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SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION THEORY:
A REFORMULATION AND EMPIRICAL TEST *
Yu Xie Emily Greenman
University of Michigan
- An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 2005 Population Association of America Annual Meeting(April, Philadelphia). Direct all correspondence to Yu Xie (e-mail: [email protected]) or Emily Greenman (e-mail: [email protected] Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. The research is supported by a research grant to Yu Xie and a traineeship to) at Population Studies Center, Institute for Social Research, 426 Thompson Street, University Emily Greenman from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. We thank Richard Alba, VictorNee, and Tony Perez for comments on an earlier version of this paper.
SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION THEORY:
A REFORMULATION AND EMPIRICAL TEST
Abstract Segmented assimilation theory has been a popular explanation for the diverse experiences of assimilation among new waves of immigrants and their children. In this paper, we review the theory as it is currently articulated in the literature and propose a more restricted reformulation of the theory that yields sharp, empirically falsifiable hypotheses. Our reformulation is based on the idea that segmented assimilation theory is really about the differential outcomes of micro-level assimilation behaviors, depending on macro-level social conditions. We then test the empirical implications of the revised theory with respect to the well-being of immigrant children, using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. Our empirical analyses yield two main findings. First, for immigrant adolescents living in non- poverty neighborhoods, we find assimilation to be positively associated with educational achievement and psychological well-being but also positively associated with at-risk behavior. Second, there is little empirical evidence supporting our reformulation of segmented assimilation. We interpret these results to mean that future research would be more fruitful focusing on differential processes of assimilation rather than differential consequences of assimilation.
theory with respect to the well-being of immigrant children, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
Theoretical Issues Historical Background From the mid 1920s until around 1965, the flow of immigrants into the United States slowed to a trickle. Since the passage of the landmark 1965 Immigration Act, the country has been once again experiencing a period of mass immigration. Whereas earlier immigrants were mainly European in origin, today’s immigrants are primarily from Asia and Latin America. They are often referred to as “new immigrants.” It remains an open question whether or not the experiences of these new immigrants and their children resemble those of earlier European immigrants and their descendants. If the experience of earlier waves of European immigrants and their descendants can be characterized as successful assimilation into the American mainstream, should we expect the same or similar paths of assimilation among new immigrants and their children? (Alba and Nee 1997, 2003). There has been considerable scholarly interest in understanding the adaptation and assimilation processes of the new immigrants and their children (Alba and Nee 1997, 2003; Bankston and Zhou 1997; Farley and Alba 2002; Hernadez 1999; Hirschman, Kasinitz, and DeWind 1999; Gans 1992; Harris 1999; Harris, Harker, and Guo 2003; Jasso and Rosenzweiz 1990; Perlmann and Waldinger 1997; Portes and Rumbaut 1996, 2001; Waldinger and Feliciano 2004; Zhou and Bankston 1998). This scholarship generally recognizes that the processes of adaptation and assimilation among new immigrants may be different from those experienced by earlier European immigrants. Most notably, it has been suggested that theories of assimilation developed in response to earlier waves of immigration in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century are no longer adequate for understanding the experiences of the new immigrants. By popular accounts, classical assimilation theories considered assimilation to be part of the process of upward mobility for immigrants and their offspring. Each subsequent generation was thought to achieve higher social and economic status as it became more culturally and linguistically similar to the
American middle class (Rumbaut 1997; Zhou 1997a). Assimilation and upward mobility were thought to go hand in hand. Some scholarly work on new immigrants, by contrast, suggests that there may no longer be such a straightforward relationship between assimilation and upward mobility (Rumbaut 1997). It is a truism, though a trivial one, that the new immigrants are different from the old immigrants. Scholarly disagreement therefore centers on the extent, as well as the consequences, of such differences. The differences between the new and the old immigrants to America are manifested in two important dimensions: changes in the immigrants themselves and changes in America as a host society. In terms of the first dimension, some scholars emphasize that the new immigrants from Latin America and Asia are considered racial/ethnic minorities in America, and their minority status may therefore hinder their full integration into the white middle class (Gans 1992; Portes and Rumbaut 1996, 2001; Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1997b, 1997a). However, the very notion of race is socially constructed in a historical context, and some groups of European immigrants (such as the Irish, Jews, and Italians) were perceived as racially distinct when they first arrived in the United States (Alba and Nee 1997, 2003; DeWind and Kasinitz 1997). The real question is whether or not