How immigrants become other marcelo m suarez

Anthropology Essay Final

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Assimilation but Were Afraid to Ask Author(s): Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco Source: Daedalus, Vol. 129, No. 4, The End of Tolerance: Engaging Cultural Differences (Fall, 2000), pp. 1-30 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027662 Accessed: 16-01-2018 18:35 UTC

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Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Assimilation But Were Afraid To Ask

As if by centennial design the first and last decades of the twentieth century have been eras of large-scale immi gration (see figures 1 and 2). During the first decade of

the twentieth century, the United States saw the arrival of what was then the largest wave of immigration in history when a total of 8,795,386 immigrants, the vast majority of them Euro pean peasants, entered the country. By the 1990s, the wave of "new immigration" (which began in 1965) peaked when about a million new immigrants were arriving in the United States each year. By 1998 the United States had over 25 million immigrants, setting a new historic record.1 Two dominant features characterize this most recent wave of

immigration: its intensity (the immigrant population grew by 30 percent between 1990 and 1997) and the somewhat radical shift in the sources of new immigration: up to 1950, nearly 90 percent of all immigrants were Europeans or Canadians; today over 50 percent of all immigrants are from Latin America, and 27 percent are from Asia (see table 1).

The recent U.S. experience is part of a broader?indeed, global?dynamic of intensified transnational immigration. As we enter the twenty-first century, the worldwide immigrant population is over 100 million people?plus an estimated 20 to

Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco is professor of human development and psychology, and co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project, Harvard University.

This essay is part of a forthcoming volume, The Free Exercise of Culture, edited by R. Shweder, M. Minow, and H. Markus. ? Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved.

1

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2 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

Figure 1. Immigrants Admitted: Fiscal Years 1900-1996

2000 1800 1600 1400

I 1200 ? 1000 h 800

600 400 200 0

Source: Adapted from U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Wash ington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1998).

30 million refugees. And these numbers reveal only the tip of a much larger immigration iceberg; by far the majority of immi grants and refugees remain within the confines of the "develop ing world" in individual nation-states. China, for example, has an estimated 100 million internal migrants.2

It is not surprising, then, that in recent years there has been renewed interest in basic research and policy in the field of

Table 1. Foreign Born as a Percentage of the Total U.S. Population 1880 1900 1920 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1997

% foreign born , 13.3 13.6 13.3 6.9 5.4 4.7 6.2 8.6 9.3* *1998 foreign-born population=25,208,000

Percentage of Foreign Born by Region of Origin 1880 1920 1950 1980 1997

Europeans 97% 93.6% 89.3% 49.6% 17% Asians 1.6 1.7 2.65 18 27 Latin Americans 1.3 4.2 6.3 31 51 Source: Harvard Immigration Project, 2000.

1900 1930 1960 1990 Year

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 3

Figure 2. Immigrants Admitted: Country of Origin, Top Five Countries

Mexico

Philippines

China'

Dominican Republic

'Includes People's Republic of China and Taiwan; 2Sixteen-year period.

Source: Adapted from U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Wash ington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1998).

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4 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

immigration. While there is now robust scholarly activity on some aspects of immigration?for example, its economic causes and consequences?the scholarship on other important facets is somewhat anemic. For example, we know comparatively little about the long-term adaptations of immigrant children?the fastest-growing sector of the child population in the United States. Data and conceptual work on their health, schooling, and transition to the world of work are quite limited.3 So is the work on the cultural processes of change generated by large scale immigration. This is in part because labor economists, demographers, and sociologists have set the tone of the current research agenda?while anthropologists, psychologists, legal scholars, and scholars of the health sciences have played a more modest role.

