Inheriting the City: The Children of Immigrants Come of Age

11. Conclusion: The Second Generation Advantage

Our research was initially motivated by worries about second generation decline. Like many other social scientists, we were concerned that the children of recent immigrants might be at risk of downward assimilation as they become Americans. We feared that many would earn less than their immigrant parents, get less education, have lower levels of civic participation in their new society, and become more alienated. We also suspected that upwardly mobile children of immigrants might achieve success largely by remaining tied to the ethnic communities and economic niches of their parents. In contemporary America, we speculated, the most successful immigrant families might be the ones who kept large parts of “mainstream” American culture at bay. Although we found examples of these two scenarios, neither turned out to be common. On the whole, second and 1.5 generation New Yorkers are already doing better than their immigrant parents. The Chinese and Russian Jews have demonstrated particularly rapid upward mobility. This upward trajectory is partly explained by their parents’ premigration class backgrounds and “hidden” human capital—but, particularly among the Chinese, even those from working class backgrounds or with poorly educated parents have sometimes achieved stunning upward mobility. Not surprisingly , those second generation respondents who belong to groups that the context of reception has racialized as black or Hispanic have a more mixed record. For these individuals, racial discrimination remains a significant factor in shaping their American lives. Yet even here, most of the chilConclusion : The Second Generation Advantage I think I have benefitted from being Colombian, from being Hispanic . It’s the best of two worlds. You know that expression? Like being able to still keep and appreciate those things in my culture that I enjoy and that I think are beautiful and at the same time being able to change those things which I think are bad. 23-year-old colombian woman 11 342 dren of immigrants are exceeding their parents’ levels of education, if only because the parents’ levels were quite low. West Indians, the group in the greatest danger of being negatively racially stereotyped, show real gains over their parents and their native born peers on a number of fronts. All the second generation groups earn as much or more than the comparable native born group. Controlling for age and gender, Dominicans and South Americans earn more than Puerto Ricans, West Indians earn more than native blacks, and the Russians and Chinese are on par with native whites. In terms of educational attainment, whether or not one controls for age, gender, and parental education, Dominicans and South Americans are doing better than Puerto Ricans, West Indians are doing better than African Americans, Russian Jews are doing better than native whites, and the Chinese are doing better than everyone. While less likely to be working full time than their staggeringly work-oriented immigrant parents, the Chinese and the Russian Jews are either working or going to school full time in slightly higher numbers than native whites (mainly because more are still attending school); the levels of the other second generation groups exceed those of African Americans and Puerto Ricans and, except for the Dominicans , are approaching the rates of native whites. While there are significant differences among the second generation groups in how many get involved in criminal activities, arrest rates are about the same as those of native whites even in those groups whose members are most likely to have had brushes with the law. Moreover, these arrest rates are well below those of native born minority counterparts. Many respondents of African descent report experiencing racial discrimination , particularly from the police. The experience has clearly left many individuals feeling uncomfortable with their status as “Americans” and alienated them from some aspects of American life. Yet, the second generation group most identified as “black” and most likely to experience such discrimination—West Indians—is also the group most likely to participate in neighborhood and civic affairs and to be interested in New York politics. West Indians vote in numbers comparable to native whites, if somewhat below the very high proportion of native African Americans. This rapid incorporation into American life does not stem from the second generation’s maintaining social or cultural ties with the parents’ immigrant communities. The group experiencing the most dramatic upward mobility—the Chinese—is actually the least likely to retain the parents’ language. Members of every second generation group who Conclusion | 343 work...