Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation, and Race (review)

Generations of Exclusion uses longitudinal data to better understand Mexican American assimilation. Telles and Ortiz follow-up Grebler, Moore, and Guzman's The Mexican American People by interviewing the original respondents (n=684) and their children (n=758) who were located in Los Angeles, California and San Antonio, Texas in 1965. Their chief research question is: "What are the integration trajectories along dimensions of education, socioeconomic status, exposure to other groups, language, ethnic identity, and political participation?" (2). Avoiding the conflation too often found in other research, Telles and Ortiz carefully distinguish between historical or family generations and generations-since-immigration.

Telles and Ortiz use assimilation theory to frame their work, reminding readers that Portes and Rumbaut expect downward assimilation for second generation Mexican Americans and that Alba and Nee predict all groups but African Americans will eventually assimilate. Rather than presuming sweeping assimilation outcomes, Telles and Ortiz recognize that "the experiences of the Mexican American population are likely to be mixed rather than unambiguously assimilated or racialized" (5). Characteristics such as race, place, and human capital produce different pathways and rates of integration that do not always move linearly toward assimilation.

Setting up racialization ("designating people by race, thus implying their position in a social hierarchy" (15)) as counterforce to assimilation, Telles and Ortiz find that racialization is inimical to the integration process. Telles and Ortiz conclude that although assimilation is occurring with regard to social exposure, politics, identity, and culture, but more slowly than for European Americans, it is more limited in education and economics over generations-since-immigration (155). They contend that education is the "linchpin" for continued inequality, stalled integration, and ethnic persistence (131, 274). Since years of schooling are positively associated with occupational status, earnings, income, and wealth, limited education thus determines the economic exclusion of many Mexican Americans (156). Those who achieved higher education, however, experience higher inter-marriage rates and residential integration (184). The process of social stratification through education excludes many Mexican Americans from successful integration. The authors find that most Mexican Americans experience relative success by doing better than their parents but continue to lag well behind their Anglo counterparts in part because of racialization. This disadvantage is typically reproduced across generations.

Despite limited structural or socioeconomic assimilation, evidence of gradual and intergenerational linguistic and cultural assimilation is strong. While ethnic identity eroded over generations-since-immigration, the slow rate of identificational assimilation is partially shaped by racialization (237). As to whether undocumented immigrants seek to incorporate into American society, Telles and Ortiz find that 70 percent of surviving immigrants who were original respondents from 1965 became citizens by 2000.

The key contributions of Generations of Exclusion include disentangling historical generation from generation-since-immigration, detailing the effects of race-based social barriers, and outlining how a sample of Mexican Americans have fared since 1965 on a number of outcome measures. This work will aid scholars and students of international migration, assimilation, race, and Latinos/as in understanding how the Mexican-origin population of the American Southwest has experienced integration over historical time and across family generations.