Large-scale immigration is at once the cause and conse quence of profound social, economic, and cultural transforma tions.4 It is important to differentiate analytically between the two. While the claim has been made that there are powerful economic interests in having a large pool of foreign workers (a major cause of large-scale immigration), immigration neverthe less generates anxieties and at times even fans the fires of xenophobia (a major consequence of large-scale immigration). Two broad concerns have set the parameters of the debate over immigration scholarship and policy in the United States and Europe: the economic and the sociocultural consequences of large-scale immigration. Recent economic arguments have largely focused on 1) the

impact of large-scale immigration on the wages of native work ers (Do immigrants depress the wages of native, especially minority, workers?), 2) the fiscal implications of large-scale immigration (Do immigrants "pay their way" taxwise, or are they a burden, consuming more in publicly funded services than they contribute?), and 3) the redundancy of immigrants, espe cially poorly educated and low-skilled workers, in new knowl edge-intensive economies that are far less labor intensive than the industrial economies of yesterday.5

Reducing the complexities of the new immigration to eco nomic factors can, of course, be limiting. Indeed, there is an emerging consensus that the economic implications of large

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 5

scale immigration are somewhat ambiguous. Research shows that immigrants generate benefits in certain areas (including worker productivity) and costs in others (especially in fiscal terms). Furthermore, we must not lose sight of the fact that the U.S. economy is so large, powerful, and dynamic that, ideo logues aside, immigration will neither make nor break it. The total size of the U.S. economy is on the order of $7 trillion; immigrant-related economic activities are a small portion of that total (an estimated domestic gain on the order of $1 to $10 billion a year, according to a National Research Council study).6

The fact that the most recent wave of immigration is com prised largely of non-European, non-English speaking "people of color" arriving in unprecedented numbers from Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America (see table 2 and figure 3) is at the heart of current arguments over the sociocultural conse quences of immigration. While the debates over the economic consequences of immigration are largely focused on the three areas of concern discussed above, the debate over the sociocul tural implications is somewhat more diffused. Some scholars have focused on language issues, including bilingual education (Are they learning English?). Others examine the political con sequences of large-scale immigration (Are they becoming American in letter and in spirit?). Still others focus on immigrant practices that are unpalatable in terms of the cultural models and social practices of the mainstream population (the eternal issues here are female genital cutting, arranged marriages, and, in Europe especially, the veil).

Table 2. Region of Birth of Foreign-Born Population Year Total Europe Asia Africa Oceania Latin America 1900 10,341,276 8,881,548 120,248 2,538 8,820 137,458 1960 9,738,091 7,256,311 490,996 35,355 34,730 908,309 1970 9,619,302 5,740,891 824,887 80,143 41,258 1,803,970 1980 14,079,906 5,149,572 2,539,777 199,723 77,577 4,372,487 1990 19,767,316 4,350,403 4,979,037 363,819 104,145 8,407,837 Source: Adapted from U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P23-195, Profile of the Foreign-Born Population in the United States: 1997 (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1999).

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6 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

Figure 3. Racial/Ethnic Composition of the Population

too r

1970

White, non-Hispanic D

1990

Black, non-Hispanic

2000 (projected)

Hispanic I

2050 (projected)

Asian American Indian

Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1996).

RETHINKING ASSIMILATION

Old ideas about immigrant "assimilation" and "acculturation"? first articulated to make sense of the experiences of the trans atlantic migrants of a century ago?have naturally been dusted off and tried out on the new arrivals. But in this case, applying the old to the new is not simply a reflex, a kind of intellectual

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 7

laziness. Rather, I think it suggests that thinking about immi gration in the United States is always, explicitly or implicitly, a comparative exercise: the here and now of the "new immigra tion" versus what, for lack of a better term, we might call the "mythico-historic" record.7 This is a record in which equal parts of fact, myth, and fantasy combine to produce a powerful cultural narrative along the following lines: poor but hard working European peasants, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, willingly gave up their counterproductive old-world views, values, and languages?if not their accents!?to become prosperous, proud, and loyal Americans.8

Because the United States is arguably the only postindustrial democracy in the world where immigration is at once history and destiny, every new wave of immigration reactivates an eternal question: How do the "new" immigrants measure up to the "old"? This was asked one hundred years ago when the "new" immigrants were Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans and the "old" immigrants were English (see figure 2). The recurring answer to that question is somewhat predictable. New immigrants always fail the comparative test by falling short of the mythico-historic standards set by earlier immi grants. Hence, the most basic rule governing public attitudes about immigration: we love immigrants at a safe historical distance but are much more ambivalent about those joining us now.9