the racial/ethnic barrier to assimilation for the new immigrants is now much higher than or qualitatively distinct from that of the earlier immigrants. In addition, many scholars (Alba and Nee 1997, 2003; Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 2001; Waldinger 2001; Zhou 1997b) have noted that contemporary immigrants come from a much wider variety of socioeconomic backgrounds than those in the previous wave, suggesting that different groups will start out on different “rungs” of the American class system. This makes any single, uniform model of immigrant incorporation into the United States inherently less appropriate than it may have been for earlier, more homogeneous groups. In terms of changes in America as a host society, the new immigrants are entering the United States during a period when demand for semi-skilled and skilled labor has been substantially reduced by changes in the economy. Several scholars have argued that the assimilation and upward mobility of the 1890-1920 wave of immigrants were facilitated by the manufacturing-based economic expansion of that
Segmented Assimilation Theory Gans (1992) outlines several distinct trajectories that the children of the new immigrants, or the “new second generation,” can follow. These paths include downward as well as upward mobility among the possible outcomes. Further developing these ideas as a critique of classical assimilation theory, Portes and Zhou (1993) propose the theory of “segmented assimilation.” This theory asserts that the United States is a stratified and unequal society, and that therefore different “segments” of society are available to which immigrants may assimilate. Portes and Zhou delineate three possible paths of assimilation that immigrants may take. The first is essentially what is predicted by classical assimilation theory, i.e., increasing acculturation and integration into the American middle class (for brevity, referred to henceforward as Path 1). The second is acculturation and assimilation into the urban underclass, leading to poverty and downward mobility (Path 2). The third, “selective acculturation” (Portes and Rumbaut 2001, p.54), is the deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s culture and values, accompanied by economic integration (Path 3) (Rumbaut 1994; Portes and Zhou 1993; Zhou 1997a). The theory emphasizes that there is more than one way of “becoming American,” and that Americanization is not necessarily beneficial (Bankston and Zhou 1997; Zhou 1997a). Portes and Rumbaut (2001) further expand segmented assimilation theory by specifying the factors that influence these disparate outcomes. They identify human capital, modes of incorporation into the host society, and family structure as the relevant background factors that shape the experience of the first generation. These, in turn, affect the relationship between the type of acculturation experienced by immigrant parents and the type experienced by their children. Portes and Rumbaut view this relationship as central to the outcomes of the second generation. When parents and children acculturate at a similar pace and in similar ways, this is considered consonant acculturation (if both either move smoothly into American culture, or remain unacculturated) or selective acculturation (if both agree on limited acculturation). When children acculturate faster or more completely than parents, this is considered dissonant acculturation. According to Portes and Rumbaut, this last type of acculturation leads to parent-
child conflict and a breakdown in communication between the generations. Because it diminishes parents’ ability to guide and support their children, they see dissonant acculturation as a major risk factor for downward assimilation among the second generation. Thus, the relationship between parents’ and children’s acculturation is considered important because it influences the family and community resources available to support children, who confront numerous challenges in adapting to life in the host society. Some of these challenges are posed by the communities that receive present-day immigrants. The continuing tendency of immigrant families to settle in poor, inner-city neighborhoods means that immigrant children frequently must attend poorly performing, underfunded, and highly segregated inner- city schools (Suarez-Orozco and Suarez-Orozco 2001; Waldinger 2001). The environment they encounter in such schools is thought to put adolescents at higher risk of acculturating into the “oppositional youth culture” or “adversarial outlooks” found among their native minority peers (Hirschman 2001; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Zhou 1997a; Portes and Zhou 1993)^1. This culture discourages school engagement, and therefore is seen as harming adolescents’ chances at upward mobility. Under these circumstances, the segmented assimilation framework asserts that maintaining the culture of origin can have a protective effect for immigrant children. The immigrant community may be able to reinforce the achievement-related and behavioral norms that parents try to teach their children and thus help adolescents avoid the pitfalls of poor neighborhoods. If adolescents assimilate too fully into the surrounding social environment, however, they may experience dissonant acculturation and lose access to the social and cultural resources of the ethnic community. Therefore, the segmented assimilation
(^1) However, it remains an open question whether an “oppositional culture” actually exists among poor,
inner-city black youth (Downey and Ainsworth-Darnell 2002). McKeever and Klineberg’s (1999) study attempts to directly measure the relationship between assimilation and “oppositional” attitudes among Hispanics in Houston but found no evidence of their assimilation into oppositional culture.
