America's Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity

Chapter 8: The Incorporation of Immigrants: Patterns of Marriage

172 Chapter 8 The Incorporation of Immigrants: Patterns of Marriage T he incorporation of immigrant groups into the mainstream of American life is a central element in the debates about immigration policy. Whether—and how rapidly—racial and ethnic groups who immigrate to the United States are incorporated into the social and cultural fabric of American society is a particularly important aspect of immigration. High levels of racial and ethnic intermarriage provide strong evidence of sociocultural incorporation because the familial relations between members of different racially or ethnically defined groups bespeaks the lack of barriers to social interaction between group members and the fading or acceptance of cultural differences. High levels of racial and ethnic intermarriage have therefore been called the litmus test of the social and cultural incorporation of racially or ethnically defined groups (Alba 1995). The incorporation of immigrant groups into American society can also be hastened by marriage between the immigrant and native-born generations. Marriages between the first and later generations result in the quick political integration of the foreign-born spouses and children and may also be associated with a quicker introduction of the foreign-born spouse to participation in social arenas dominated by native-born Americans. Although often neglected in research and discussions concerning intermarriage, levels of intermarriage across generational lines may in fact be an underappreciated aspect of (and shortcut to) the integration of immigrant groups into American society . In this chapter, we describe patterns of intermarriage of immigrants with respect to national origins, race, citizenship, and nativity. We include discussions of some of the reasons why intermarriage is Patterns of Marriage 173 such an important barometer of incorporation, and how social and demographic contexts can modify patterns of intermarriage. To provide some background for the description and discussion of contemporary patterns of intermarriage, we first describe patterns of intermarriage with respect to national origins among immigrants and their descendants early in the twentieth century. We then discuss how elements of immigration policy have shaped patterns of marriage and intermarriage among immigrants during the latter part of the twentieth century. Background Early in the twentieth century, concerns were raised about the ability of the nation to integrate the “disparate racial elements” introduced through immigration from southern and eastern European nations. Contemporaneous and recent analyses of marriage patterns between the various European nationalities in the 1920s showed high “castelike ” levels of in-group marriage and low levels of intermarriage (Drachsler 1920; Pagnini and Morgan 1990). By 1960, however, a generation or so later, levels of intermarriage among Americans of European descent were much higher and educational attainment appeared to be trumping national ancestry as the more important dimension in marriage choices (Kalmijn 1993a). By 1980, only twenty years later, intermarriage had become the expectation among Americans of European descent: native-born Americans of European descent were more likely to be out-married (married to a member outside their ethnic group) than to marry a person of matching or overlapping European origin (Lieberson and Waters 1988). The social and cultural barriers between the European national groups, each of which was considered in the early twentieth century to be racially distinct—had become almost nonexistent in the American context. The high levels of intermarriage , which increased over time and generation during the twentieth century, both reflected and accelerated the processes through which Americans of European descent became American—or, more accurately, became white Americans. The Immigration Act of 1924 had distinguished the desirability of Europeans according to nationality and ranked them invidiously. It also had banned the immigration of persons of nationalities racially ineligible for citizenship, such as Chinese, Japanese, and South Asians. Although Mexicans were not prevented from entering, the implementation of various provisions of immigration policy such as the literacy test, the ban on contract labor, and the formation of the 174 America’s Newcomers and the Dynamics of Diversity Border Patrol in 1925 helped drive the level of documented immigration from Mexico down during the 1920s (Ngai 1999). But the rigid racial architecture underlying the Immigration Act of 1924 began to unravel in the 1940s. Small quotas were allotted to immigrants of previously barred races and national origins and special provisions were enacted for the spouses and fiancées of American soldiers. The Immigration Act amendments of 1965 mandated evenly distributed quotas of 20,000 each to states in the Eastern Hemisphere (comprising Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia) and thus undid...