It is hardly surprising, then, what questions many are asking today: Are the new immigrants of color recreating the struc tures of the foundational mythico-historic narrative?the gram

mar of which was articulated in Irish, Italian, and Eastern European accents on the streets and docks of the Lower East Side of Manhattan one hundred years ago? Or is today's un precedented racial and cultural diversity?think of the over one hundred languages now spoken by immigrant children in New York City schools?generating an entirely new script? Is what we hear today an incomprehensible Babelesque story, which is not only unlike anything we have heard before but is quite likely to contribute to our already polarized race relations and chronic "underclass" problems? Will today's new arrivals turn out to be like our mythical immigrant ancestors and assimilate,

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8 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

becoming loyal and proud Americans? Or, conversely, will they by the sheer force of their numbers redefine what it is to be an American?

Much of the analytic?as well as the emotional?framework for approaching the topic of immigration was developed as the then-young nation was in the process of metabolizing the great transatlantic European immigration wave of a century ago. Ideas about "assimilation" and "acculturation," terms often used interchangeably, were first introduced in the social sci ences to examine the processes of social and cultural change set in motion as immigrants began their second journey: their inser tion into mainstream American life.10 The basic theme in the narratives of "assimilation" and "acculturation" theories that came to dominate the social sciences predicted that immigra tion sets in motion a process of change that is directional, indeed unilinear, nonreversible, and continuous.

The direction or aim of the process was said to be "structural assimilation" (typically operationalized in terms of social rela tions and participation in the opportunity structure) and "ac culturation" (typically operationalized in terms of language, values, and cultural identifications) into what was, implicitly or explicitly, the prize at immigration's finish line: the middle class, white, Protestant, European American framework of the dominant society.11 The process as it was narrated in the social science literature seemed to follow neatly the van Gennepian structural code: separation (from social relations and from participation in the opportunity structure of the country or culture of origin), marginality (residential, linguistic, economic; especially during the earlier phases of immigration and espe cially acute among the first generation), and, finally, a genera tion or two after immigration, incorporation into the social structures and cultural codes of the mainstream.

The process of change was said to be nonreversible in that once an immigrant group achieved the goals of acculturation and structural assimilation, there was, so to speak, "no going back." This is in part because scholars of immigrant change conceptualized it as a dual process of gain (new culture, partici pation in new social structures) and loss (old culture, old social structures). The process was said to be continuous because it

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 9

took place transgenerationally. The immigrant generation (out siders looking for a way in), the second generation (American ized insiders), the third and forth generations (the "Roots" generation in search of "symbolic ethnicity"), and so on all had their assigned roles in this telling of the immigrant saga.

The dominant narratives of immigrant assimilation were struc tured by three reasonable assumptions. I will call them the "clean break" assumption, the "homogeneity" assumption, and the "progress" assumption. These assumptions, I suggest, need reexamination in light of some of the distinct features charac terizing the latest wave of immigration.

First, immigration was theorized to take place in clearly delineated waves (versus ongoing flows) between two rela tively remote, bounded geopolitical and cultural spaces. Immi grants left country "A" to settle permanently in country "B."

When immigrants chose to return to their country of origin, and large numbers did, it was again seen as a permanent move.12 The norm, however, was that immigrants leaving Ireland or Eastern Europe were not supposed to look back. This is hardly surprising, since the very idea of immigration was to look forward to a new start and better opportunities in a new country. The renaming rituals at Ellis Island, when immigrants traded?some voluntarily, others involuntarily?exotic names for "Americanized" versions, signified the beginning of a new life. A "clean break" was needed before the process of Ameri canization could begin.