immigrant groups follow particular paths of assimilation, at least on average.^2 Since the original authors (Portes and Zhou 1993) allowed for many such conditions, their work has sparked several different interpretations of segmented assimilation theory. Three major and potentially interrelated dimensions differentiate assimilation experiences in the literature on segmented assimilation. First, some scholars have argued that assimilation outcomes may differ by immigrants’ characteristics such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), social capital, family cohesion, and perhaps gender (Farley and Alba 2002; Hirschman 2001; Nagasawa, Qian, and Wong 2001; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Rong and Brown 2001; St-Hilaire 2003; Waldinger and Feliciano 2004). It is argued that immigrant groups with relatively good resources (i.e., physical, cultural, and/or social capital) are able to follow the traditional assimilation path (Path 1) without too much trouble, whereas those lacking such resources are at risk of experiencing downward assimilation. Second, assimilation outcomes may differ by the characteristics of natives to whom immigrants assimilate (Gans 1992; Rumbaut 1994, 1997; Bankston and Zhou 1997).^3 If immigrants assimilate to middle-class, white natives, the assimilation is straight-line (Path 1). If immigrants assimilate to inner city, underclass minorities struggling with poverty, crime, and joblessness, the assimilation is downward (Path 2). Third, assimilation outcomes may depend on whether assimilation is “wholesale” or selective, with the implication that limited assimilation is beneficial (Bankston and Zhou 1995; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Portes and DeWind 2004; Portes and Schauffler 1996). The notion of selective acculturation is perhaps the most common interpretation of segmented assimilation theory. Indeed, Hartmann and Gerteis (2005) even go so far as to attribute to segmented assimilation theory a radical version of multiculturalism –
(^2) For a rational-choice approach to assimilation and segmentation, see Esser (2004). In Esser’s theoretical
framework, assimilation decisions are rational responses to immigrants’ situations. Put in this view, segmented assimilation is no more than a logical response to different sets of circumstances. (^3) By “natives,” we refer in this paper to U.S.-born persons with parents who were also born in the U.S.
“fragmented pluralism” – which views individuals as bounded primarily by self-contained cultural groups rather than integrated into a larger society. While segmented assimilation theory provides an insightful and in some sense necessary perspective on the experiences of today’s immigrants and their children, it also suffers from interpretational ambiguity, which results in operational imprecision. In light of these limitations, we reconceptualize segmented assimilation by focusing on a particular aspect of the theory – the characteristics of native-born Americans to whom immigrants assimilate. Operationally, we focus on the local context of the immigrant family. As shown in the next section, our approach leads directly to sharply specified hypotheses subject to empirical tests. The ability to empirically test hypotheses derived from segmented assimilation theory is particularly helpful, given the on-going debates about the usefulness of the theory. A major critique of segmented assimilation theory is that the experience of today’s immigrants and their offspring is not truly all that different from that of the 1890-1920 wave of immigrants from Europe. For example, Alba and Nee (1997, 2003) argue that the offspring of earlier European immigrant groups often did not fully assimilate until the third or fourth generation. Thus, observations of limited assimilation on the part of today’s second generation youth should not be surprising. Reacting to Borjas’ (1985, 1995) contention that immigrants are disadvantaged by low levels of human capital, Perlmann and Waldinger (1997) show that immigrants from most national origin groups are actually more likely to have a college degree than native-born Americans. Alba and Nee (1997, 2003) and Perlmann and Waldinger (1997) are also skeptical of the idea that the racial distinctiveness of contemporary immigrants will be a long-term disadvantage. Because racial boundaries in the United States have proven to be fluid with regard to past “white” immigrants (Irish, Italians, and Jews, for example), they argue that contemporary Asian and Latin American immigrant groups may not be considered racially distinct in the long term. Furthermore, Alba and Nee (2003, pp.54-57) contend that today’s immigrants have benefited from the civil rights movements in the 1960s, which increased the “cost of discrimination.”
Finally, segmented assimilation theory has also been criticized for “essentializing central-city black culture in the image of the underclass” (Alba and Nee 2003, p. 8). A variety of cultural models are found among urban African Americans. It is thus naive to think that assimilation into native minority culture is necessarily downward assimilation into the underclass. In fact, Neckerman, Carter, and Lee (1999) suggest that immigrants may well assimilate into the black middle class, a possibility overlooked by proponents of segmented assimilation theory. Although scholars have previously criticized segmented assimilation theory from various theoretical and historical standpoints, there has been little effort to test the theory rigorously on empirical grounds. This paper focuses precisely on this task and represents the most systematic examination of segmented assimilation theory to date. Before conducting empirical tests, however, we must first reformulate the theory in a way that makes it testable. Reformulation: Assimilation Outcomes and Social Context It is a well accepted principle in the philosophy of science that sound scientific theory should yield concrete hypotheses that are empirically falsifiable (Popper 1972). Only after testing specific hypotheses that are logically derived from a theory can we then assess the validity or invalidity of that theory. We believe that segmented assimilation has important, testable empirical implications, and we reformulate the theory in order to develop testable hypotheses that can be checked against empirical data. Throughout the paper, we are concerned with outcomes that indicate the well-being of immigrant children. Specifically, we conceptualize segmented assimilation as a function of interactions between micro-level assimilation processes and macro-level community contexts (also see Zhou 1997a). We address measurement issues in the next section. For the sake of illustration, we focus on two types of communities, low SES and high SES, and two types of assimilation, full assimilation and partial assimilation (which is called “selective acculturation” by Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). In reality, there are continuous gradations in both dimensions. Let us examine the following 2x2 table: Table 1 about Here
