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International Labor and Working-Class, Inc. 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 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of International Labor and WorkingClass, Inc. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40931308 Accessed: 03-01-2020 02:39 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40931308?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms International Labor and Working-Class, Inc., Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Labor and Working-Class History This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 128.111.121.42 on Fri, 03 Jan 2020 02:39:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms McGill-Queen's University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Twenty-First-Century Immigration to North America This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms pa r t t h r e e Socio-Cultural Aspects of North American Immigration This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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” This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 187 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 188 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 189 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. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 190 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 191 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 192 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 193 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 194 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 195 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 196 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 197 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 198 Kay Deaux 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 This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 199 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; This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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). This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 202 Kay Deaux 6 In both cases, the two immigrant groups reported significantly more confidence in the system than did students without immigrant backgrounds. references Alba, Richard. 2008. “Why We Still Need a Theory of Mainstream Assimilation.” Migration und Integration. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Sonderheft, 48: 37–56. Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, m a : Harvard University Press. Allport, Gordon. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge, ma : Addison-Wesley Publishing. – 1958. The Nature of Prejudice, abr. ed. Garden City, ny: Doubleday. 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Crocker, Jennifer, Riia Luhtanen, Bruce Blaine, and Stephanie Broadnax. 1994. “Collective Self-Esteem and Psychological Well-Being Among White, Black, and Asian College Students.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20: 503–15. Deaux, Kay. 2006. To Be an Immigrant. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Deaux, Kay, Nida Bikmen, Alwyn Gilkes, Ana Ventuneac, Yvanne Joseph, Yasser A. Payne, and Claude M. Steele. 2007. “Becoming American: Stereotype Threat Effects in Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Groups.” Social Psychology Quarterly 70: 384–404. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 203 Deaux, Kay, Anne Reid, Daniela Martin, and Nida Bikmen. 2006. “Ideologies of Diversity and Inequality: Predicting Collective Action in Groups Varying in Ethnicity and Immigrant Status.” Political Psychology 27: 123–46. Deaux, Kay, and M. Verkuyten. 2014. “The Social Psychology of Multiculturalism: Identity and Intergroup Relations.” In The Oxford Handbook of Multicultural Identity, edited by Verónica Benet-Martínez and Yongyi Hong, 118–38. New York: Oxford University Press. Feygina, Irina, and E. Godfrey. 2013. “Paying the Price for the American Dream? The Role of System Justification in Ethnic Group Evaluation and Well-Being among Immigrants.” Unpublished manuscript. Fiske, Susan T., and Tiane L. Lee. 2012. “Xenophobia and How to Fight It: Immigrants as the Quintessential ‘Other.’” In Social Categories in Everyday Experience, edited by Shaun Wiley, Gina Philogène, and Tracey A. Revenson, 151–63. Washington, dc : American Psychological Association. Goel, Mita Sanghavi, Ellen P. McCarthy, Russell S. Phillips, and Christina C. Wee. 2004. “Obesity among US Immigrant Subgroups by Duration of Residence.” Journal of the American Medical Association 292: 2860–7. 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New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Lara, Marielena, Cristina Gamboa, M. Iya Kahramanian, Leo S. Morales, and David E. Hayes Bautista. 2005. “Acculturation and Latino Health in the United States: A Review of the Literature and Its Sociopolitical Context.” Annual Review of Public Health 26: 367–97. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 204 Kay Deaux Luhtanen, Riia, and Jennifer Crocker. 1992. “A Collective Self-Esteem Scale: Self-Evaluation of One’s Social Identity.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 18: 302–18. Major, Brenda, and Pamela J. Sawyer. 2009. “Attributions to Discrimination: Antecedents and Consequences.” In Handbook of Prejudice, ­Stereotyping, and Discrimination, edited by Todd D. Nelson, 89–110. Mahwah, n j : Erlbaum. Mead, George Herbert. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press. Migration Policy Institute (m pi ). 2013. “Migration Information Source: Fresh Thoughts, Authoritative Data, Global Reach.” Washington, dc : m pi . http://www.migration​information.org/USfocus/print.cfm?ID=931 (accessed 27 June 2013). – 2016. “Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States.” Washington, dc: mpi. http://www.migration information.org/article/frequently-requested-statistics-immigrantsand-immigration-united-states (accessed 19 October 2016). Park, Robert Ezra, and Ernest W. Burgess. 1921. Introduction to the Science of Sociology. Chicago, i l: University of Chicago Press. – 1969. Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 3rd ed. Chicago, il: University of Chicago Press. Park, Robert Ezra., and Herbert A. Miller. 1921. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York: Harper Bros. Perkins, Krystal, Shaun Wiley, and Kay Deaux. 2014. “Through Which Looking Glass? Distinct Sources of Public Regard and Self-Esteem among First- and Second-Generation Immigrants of Color.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 20: 213–19. Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2001. Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. Berkeley, c a : University of California Press; New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Portes, Alejandro, and Min Zhou. 1993. “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants among Post-1965 Immigrant Youth.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530 (1): 74–96. Rumbaut, Rubén G. 1999. “Assimilation and Its Discontents: Ironies and Paradoxes.” In The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited by Charles Hirschman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind, 172–95. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Steele, Claude M. 1997. “Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance.” American Psychologist 52: 613–28. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Assimilation and Its Discontented 205 – 2010. Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. New York: W.W. Norton. Steele, Claude M., and Joshua Aronson. 1995. “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69: 797–811. Suárez-Orozco, Carola, and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco. 2001. Children of Immigration. Cambridge, m a: Harvard University Press. Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo. 2002. “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Assimilation but Were Afraid to Ask.” In Engaging Cultural Differences: The Multicultural Challenge in Liberal Democracies, edited by Richard A. Shweder, Martha L. Minow, and Hazel R. Markus, 19–42. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Telles, Edward E., and Vilma Ortiz. 2008. Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Wang, Jennifer, Camden Minervino, and Sapna Cheryan. 2013. “Generational Differences in Vulnerability to Identity Denial: The Role of Group Identification.” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 16: 601–17. Waters, Mary C. 1999. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American Realities. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Wiley, Shaun. 2013. “Rejection-Identification among Latino Immigrants in the United States.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 37 (3): 375–84. Wiley, Shaun, and Kay Deaux. 2011. “The Bicultural Identity Performance of Immigrants.” In Identity and Participation in Culturally Diverse Societies: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, edited by Assaad E. Azzi, Xenia Chryssochoou, Bert Klandermans, and Bernd Simon, 49–68. Chichester, u k : Wiley-Blackwell. Wiley, Shaun, Kay Deaux, and Carolin Hagelskamp. 2012. “Born in the u sa : How Immigrant Generation Shapes Meritocracy and Its Relation to Ethnic Identity and Collective Action.” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 18: 171–80. Wiley, Shaun, Krystal Perkins, and Kay Deaux. 2008. “Through the Looking Glass: Ethnic and Generational Patterns of Immigrant Identity.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 32: 385–98. Winnicott, D.W. 1971. Playing and Reality. Middlesex, uk : Penguin. Zhou, M. 1999. “Segmented Assimilation: Issues, Controversies, and Recent Research on the New Second Generation.” In The Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience, edited by Charles Hirshman, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind, 196–211. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. This content downloaded from 128.111.224.57 on Thu, 21 Nov 2019 23:14:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 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 2522 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 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [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). 2526 FORDHAM LAW REVIEW [Vol. 75 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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Political Incorporation for Immigrants
Name
Institution
Date

