Working Paper No. 240

This paper serves as an opportunity to pull together some thoughts and questions about modes of incorporation as an explanation for ethnic differences in behavior. Specifically, I ask just what is the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior if ethnic behavior is approached from a modes-of-incorporation perspective. I ask this question both in connection with individuals of the immigrant generation as well as in connection with the second generation; the concern with the second generation leads me to consider the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior in connection with the related conception of segmented assimilation. My argument proceeds through four steps. 1) I note that the modes are introduced as a way out of being left with a large ethnic residual (or unexplained difference) from individual-level analysis and as one more way of contradicting the claim that the residual reflects the operation of independent cultural differences among groups. 2) I stress how far we can push the corollary that living in different modes can effect not only the structural opportunities available to a person but also the attitudes, values, and outlooks common in people from different groups. 3) I also stress the possibility that many specifics of an immigrant group’s historical experiences are not captured by the modes of incorporation (as would be true of any typology), and that such historical specifics ignored by the typology might matter a great deal. Moreover, such historically specific features may involve cultural characteristics as well as other characteristics, cultural characteristics related not at all or only tangentially to the aspects of experience discussed in the typology of the modes. 4) A big question, from this perspective, then, is: how well do the modes in fact explain the residual ethnic differences unexplained by the individual-level variables? And how do we answer that question empirically? 1 I want to use this opportunity to pull together some thoughts and questions about modes of incorporation as an explanation for ethnic differences in behavior. My approach is highly idiosyncratic, in that I first describe briefly the logic of my own efforts (of a decade ago) to sort out cultural and structural influences upon ethnic behavior (Perlmann, 1988), and then show that the concept of modes of incorporation is meant to surmount just the sort of constraints inherent in approaches such as the one I had taken. For this reason the concept of the modes and the development and elaboration of that concept is of great interest to me; and so I try to go a step farther and ask explicitly just what is the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior if ethnic behavior is approached from a modes-of-incorporation perspective. I ask this question both in connection with individuals of the immigrant generation as well as in connection with the second generation; the concern with the second generation leads me to consider the status of cultural explanations for ethnic behavior in connection with the related conception of segmented assimilation. Another issue also runs through this paper, namely the contrast between the demands of historical specificity and those of a broad explanatory framework (in this case the modes of incorporation) that relies on a relatively small number of explanatory elements (those in the typology). The questions about the status of cultural baggage leads back to this issue of historical specificity; when I ask about the existence of premigration cultural patterns that seem to have originated in historical circumstances one could not have foreseen simply by invoking the modes-of-incorporation typology. And more broadly, the issue of historical specificity arises when I ask just how much of what needs to be explained can in fact be explained by the modes of incorporation. To put it another way, the historical specifics of each group’s premigration situation can hardly be fully described by the typology; surely it is plausible that some of these historical legacies might continue to influence the group’s members after migration. If these historical legacies do continue to influence the group’s members, and if these historical legacies are not merely aspects of the class structure in the country of origin, than they may well turn out to be cultural sources of behavior unrelated to the class features stressed in the typology. And in any event, just how important are the historical legacies not captured by the modes (whether cultural sources of behavior or not)? For the sake of simplicity I focus almost entirely on the discussion of modes of incorporation as it appears in the second edition of Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut’s Zrnmigrant America (1996) which I think is a recent, self-conscious and subtle effort to summarize an evolving body of remarkable research and reflection. I want to make it clear that there are considerable gaps in my reading of related scholarship; for that reason too focusing on the single exposition is useful, but it seems fair to warn the reader that this strategy may not protect against all blunders.