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Chapter 6: Immigrant Economic Incorporation
- Russell Sage Foundation
- Chapter
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114 Chapter 6 Immigrant Economic Incorporation T he extent to which the new immigrant groups are experiencing successful economic incorporation is one of the central issues driving current debates about the need to reform U.S. immigration policy. Political controversy about whether existing admissions policies should be changed is likely to intensify to the degree that immigrants are not experiencing positive economic incorporation , or are undergoing slower or more difficult incorporation processes than immigrants in the past. In recent years, the question of successful incorporation has also been raised in the case of the second generation. Attention has focused on the offspring of immigrants because it is the second generation that experiences lifetime exposure to the opportunities and constraints of American society (see Zhou and Bankston 1998; Portes and Rumbaut 2001). Relative lack of success among the second generation is likely to be interpreted by many as an even stronger indictment of immigration policies than any difficulties experienced by the first generation. In this chapter, we address the matter of economic incorporation by examining labor-market outcomes among immigrants and their descendants, focusing primarily on wages and earnings. We concentrate on four main topics. First, in order to ascertain whether major categories of immigrants have experienced the same trends in earnings as non-Hispanic whites, we examine the levels and changes in earnings among major racial and ethnic and immigrant groups over the past twenty years, paying special attention to differences between the native- and foreign-born. Second, in order to ascertain what happens to immigrants themselves after they arrive, we review the results of recent research on the extent to which any nativity gaps in wages and earnings diminish the longer immigrants reside in the country. Third, we examine whether the degree of self-employment Immigrant Economic Incorporation 115 and an important contextual factor, the relative size of the ethnic market or economy, enhance earnings prospects among Mexican immigrants who are not self-employed. Fourth, in order to ascertain the degree to which convergence in economic well-being between immigrants and natives occurs across generations, we present research findings on the education and labor-market outcomes of first-, second -, and third- or later-generation Mexican-origin persons, the largest recent U.S. immigrant group, compared to natives. Earnings Trends The work of social scientists seeking to describe, analyze, and explain immigrant economic well-being has often reflected the fact that until recently, literature on incorporation of immigrants into the labor market , particularly in urban contexts, has been dominated by studies of urban African Americans in the United States (Waldinger 2001). A resulting assumption has often been made that the research strategies and theoretical explanations applying to the African American case can be transferred to the immigrant case. One of the consequences of this is to treat immigrants and immigrant groups (by which we mean, in the case of the new immigrants, not only the immigrants themselves but also their descendants) as members of racial or ethnic minority groups that are disadvantaged because of persisting discrimination in the United States against people of color. While abundant evidence exists to document the enduring effects of racial discrimination in the case of blacks in this country, it has not been clear that immigrant groups are discriminated against to the same degree as are African Americans (Bean and Bell-Rose 1999; Perlmann and Waldinger 1999; Waters 1999), which calls into question tendencies to view the experience of immigrant groups as identical to that of African Americans. Recent research also indicates that immigrants are more concentrated in lower-paying jobs than the native-born members of their ethnic groups, largely because of their lesser skills (Waldinger 2001). This implies that certain approaches to studying the economic situation of immigrant groups are not likely to be able to provide a full picture of immigrant incorporation. For example, an approach that treats immigrant groups as racial or ethnic minorities and lumps the foreign- and native-born together will understate economic progress by virtue of including the former with the latter. Also, an approach that focuses only on the immigrants instead of also on the second and later generations will cover too short a time span to reveal the effects of more complete incorporation experiences. A preferable strategy is [3.235.139.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:04 GMT) 116 America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity to take into account nativity differences, and one that is even better where possible is also to...