Color Lines, Country Lines: Race, Immigration, and Wealth Stratification in America

Chapter 9. Looking Ahead: Immigration, Stratification, and Assimilation

Looking Ahead: Immigration, Stratification, and Assimilation D ouglas Massey and his colleagues (2002) predict that chain-migration from Latin America will continue for generations. It will persist from Asia and Africa. Uninterrupted streams of immigrants who are for the most part neither white nor highly skilled perpetuate a first generation that requires rethinking of two broad issues—the impact of immigration on American society and the assimilation of the first-generation immigrants. The mass population movement of immigrants introduces the factor of nativity into the American wealth stratification system. Nativity will transform this system by changing the ways that immigrants assimilate economically and culturally by accumulating wealth. The transformation goes hand in hand with the transformation of racial residential segregation. Settlement patterns of contemporary immigrants have reshaped both the landscape of racial residential segregation and the consequences of such segregation for various racial groups. The large presence of first-generation immigrants suggests a rethinking of the century-old practice of focusing on second and higher generation assimilation. It is imperative to pay equal attention to the first generation. Ultimately, the role of immigration should be evaluated not only by examining the assimilation of immigrants but also by examining the impact of immigration on the native-born population and society as a whole. This conclusion places the key findings from the book within the larger picture created by immigration, stratification, and assimilation. Immigrants and natives alike are constrained by the American racial hierarchy. Nativity, however, differentiates members within racial-ethnic groups and, in the long run, contributes to the weakening of racial-ethnic inequality . This two-tiered process justifies reconceptualizing social stratification , a process that can take a number of factors into account. Results 270 Chapter 9 concerning the contextual effects help us understand how immigrationinduced changes in society affect immigrants and natives. At the same time, findings about the differences and similarities in wealth between immigrants and natives demand that we rethink assimilation. By examining nonwhite first-generation immigrant assimilation, this book underscores a distinction between the role of race-ethnicity and nativity in shaping the path either toward or away from the American mainstream. Immigration and Racial Ethnic Stratification The stratification literature stresses three factors—race-ethnicity, class, and gender. This book argues that when the immigrant population is substantial, nativity and nationality of those immigrants are new factors that bear on social stratification. When multiple stratification factors are present, it is important to consider and distinguish all of the possible ideal-type scenarios. This book develops three. When all stratification factors are competing, each remains influential and the system persists. When one factor becomes indecisive, it loses its influence and the system is reduced. When the primary factors dominate the secondary, the secondary differentiate the population and, in the long term, transform the stratification order. The observed patterns show that in wealth stratification race is the primary factor dominating nativity (chapter 3), as they reveal wide racial-ethnic gaps and narrow nativity gaps. The small nativity gaps in age profiles of net worth within racial-ethnic groups further testify to the dominant role of race-ethnicity over nativity. Immigrants’ country of origin , age at arrival, and naturalization, can be more important than nativity in social stratification. Differences by country of origin are indeed sharper than differences by nativity. However, racial-ethnic stratification remains primary. After all, most origin-country groups are clustered within the same racial-ethnic groups. Only two origin-country groups cross color lines: immigrants from Hong Kong–Taiwan surpass native whites (and all other native groups) and Cuban immigrants have the advantage in many wealth measures over Korean and Vietnamese immigrants . This is scant evidence to support that immigrant characteristics could contest the importance of race-ethnicity. Evidence from chapter 7 indicates that the two-tiered system of raceethnicity and nativity also withstands multivariate analysis. Racialethnic gaps in both the probability and the size of having positive net worth remain substantial after education, nativity, and household characteristics are taken into account. The results not only confirm a wide black-white gap, but also reveal one between Hispanics and whites. In addition, because Asian educational attainment is high, the white-Asian gap becomes wider after education levels are held constant. These findLooking Ahead 271 ings show that the influence of racial-ethnic stratification on...