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1. Introduction: Inheriting the City
- Russell Sage Foundation
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Immigration is squarely on the American political agenda. With the influx of migrants continuing at high levels, it is destined to remain there. Although its salience as an issue may rise and fall, immigration poses fundamental questions about what it means to be an American and whether the nation can deliver on its historic promise to provide upward mobility to newcomers and their children. Scholars usually frame the debate in terms of the economic and demographic impacts of high levels of immigration. Yet the broad passions excited by the issue point to deeper concerns about the ways in which mass migration is reshaping American society and culture (Zolberg 2006). Many wonder what sort of Americans the latest immigrants will become and what sort of America will be their legacy—and ours. Even those who think that immigration has a generally benevolent economic impact often worry that the huge numbers of largely nonwhite immigrants who have come to the United States since the mid-1960s will not “assimilate” or will put native born minorities at a further disadvantage. The answer to the question of what large scale migration will mean for American society, however, lies less with the immigrants themselves than with their ambivalently American children. The March 2005 Current Population Survey (CPS) reported that this new “second generation”— the children of at least one immigrant parent born in the United States or who arrived by the age of 12—accounted for one out of six 18- to 32year -olds in the nation and one out of four of all Americans under 18. In many ways, they will define how today’s immigrant groups become tomorrow ’s American ethnic groups. In the process, they will not only reshape American racial and ethnic relations but define the character of American social, cultural, and political life. This book is about their lives. It is the culmination of a decade-long Introduction: Inheriting the City 1 1 research project by a large team of researchers who interviewed members of the second and 1.5 generations in and around New York City. (We define the second generation as those born in the United States to at least one immigrant parent and the 1.5 generation as those born abroad but who arrived by age 12 and then grew up in the United States.) By looking at what life is like for them and those who will follow them, the project sought to understand the longer term consequences of immigration for American society. Over time, however, it also became a study of what it is like to be a young adult in New York today. We learned about the struggles and joys experienced by young adults coming of age in a tough town, a place of ever-present dangers, of backbreaking competition, but also of extraordinary possibilities. As such, it is also a book about New York City. This city of “eight million stories” houses more adult immigrants and more children of immigrants than any other city in the United States and its metropolitan area more than anywhere else but Greater Los Angeles. Yet while large scale international migration to Los Angeles did not take place until well into the twentieth century, it has a much longer history in New York. Indeed, the children of immigrants, past and present, have often been seen as the quintessential New Yorkers. Today’s second generation grows up among local institutions and attitudes that were shaped by the region’s long, deep, and diverse immigrant traditions. Writing this book has made us more aware of how difficult it can be to grow up in New York, yet how the city can still welcome newcomers. These qualities will no doubt lead some readers to think our research and conclusions apply only to New York. The city’s enthusiasts and detractors alike tend to exaggerate its difference from the rest of the United States— an “island off the coast of America,” in the words of Spalding Grey. Yet the problems faced by the second generation in New York are pretty much the same as those anywhere else. If New Yorkers have forged distinctive answers to those problems, they may offer positive or negative lessons to the rest of the nation. Why is it important to assess how New York and the nation are incorporating this new second generation? One reason is sheer numbers. Immigrants and their children now form a majority of the population in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles. According...