Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration.

Chapter 1: Rethinking immigration

- Many of the features of the old assimilation concept are now largely rejected in the literature; these features include . . .

Seeming inevitability of assimilation

- Elevation of the culture of middle-class, Protestant whites to the standard by which other groups should be assessed and aspire

- Minority group expected to change completely, while majority group expected to be unaffected

- The ethnic or racial community played no positive role

Alternatives to this old assimilation model

- Pluralism and transnationalism suggest that ethnic diversity will flourish in the modern world, driven by advances in the global economy

- The choice to have multiple ethnic identities will no longer result in a loss of the advantages once accorded exclusively to the mainstream

- Segmented assimilation theory suggests that members of the second and third generation immigrant groups will be incorporated into American society as disadvantaged minorities

- Alba and Nee argue that this theory overlooks the variation in outcomes across different immigrant groups

- Alba and Nee assert that the traditional view of assimilation is still quite viable, but with some tweaks

- Believe that ethnicity should be thought of as a social boundary and that assimilation, as a form of ethnic change, can occur on either the minority or majority side of this boundary

Chapter 6: Evidence of contemporary assimilation

- Assimilation must be thought of as a multigenerational process

- Language usage is a good proxy for assimilation

- The three-generation model of language assimilation asserts that, in general, by the third generation English will be the only language spoken in the home

- Socioeconomic assimilation more variable across ethnic groups

- Groups who migrate with more education tend to have children who are at least as educated as the native population

- Groups who come as labor migrants tend to have children who are more educated than the first generation, but less educated than the native population

- Residential assimilation more difficult for those with black skin color (ex: Afro-Caribbeans)

The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World.” Chs. 1, 2, 4, and 6.

Ch.1: Introduction

- Since 9/11, population movements have been viewed with much more scrutiny

- Very difficult to tell how many international migrants there are in the world

- A report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) indicated that the number of migrants doubled between 1965 and 2000, from 75 million to 150 million

- Over 2% of the world’s population has lived outside its national borders for at least 12 months

- Most likely there has been a remarkable upsurge in illegal migration in recent decades, but again, it’s difficult to tell

Certain general tendencies of world migration in recent years include. . .

 - The globalization of migration; i.e. the tendency for more and more countries to be affected by migration

- The acceleration of migration in all major regions of the world

- The differentiation of types of migration (labor, refugees, family reunification, etc.) within the same country at the same time

- The feminization of migration; i.e. women migrating not only for family reunion, but also as labor migrants (major example: Filipino women to Middle East)

- The growing politicization of migration

Ch. 2: The migratory process and the formation of ethnic minorities

3 main theories of why people migrate

1. Economic (push-pull) theories suggest that certain factors compel people to leave one area while certain pull factors attract them to another

- Push factors include demographic growth, low living standards, lack of economic opportunities, and political repression

- Pull factors include demand for labor, availability of land, economic opportunities, and political freedom

- Economic theories have been criticized as too individualistic; empirical studies cast doubt on hypothesis that individuals migrate to maximize economic utility

2. Historical-structural theories suggest that rich capitalist countries exploit poorer countries by recruiting their cheap, foreign labor

3. Migration-systems theory takes an interdisciplinary approach and suggests that migration is the result of macro-level structures (such as a history of colonization or trade between 2 countries) interacting with micro-level structures (such as individual desire for economic gain, informal networks of friends and community members, etc.)

Emergence of discourse on transnationalism

- Globalization and improvements in technology have led to immigrants becoming attached to both new home and country of origin

- In light of transnationalism, migrants will likely maintain closer ties to countries of origin in the future

Discourse on the formation of ethnic minorities

- Minorities are created by their subordinate position in society and a sense of collective consciousness

Ch. 4: Migration to developed countries since 1945

 3 major migratory flows 1945-1970

 1. Migration of workers from the European periphery to Western Europe, often through “guestworker systems”

 - For instance, France and West Germany recruited temporary foreign workers

2. Migration of colonial workers to former colonial powers

 - For example, Irish in GB and N. Africans in France

3. Permanent migration to North America and Australia, at first from Europe and later from Asia and Latin America

 - Often migration flows began with temporary recruitment (ex: Bracero system of recruiting Mexicans to do agrarian labor in California and Texas) but migrants settled permanently

- One common feature of migratory movements 1945-1970 is the predominance of economic motivations

Since 1970 many shifts have occurred in migratory trends, including. . .