The second assumption was that immigrants would, in due course, over two or three generations, join the mainstream of a society dominated by a homogeneous middle-class, white, Eu ropean American Protestant ethos.13 While American society was never homogenous, "the color line" being a defining fea ture of its landscape, it was never assumed that the African American culture played a significant factor in the immigrant equation. When assimilation was debated it went without say ing: its very point was to join mainstream culture. The third assumption dominating thinking about immigrant

assimilation was structured by a powerful teleological reflex: immigration is about uniform progress, about going from "good" (first generation) to "better" (second generation), to "best"

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10 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

(third and fourth generations). The immigrant's journey to success was the stuff of the American dream. Ragtime, the acclaimed Broadway musical, gives artistic form to this basic idea: the Russian family moves from the misery of the shtetl to glamorous Hollywood in one generation?assimilation in fast forward, so to speak. Taken together with the two previous assumptions, a coherent narrative unfolds: as immigrants give up their old ways, and they assimilate to middle-class, white European American Protestant culture, they find enormous re wards.

THE "CLEAN BREAK" ASSUMPTION: A CRITIQUE

It may no longer be useful to assume that immigration takes place between remote, neatly bounded geopolitical spaces, where a "clean break" is, even if not desired, inevitable. Indeed, in recent years, anthropologists and sociologists have claimed that what is novel about the "new immigrants" is that they are actors on a transnational stage.14 The relative ease and acces sibility of mass transportation (1.5 billion airline tickets were sold last year) and the new globalized communication and information technologies make possible a more massive back and-forth movement of people, goods, information, and sym bols than ever before.15 Compared to Mexican or Dominican immigrants today, the Irish and Eastern European immigrants of last century?even if they had wanted to?simply could not have maintained the level and intensity of contact with the "old country" that we are now witnessing.16 Furthermore, the new immigration from such places as Latin America and the Carib bean can be best characterized as an uninterrupted "flow" rather than neatly delineated "waves" typical of the earlier European transatlantic immigration. This ongoing, uninterrupted migratory flow is said to "replenish" constantly social practices and cultural models that would otherwise tend to be "lost" to assimilation.17 Indeed, in certain areas of the Southwest, Latin American immigration is generating a powerful infrastructure dominated by a growing Spanish-speaking mass media (radio, television, and print), new market dynamics, and new cultural identities.18

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 11 Another relevant feature of the new transnational frame

work is that even as they enmesh themselves in the social, economic, and political life in their new lands, immigrants remain powerful protagonists in the economic, political, and cultural spheres back home.19 With international remittances estimated at nearly $100 billion per annum, immigrant remit tances and investments have become vital to the economies of most countries of emigration. A U.S.-Mexican Binational Study on Immigration estimates that remittances to Mexico were the "equivalent to 57 percent of the foreign exchange available through direct investment in 1995, and 5 percent of the total income supplied by exports."20

Politically, immigrants are emerging as increasingly relevant actors with influence in political processes both "here" and "there." Some observers have noted that the outcome of the

most recent Dominican presidential election was largely deter mined in New York City?where Dominicans are the largest group of new immigrants. Likewise, Mexican politicians?es pecially those of the opposition?have recently "discovered" the political value of the seven million Mexican immigrants living in the United States. The new Mexican dual nationality initiative?whereby Mexican immigrants who become nation alized U.S. citizens would retain a host of political and other rights in Mexico?is also the product of this emerging transnational framework.21

Because of a new ease of mass transportation and new com munication technologies, immigration is no longer structured around the "sharp break" with the country of origin that once characterized the transoceanic experience. Immigrants today are more likely to be at once "here" and "there," articulating dual consciousness and dual identities and, in the process, bridging increasingly unbounded national spaces.22

THE "HOMOGENEITY" ASSUMPTION: A CRITIQUE

It may no longer be useful to assume that immigrants today are joining a homogeneous society dominated by the middle-class,

white, European American Protestant ethos.23 The new immi grants are entering a country that is economically, socially, and

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12 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

culturally unlike the country that absorbed?however ambivalently?previous waves of immigrants. Economically, the previous large wave of immigrants arrived on the eve of the great industrial expansion in which immigrant workers and consumers played a key role.24

