Working Paper No. 200

This paper takes a doubting, though friendly, look at the hypotheses of “second generation deciine” and “segmented assimiiation” that have framed the emerging research agenda on the new second generation. We begin with a review of the basic approach, outlining the logic of argument, and specifying the central contentions.We then head toward the past, in search of material that will illuminate both the parallels and points of distinction between the immigrant children who grew up in the first half of the 20th century and those who will move into adulthood during the century to come. Last,we return to the present, inquiring both into the characteristics of those children of immigrants who might find themselves at risk, and the precise source of any such peril. Thirty years after the Hart-CeIIer Act brought renewed immigration to the United States, the immigration research agenda is slowly shifting from the newcomers to their children. The timing is just right, as it is only within the past decade that immigrants’ children have become a sizable presence in American schools, and still more recently that they have moved from the schools into the labor market. But the tenor of the times is clearly not good. America is in the throes of another debate over immigration, and this time, the parties that would narrow, if not close, the door to immigration seem to have the upper hand. An unhealthy brew of popular anxiety whipped up by politicians who can never stoop too low in search of votes lies behind the emerging trend toward restriction. Nonetheless, there are non-partisan, scholarly reasons for worry. Many of the newcomers arrive with low levels of skill, converging on a handful of metropolitan areas that lack the resources neeaea to speea rne process or immigrant aadprauon. And these days, even me 3-3 If .l_.__~ ____ -l?-._:___..r _,(,..r_L!-.-_.-*L_ friends of immigration will concede that serious questions have been raised about immigrants’ prospects and about the costs associated with absorbing the many newcomers who have moved to the United States over the past fifteen years. Not surprisingly, then, the emerging scholarship on the children of immigrants has begun on a note of inflected pessimism. Recent publications by Herbert Gans, Alejandro TI-..A__ T)..L_T)..-L-..* ru1~c:s, nuuw mm~uiiu~, Ziiid Mii ZhOii -l--A:...^L..rl^...C^ AC A -__:_,., _rt...:, 1:c.-. Itaulrlg sLuut;IlLs Ul Atllt;llL;all CLIIIII~ IIIC, aid immigrants themselves -outline, with clarity and acuity, the reasons for concern: Coming from everywhere but Europe, today’s newcomers are visibly identifiable, and enter a mainly white society still not cured of its racist afllictions. Shifts in the structure of the economy aggravate the impact of discrimination: while poorly-educated immigrant parents seem to have no trouble getting started at the very bottom, the shift toward knowledgeintensive jobs means that the next generation will have to do well in school if it wishes to surpass the achievements of the foreign-born. With big-city schools in more trouble than ever before, the outlook for successful passage through the educational system seems dim. As second generation expectations are unlikely to remain unchanged, we can count on a mismatch between the aspirations of immigrant children and requirements of the jobs which they seek.’ So our leading sociological commentators on ethnicity are worried about “second generation decline”. Their anxieties, however, take a very different form from that voiced in the popular press: there we read that the children of today’s immigrants are failing to assimilate, in supposed contrast to their predecessors of earlier in the century. She scholarly literature assures us that new second generation is assimilating, all right, but in ‘%egmented9i fashion, with some large, though so far undefined, proportion likely to converge with the “urban underclass.” This new perspective on second generation change emerged just as the topic of immigrants’ children showed up on the scholarly radar screen. As such, it seems likely to have been designed for agenda-setting purposes, laying out a set of leads and sensitizing concepts for subsequent researchers to modify, extend, alter, and systematize as empirical work on the new second generation moved ahead. But these ideas have struck a particularly deep chord: consequently, the hypotheses of “second generation decline” or “segmented assimilation” have already assumed canonical form. As can be seen from the articles appearing in the International Migration Review’s special issue on “The New Second Generation”, or from any other perusal of this rapidly growing literature, the research community has taken the new perspective as conventional wisdom.2 One can only admire the persuasive power of ideas. But it does seem that a skeptical review is long overdue. While the new views present a powerful case, the core contentions rest on a set of assumptions neither adequately specified and nor beyond reproach. Moreover, the current pessimism is heavily influenced by a particular, never fully articulated view of the past, adopting an interpretive perspective that puts the contemporary situation in an especially unfavorable light. The anxiety about emerging second generation trends is also notably broad-brushed: while one can argue that some portion of today’s second generation is either stalled or headed downward, the relative size of that portion is certainly relevant, and that matter is never addressed. And the underlying case for pessimism relies on a set of analogies to the experience of other, contemporary minorities that have not yet received much attention, and may not bear up under the scrutiny. Thus, this paper takes a doubting, if friendly, look at the hypotheses of “second generation decline” and “segmented assimilation”. We begin with a review of the basic approach, outlining the logic of argument, and specifying the central contentions. We then head toward the past, in search of material that will illuminate both the parallels and points of distinction between the immigrant children who grew up in the first half of the 20* century and those who will move into adulthood during the century to come. Last, we return to the present, inquiring both into the characteristics of those children of immigrant who might find themselves at risk, and the precise source of any such peril. Second generation decline? There is little question that many, possibly even most immigrant children are heading upward, exemplified by the large number of Asian students enrolled in the nation’s leading university, some the children of workers, others the descendants of immigrants who moved right into the middle-class. The rapid Asian ascent evokes parallels with the past, most clearly the first and second generation Jews who began appearing at City College, and then Harvard, Columbia, and other prestigious schools in numbers that discomfited the then dominant WASPS. As Steinberg (198 1) pointed out some years ago, it was the Jews’ good fortune to have moved to America just when the educational system was expanding and moving away from its classical past, and to have converged on the Northeast, where opportunities to pursue schooling were particularly good. But even so, schleppers greatly outnumbered scholars, and the proportion of Jews who made their way to Harvard or its proletarian cousin, CCNY, was dwarfed by those who moved ahead as skilled workers, clerks, or small businessowners. In this light, the Asian advance into higher education remains phenomenal: in the Los Angeles region, for example, 18 to 24 year olds in every Asian group (Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the United States after the age oflO included) attend college at a rate that exceeds native-born whites, with the native-born leagues ahead of native-born whites on this count. And ironically, the temper tantrums of “angry white men” seem likely to accelerate, rather than reverse this trend -quite a different turn of events than that which transpired in the Ivy League 70 years ago. Even though some portion of today’s second generation is rapidly ascending the totem pole, others appear to be left behind; it is this group that has attracted scholarly interest and concern. As we read the emerging literature, the obstacles to progress appear to stem from a complex of intersecting economic, social, and psychological factors. The starting point is race: since the European immigrants, as Portes and Zhou write, were “uniformly white”, ” skin color reduced a major barrier to entry into the American mainstream (76).” Like beauty, skin color lies in the eyes of the beholder, and as Gans reminds us, white southern and eastern European immigrants were earlier characterized as races. Henry Adams, E.A. Ross and others of their ilk were certainly convinced that the swarthy masses of the turn of the century were of a different kind; since Portes and Zhou are quite right in arguing that race, or rather the meanings associated with it, “is a trait belonging to the host society”, one wonders whether levels of xenophobia and racism are indeed higher today than they were in the 1920s or 1930s -when the last second generation came of age. Still, the thinking today concludes that the “ethnic and racial discrimination” suffered by contemporary dark-skinned and non-Caucasian immigrants seems “more permanent” (Gans, 176). Perhaps. But the argumentation has more to do with second generation response than with the mainstream’s problems with race, After ail, discriminatory practices &it by the children must surely be experienced by the parents, who, in self-presentation and cultural attributes, are far more distinct than their offspring. The children, however, respond differently: they have a heightened perception of discrimination and its prevalence; and they react to actual and perceived discrimination by rejecting the dreams that impelled their parents. But how to account for this distinctive second generational response? Answer: the advent of the second generation yields an attitudinal shift, which in turn, stems from varying sources. One derives from the immigration process itselc following Piore (1979), we can caii this %econd generation revoit”. The immigrants arrive wiiiing to do the jobs that natives won’t hold: however low the jobs may fall in the U.S. hierarchy, they still offer wages and compensation superior to the opportunities back home. Having been exposed to different wage and consumption standards from the start, the children want more; consequently, the question is whether their “careers...keep pace with their U.S.-acquired aspirations” (Portes and Zhou, 85). For Piore, the generational shift in immigrant aspirations was inherent in the processes of migration and settlement and thus a recurrent phenomenon. This would suggest greater continuity between yesterday’s and today’s second generations, but Portes, Zhou, and Gans all argue that the mismatch between aspiration and opportunity is greater today than ever before, and therefore the greater likelihood of frustration as well (shades of Merton!) The conundrum of the contemporary second generation lies in the continuing transformation of the U.S. economy. The manufacturing economy of old allowed for a three, possibly four generational move beyond the bottom-most positions to which the immigrants were originally consigned. Even though low-skilled jobs persist, occupational segmentation has “reduced the opportunities for incremental upward mobility through well-paid, blue-collar positions” (Portes and Zhou, 85). The declining viability of small