- Transition of many Southern and Central European countries from places of emigration to places of immigration

- In Italy, foreign workers increased from 300,000 to 1.4 million 1981-2001

- Recruitment of foreign labor by oil-rich countries

- Increasing international mobility of highly qualified personnel

- Proliferation of illegal migration and legalization policies

- Attempts in the US to limit migration (primarily from Mexico) have included measures such as high fences, video surveillance and border patrol, and denying welfare benefits to illegals

Replacement migration in Western Europe is a big issue at the turn of the century

- UN population report in 2000 suggests that extremely high levels of immigration would be needed to achieve replacement levels in most countries

Ch. 6: Next waves: The globalization of international migration

- Objective of chapter is to describe current trends in international migration to, from, and within the Arab, African, and Latin American regions

Arab region

- Morocco and Turkey have largest population of expatriates living in the EU

 - Many Arab workers from poorer regions flock to the oil industry in Libya, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE

 - Gulf War transformed Iraq from region to immigration to one of emigration

 - Some, but much smaller, migration of Arabs to non-oil producing states

Africa

- Africa has the world’s most mobile population

- Migration often a way to escape poverty/starvation

- Many zones have freedom of movement policies, but depending on political environment migration may or may not be tolerated

Latin America and the Caribbean

- 4 areas of migrants:

Southern cone w/ Europeans,

Andean with Indians and mestizos,

Latin America with Indians and mestizos, a

nd Caribbean with Africans

- Seasonal labor migration very common

- Poor economies in the 1980s ->immigration to the US, Canada, and Europe

“Transnationalism in question.” The American Journal of Sociology, 109(5), 1177-1195.

Traditional theories of transnationalism argue that in today’s age of globalization, the alignment between the nation-state and society has waned

- Transnational communities have emerged as migrants find new and more ways to connect their home and host societies

- Waldinger and Fitzgerald argue that what immigration scholars describe as transnationalism is typically its opposite

- Transnationalism implies an imagined community that extends beyond loyalties to a particular place or ethnic group

- Immigration scholars typically use transnationalism to mean migrants’ connections to multiple places/groups

- Furthermore, they argue that transnationalism and assimilation are not opposing concepts, although they are often described as such

- Both transnationalism and assimilation deal with boundaries between two or more societies; these concepts are not about transcending or eliminating differences between ethnic groups, but rather about distinguishing between members and outsiders of groups

- This is apparent in the observation that states make migrants transnational by bounding the territories that they seek to connect

- Scholars of transnationalism should conduct more temporal studies, to see if the state-spanning efforts of migrants have really increased in recent years

- Furthermore, such studies should distinguish between having no homes versus having two homes (which one better characterizes the feelings of today’s migrant?)

- In sum, Waldinger and Fitzgerald argue that that transnationalism should not be thought of as an either/or concept, but rather as a matter of degree

The rise of different forms of grass-roots transnationalism has both
theoretical and practical signiŽcance. Theoretically, because it represents
a distinct form of immigrant adaptation to those described in the past
literature. Practically, because it offers an option to ordinary people not
present in the past, either in their own countries or in those to which they
migrate. As the process acquires momentum, grass-roots transnationalism
has the potential of subverting one of the fundamental premises of
capitalist globalization, namely that labour stays local, whereas capital
ranges global. By availing themselves of the same technologies that make
corporate strategies possible, transnational entrepreneurs not only deny
their own labour to would-be employers at home and abroad but become
conduits of information for others. In this manner, they help to reduce
the informational gap between those engaged in the expansion of ‘transnationalism
from above’ and subordinate groups formerly at the mercy
of these strategies.

he broad dynamics of the
phenomenon and its potential implications: 1) the emergence of these
activities is tied to the logic of capitalist expansion itself; 2) while following
well-established principles of social network development, transnational
communities represent a phenomenon at variance with
conventional expectations of immigrant assimilation; 3) because transnational
enterprise is fuelled by the dynamics of capitalism, it has greater potential as a form of individual and group resistance to dominant structures
than alternative strategies.

schiller et al in a 1995