The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship

7. Children of Immigrants: Segmented Assimilation and Its Determinants

7 Children of Immigrants: Segmented Assimilation and Its Determinants ALEJANDRO PORTES GROWING UP in an immigrant family has always been a difficult process of reconciling the language and cultural orientations of foreign-born parents with the demands for assimilation of the host society. In the American experience, the process has traditionally been portrayed as a seldom-resolved series of familial and socialpsychological tensions which often culminate either in a rejection of the parental culture or a retreat from confrontation with outside society . Those children of immigrants who are able to move successfully between the two worlds represent a minority.1 Studies of the second generation virtually ceased in the 1950s after the coming-of-age of the offspring of turn-of-the-century immigrants. In the 1990s, however , these studies have gained renewed vigor in the wake of accelerating immigration brought about by changes in United States immigration law. Unlike the earlier immigration wave, composed primarily of Europeans, contemporary immigrants came mostly from Latin American and Asian countries. Their numbers virtually guarantee that the second generation (native-born persons of foreign parentage ) will surpass its earlier peak of about 28 million reached in 1940.2 More important than their numbers alone is the theoretical problem posed by the new second generation and its adaptation to American society. Children of immigrants grow up today in a social context different from that encountered by their predecessors, which 248 Children of Immigrants: Segmented Assimilation 249 can alter significantly the effects of assimilation. Regardless of their particularities, studies of immigrant offspring in the past took for granted that acculturation into the values, norms, and practices of American society was a sine qua non for socioeconomic mobility.3 Today this assertion is more problematic. As we shall see, there are circumstances at present in which assimilation does not lead to economic progress and social acceptance, but to precisely the opposite results. My purpose in this chapter is to examine the dilemmas confronting the second generation within the framework of conceptual developments in both economic sociology and the sociology of immigration . Their joint use will allow us to see the phenomena of intergenerational tension and sociocultural assimilation in a new light and to advance original propositions on their future course. Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants The dilemmas of contemporary second-generation adaptation are well illustrated by several recent studies. I present two examples that offer a suitable empirical background for the ensuing theoretical discussion. The Haitian immigrant community of Miami is composed of some 100,000 legal and clandestine immigrants, many of whom sold everything in order to buy passage to America. First-generation Haitians are strongly oriented toward preserving a strong national identity , which they associate both with community solidarity and with social networks promoting individual success. In trying to instill national pride and an achievement orientation in their children, however , they come into conflict with the youngsters' everyday experiences in school. Little Haiti is adjacent to Liberty City, the main black inner-city area of Miami, and Haitian adolescents attend predominantly inner-city schools. Native-born minority youth stereotype Haitians as too docile and too subservient to whites and they make fun of French and Creole and of the Haitians' accent. As a result, second-generation Haitian children find themselves torn between conflicting ideas and values: to remain "Haitian" they would have to face social ostracism and continuing attacks in school; to become "American" (black American in this case), they would have to forgo their parents' dreams of making it in America on the basis of ethnic solidarity and preservation of traditional values.4 An adversarial stance toward the white mainstream is common among inner-city minority youth who, while attacking the newcomers ' ways, instill in them an awareness of American-style discrimination . A common message is the devaluation of education as a vehicle 250 The Economic Sociology of Immigration for advancement of all black youth, a message that directly contradicts the immigrant parents' expectations. Academically outstanding Haitian American students have consciously attempted to retain their ethnic identity by cloaking it in black American cultural forms. Many others, however, have followed the path of least effort and become thoroughly assimilated. "Assimilation" in this instance is not to mainstream culture, but to the values and norms of the inner city. In the process, the resources of solidarity and mutual support within the immigrant community are dissipated. A second recent study looks at the...