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POLITICAL INCORPORATION FOR IMMIGRANTS

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Political incorporation
Political incorporation is a complex process because immigrants and their descendants perceive
themselves as having as equals to the native Americans with political rights, and having their
political views count in the case they decide to exercise it. For Gerstle (2010), he identifies three
dimensions to political incorporation that is the institutional, cultural, and legal, and his argument
is that there is unevenness in the process among the mentioned dimensions. I support Gerstle's
(2010) argument that the process of incorporation is complex, and the three dimensions he
mentions make it fraught and more contradictory. On the other hand, I believe that
transformational and acquiescent modes of incorporation are the more meaningful approach of
achieving political incorporation for immigrants.
Understanding immigrant politics requires a closer focus with one eye on the telescope and the
other eye on the microscope. The electoral politics we see in the U.S is dynamic because of
differences in political systems across different states, electoral systems, and other structural
elements. As Junn and Haynie (2008) note, political parties have an influence in the politics of
America, and they exert their influence on immigrant political immigration as they play the
critical role of mobilizing the mass public and only resolve to activate voters when it is their selfinterests. For the immigrants, they are new entrants into the Americas political system, and for
political parties, they see this as an opportunity to spend fewer resources in activating and
nudging this lot to their full support. At the end of the day, the political incorporation of the
immigrants is in the interest of the political parties. As Junn and Haynie (2008) note at the
beginning of the twenty-first-century immigrant population accounted for 11.6 percent of the
American population, and through their descendants, the number increased to 20 percent. From
the figures highlighted by Junn and Haynie, (2008), it is evident that political parties target these

POLITICAL INCORPORATION FOR IMMIGRANTS

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immigrants because they understand they are an easy to entice lot with local welfare systems and
non-profits services.
For states and localities, they are more than eager to incorporate immigrants into their political
system as well as their economic system. For instance, the state of Pittsburg is wil...


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