Immigrants now are actors in a thoroughly globalized re structured economy that is increasingly fragmented into dis continuous economic spheres. Some have characterized the new postindustrial economy in terms of the "hourglass" meta phor. On one end of the hourglass there is a well-remunerated, knowledge-intensive economic sphere that has recently experi enced unprecedented growth. On the other end, there is a service economy where low-skilled and semiskilled workers continue to "lose ground" in terms of real wages, benefits, and security. Furthermore, in the new economy there are virtually no bridges for those at the bottom of the hourglass to move into the more desirable sectors. Some scholars have argued that unlike the low-skilled industry jobs of yesterday, the kinds of jobs typically available today to low-skilled new immigrants do not offer serious prospects of upward mobility.25

Another defining aspect of the new immigration is the intense social segregation between new immigrants of color and the middle-class, white, European American population. While immigrants have always concentrated in specific neighbor hoods, we are witnessing today an extraordinary concentration of large numbers of immigrants in a handful of states in large urban areas polarized by racial tensions. Some 85 percent of all

Mexican immigrants in the United States reside in three states (California, Texas, and Illinois). As a result of an increasing segmentation of the economy and society, large numbers of low-skilled immigrants "have become more, not less, likely to live and work in environments that have grown increasingly segregated from whites."26 These immigrants have, by and large, no meaningful contact with the middle-class, white, Eu ropean American culture. Rather, their point of reference is more likely to be co-nationals, co-ethnics, or the African-American culture.

But perhaps the lethal blow to the homogeneity assumption comes from what I call a "culture of multiculturalism." Rather

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 13

than face a "relatively uniform 'mainstream'" culture,27 immi grants today must navigate more complex and varied currents. The cultural models and social practices that we have come to call multiculturalism shape the experiences, perceptions, and behavioral repertoires of immigrants in ways not seen in previ ous eras of large-scale immigration. A hundred years ago there certainly was no culture of multiculturalism celebrating?how ever superficially and ambivalently?ethnicity and communi ties of origin. Indeed, the defining ritual at Ellis Island was the mythic renaming ceremony when immigration officers?some times carelessly and sometimes purposefully?renamed new arrivals with more Anglicized names, a cultural baptism of sorts. Others chose to change their names to avoid racism or anti-Semitism, or simply to "blend in." Hence, Israel Ehrenberg was reborn as Ashley Montague, Meyer Schkolnick was reborn as Robert Merton, and Issur Danielovitch Demsky was reborn as Kirk Douglas.28

Immigrants today enter social spaces where racial and ethnic categories are important gravitational fields?often charged? with important political and economic implications. The largest wave of immigration into the United States took place largely after the great struggles of the civil rights movement.

In that ethos, racial and ethnic categories became powerful instrumental as well as expressive vectors. By "expressive ethnicity" I refer to the subjective feeling of common origin and a shared destiny with others. These feelings are typically con structed around such phenomena as historic travails and struggles (as in the case of the Serbian sense of peoplehood emerging from their defeat five centuries ago at the hands of the Ottmans in the Battle of Kosovo), a common ancestral language (as in the case of the Basques), or religion (as in the case of the Jews in the Diaspora).29

By "instrumental ethnicity," I mean the tactical use of ethnicity. In recent years, "identity politics" has become a mode of ex pressive self-affirmation as well as instrumental self-advance ment. This is in part because ethnic categories have become a critical tool of the state apparatus. Nation-states create catego ries for various reasons, such as to count people for census, taxation, and apportionment for political representation. Eth

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14 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

nie categories as generated by state policy are relevant to a variety of civic and political matters; furthermore, they are appropriated and used by various groups for their own strate gic needs.

Pan-ethnic categories such as "Asian American" and "His panic" are largely arbitrary constructions created by demogra phers and social scientists for purposes of data development, analysis, and policy. The term "Hispanic," for example, was introduced by demographers working for the U.S. Bureau of the Census in the 1980s as a way to categorize people who are either historically or culturally connected to the Spanish lan guage. Note that "Hispanic," the precursor to the more au courant term Latino, is a category that has no precise meaning regarding racial or national origins. Indeed, Latinos are white, black, indigenous, and every possible combination thereof. They also originate in over twenty countries as varied from each other as Mexico, Argentina, and the Dominican Republic.30

For large numbers of new arrivals today, the point of refer ence seems to be the cultural sensibilities and social practices of their more established co-ethnics?i.e., Latinos, Asians, Afro Caribbeans?rather than the standards of the increasingly more remote middle-class, white, Protestant European Americans.

