. Peter H. Schuck & Rogers M. Smith, Citizenship Without Consent: Illegal Aliens in
the American Polity (1985); cf. Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of
Citizenship in U.S. History 308-10 (1997); Letter from Professor Rogers M. Smith to
Professor Gerald L. Neuman (July 9, 1987), in Immigration and Refugee Law and Policy
1308 (Stephen H. Legomsky ed., 4th ed. 2005). For critiques and more discussion, see
Christopher L. Eisgruber, Birthright Citizenship and the Constitution, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 54
(1997); Gerald L. Neuman, Back to Dred Scott?, 24 San Diego L. Rev. 485 (1987) (book
review); David S. Schwartz, The Amorality of Consent, 74 Cal. L. Rev. 2143 (1986) (book
review).
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subjects in exchange for his protection, is a feudal remnant not compatible
with citizenship in a republic, which is (or should be) based on consent. 26
The second argument is that the Fourteenth Amendment’s phrase, “subject
to the jurisdiction thereof” should not be interpreted as mere territorial
jurisdiction exempting only the children of foreign diplomats as the Court
ruled in Wong Kim Ark, but rather that “jurisdiction” should be interpreted
...
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