Special Issue: The Second Generation
Special Issue: The Second Generation
Adult children of immigrants to the United States matter greatly to the country's future. This Special Issue, which includes a look back at the children of the last great wave of immigrants, examines trends among the new second generation, models of assimilation, and methods for learning more about this dynamic group.
A decade-long panel survey conducted in San Diego, California, and Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, reveals different outcomes among members of the second generation in education, employment, acculturation, incarceration, and family formation. Rubén G. Rumbaut of the University of California, Irvine and Alejandro Portes of Princeton University provide an overview of the latest results.
The second generation in New York City largely comes from non-European ethnic origins. Philip Kasinitz, Mary C. Waters, John Mollenkopf, and Jennifer Holdaway look at how growing up in a “majority minority” city has affected their experiences in school and on the job, how they feel about their progress, and where they think they fit within American society.
The story of yesterday’s second generation overall is one of progress and advancement. However, exclusively upbeat portrayals fail to capture the complexities of the paths of second-generation Italians and eastern European Jews, explain Nancy Foner and Richard Alba.
In moving from the first to the second generation, most groups in New York and Los Angeles have retained a fairly stable rate of self-employment, according to Steven J. Gold of Michigan State University, and Ivan Light and M. Francis Johnston of the University of California, Los Angeles.
In the 20th century, intermarriage across generations helped accelerate the integration of European immigrant groups. Gillian Stevens and associates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign investigate intermarriage trends among second-generation Asians and Latinos.
From the infamous "melting pot" to segmented assimilation to an identity-based model, Susan K. Brown and Frank D. Bean of the University of California, Irvine explore the various ways academics conceptualize assimilation.
To study the second generation, researchers need both demographic information and information that can only be learned through surveys and interviews. Douglas D. Heckathorn of Cornell University provides an overview of Census Bureau data and a relatively new methodology useful for immigrant research.
Members of the second generation are more likely to finish college than both the foreign born and those who are third generation and higher. David Dixon looks at general social and demographic characteristics of the second generation in the United States.