THE "PROGRESS" ASSUMPTION: A CRITIQUE

The foundational narratives of immigrant assimilation typi cally depicted an upwardly mobile journey. The story was elegant in its simplicity: the longer immigrants were in the United States, the better they would do in terms of schooling, health, and income. As Robert Bellah once noted, "The United States was planned for progress," and each wave of immigrants was said to recapitulate this national destiny. This assumption needs rethinking in light of new evidence. A number of scholars from different disciplines using a variety of methods have iden tified a somewhat disconcerting phenomenon. For many new immigrant groups, length of residency in the United States seems to be associated with declining health, school achieve ment, and aspirations.31

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 15

A recent large-scale National Research Council study con sidered a variety of measures of physical health and risk behav iors among children and adolescents from immigrant families? including general health, learning disabilities, obesity, and emotional difficulties. The NRC researchers found that immi grant youths tend to be healthier than their counterparts from nonimmigrant families. These findings are "counterintuitive in light of the racial and ethnic minority status, lower overall socioeconomic status, and higher poverty rates of many immi grant children and families." The NRC study also found that the longer immigrant youths are in the United States, the poorer their overall physical and psychological health. Furthermore, the more "Americanized" they became, the more likely they were to engage in risky behaviors such as substance abuse, unprotected sex, and delinquency (see figure 4). While the NRC data are limited, they nevertheless should be cause for reflec tion.32

In the area of education, sociologists Ruben Rumbaut and Alejandro Portes surveyed more than five thousand high-school students in San Diego, California, and Dade County, Florida. R?mbaut writes:

an important finding supporting our earlier reported research is the negative association of length of residence in the United States with both GPA and aspirations. Time in the United States is, as ex pected, strongly predictive of improved English reading skills; but despite that seeming advantage, longer residence in the United States and second generation status [that is, being born in the United States] are connected to declining academic achievement and aspirations, net of other factors.33

In a different voice, Reverend Virgil Elizondo, rector of the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio, Texas, articulates this same problem: "I can tell by looking in their eyes how long they've been here. They come sparkling with hope, and the first generation finds hope rewarded. Their children's eyes no longer sparkle."34

A number of scholars are currently exploring the problem of decline in schooling performance, health, and social adaptation of immigrant children. Preliminary research suggests that sev

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16 Marcelo M. Su?rez-Orozco

Figure 4. Mean Risk Behavior by Ethnic Group and Immigrant Status

Europe/ Africa/Afro- China Philippines Other Asia Central/ Cuba Mexico Canada Caribbean South America

^ Native-born with native-born parents HI Native-born with foreign-born parents

B Foreign-born with foreign-born parents

Source: Adapted from National Research Council, From Generation to Generation: The Health and Well-Being of Children in Immigrant Families (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998), 84. Copyright 1998 by the National Academy of Sciences. Courtesy of the National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. Reprinted by permission.

eral factors seem to be implicated. The various forms of "capi tal" that the immigrant families bring with them?including

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Everything You Want to Know About Assimilation 17

financial resources, social class and educational background, psychological and physical health, as well as social supports? have a clear influence on the immigrant experience. Legal status (documented versus undocumented immigrant), race, color, and language also mediate how children and families manage the upheavals of immigration. Economic opportunities and neigh borhood characteristics?including the quality of schools where immigrants settle, racial and class segregation, neighborhood decay, and violence?all contribute significantly to the adapta tion process. Anti-immigrant sentiment and racism also play a role. These factors combine in ways that seem to lead to very different long-term outcomes. Until better longitudinal data are available, it is no longer safe to assume that immigration inevi tably leads to measurable progress.