Assimilation to American Society

Theories and Realities

One representation of America

Assimilation/Americanization = Social Mobility• 1st generation (immigrant

generation) arrives without wealth, education, or fluency in English: works hard as an entrepreneur or in manual labor

• 2nd generation (children of immigrants): fluent in English, finish school in U.S., achieve middle-class status

• 3rd generation (grandchildren of immigrants): go to college, successful professionals

Children at Ellis Island, 1908

But some anthropologists found that assimilation was counterproductive to social

mobility….

• Punjabi immigrants to California

• Farm-workers• Kept their children from the

local peer culture: inside, working with the family

• Pulled their daughters out of school if they weren’t doing well, to marry them early

In some measures of wellbeing, which often correlate to social class,

immigrants do better than the native-born….

• Education: lower high-school dropout rates for first generation immigrants than for second-generation immigrants or native-born

• Health: immigrants live longer, on average, than the native born, although the effect wears off the longer they live in the United States (or Canada)

Cultural Ecology model by John Ogbu

The achievement gap is the result of the nature of the history, subordination, and exploitation of the minority group and the minority group’s interpretation and response to their oppression.

• Autonomous minorities• Immigrant minorities• Subordinate or castelike minorities

Segmented Assimilation = Americanization might mean downward mobility or upward

mobility• Different social classes in American society with different

relations to education (aspiration and achievement, p. 135)• In 2009, 4.8 % of Blacks and 5.8% of Hispanics between 15

and 24 dropped out of grades 10-12, compared with 2.4% for white students.

• Also in 2009, the dropout rate for low-income students was five times greater than their high-income counterparts -- 7.4% percent compared with 1.4%t.

Drop-out Rates, 1972-2004

College Enrollment Rates, 1970-2003

What conclusions do Stepick and Stepick draw about assimilation of the children of immigrants?

Miami: An Immigrant City• 2.6 million people in Miami-

Dade County• 65% Hispanic or Latino; 51%

Foreign-born; 72% spoke language other than English at home

• 1.2million Cubans in Greater Miami area; began migrating to Miami in 1950; Cuban Revolution 1953; came as refugees

• Politically and economically prominent (first Latino president to be Cuban? Marco Rubio?)