In Table 1, there are four groups of immigrant children, depending on assimilation experience and community context. The two different columns reflect the view that contemporary America is a diverse—i.e., segmented—society. Given immigrants’ own diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, some immigrants settle in high-SES communities, whereas others live in low-SES communities. Within each type of community, it is further assumed that the degree of assimilation differs across immigrant children. As will be discussed later in the paper, we employ different operationalizations of assimilation. For the purpose of this study, however, it is assumed that the sorting process of individuals into the different cells is a given condition exogenous to our study. That is, we do not explicitly study the processes by which immigrant parents and their children may choose whether and how to assimilate on the basis of the anticipated consequences of their assimilation behavior. Instead, we are interested in whether the different assimilation paths, depending on social context, lead to disparate outcomes. Based on the classification system presented in Table 1, let us now discuss the implications of segmented assimilation theory for immigrant children’s outcomes. Groups A and B: Immigrant children are only partially assimilated into the community. They still retain certain aspects of the culture of origin but have learned what is necessary to do well in school. This path of assimilation is called “selective acculturation,” or Path 3. The difference between Group A and Group B lies in community context: while children in Group A live in a high SES community, children in Group B live in a low SES community. In Portes and Zhou’s original formulation, segmented assimilation theory emphasizes the value of retaining the culture of origin for immigrants who live in low SES communities. However, there is no a priori reason (nor was any given by Portes and Zhou) why selective acculturation cannot occur for immigrants who live in high SES communities. The real difference is that retaining the culture of origin may be optional for Group A but essential for Group B, as it may protect immigrant children in unfavorable social contexts from downward assimilation into the underclass. Group C: Immigrant children who live in a high SES community are fully assimilated into the community. Group C follows the assimilation path described by classical assimilation theory (Path 1).
E(Yb) - E(Ya) = r 1 < 0. (1) Prediction 2: E(Yc ) > E(Yd ). This relationship is analogous to Prediction 1, because Group C lives in a more favorable community context than Group D. Similarly to equation (1), we have E(Yd) - E(Yc) = r 2 < 0. (2) Prediction 3: r 1 > r 2. This is true because, according to segmented assimilation theory, retaining the culture of origin protects immigrant children from the influences of the community context so that outcome differences attributable to community SES are smaller for immigrant children who are partially assimilated than for those who are fully assimilated. This prediction reflects the interaction effect, discussed earlier, between assimilation and social context. Now let us take the difference of the differences: r 2 - r 1 = s < 0. (3) The quantity s is of central interest. If s < 0, there is evidence in support of segmented assimilation theory. We call equation (3) the difference-in-difference estimator of segmented assimilation. Predictions 1 through 3 are row-wise comparisons. We can also make column-wise comparisons. The column-wise comparisons give us a different perspective, although the information about the difference-in-difference estimator (i.e. equation 3) is the same. Prediction 4: E(Yb ) > E(Yd ). That is to say, in a low SES community context, it is better to be partially assimilated than to be fully assimilated. This statement has been advocated strongly by proponents of segmented assimilation theory (Portes and Zhou 1993; Portes and Rumbaut 1996, 2001). Let us take the difference between the two: E(Yd) - E(Yb) = c 2 < 0. (4) However, segmented assimilation theory is vague about whether or not delayed or limited acculturation (Path 3) may also be beneficial for immigrant children living in favorable community contexts. That is, we do not know whether E(Ya ) > E(Yc ) or E(Ya ) < E(Yc ). However, the theory clearly
predicts that we should see less of a gain from following Path 3 for immigrant children in high SES communities than we do for those who live in low SES communities. To see this, let us define c 1 as: E(Yc) - E(Ya) = c 1. It is easy to show that s = r 2 - r 1 =E(Y (^) d -Yc )-E(Yb -Ya ) =E(Yd -Yb )-E(Yc -Ya ) = c 2 – c 1 < 0. (5) Because c 2 < 0 (equation 4), equation (5) states that segmented assimilation allows a range of possible scenarios for the effect of full assimilation on immigrant children living in privileged environments: they either benefit from full assimilation or at least do not suffer from it to the same extent as immigrant children living in low SES communities. That is to say, although we cannot determine a priori from the theory the relationship between E(Ya ) and E(Yc ), we know that their relationship is bounded somehow by equation (5). In fact, knowing the relationship between E(Ya ) and E(Yc ) will greatly improve our ability to make predictions and thus sharpen segmented assimilation theory. Let us consider three possible scenarios. Scenario 1: E(Ya ) = E(Yc ). That is, given a high SES community context, there is no difference between partial assimilation and full assimilation. In this case, our difference-in-difference estimator is reduced to the difference in the second column, differences between partial assimilation and full assimilation among immigrant children living in a low SES community: s = c 2. (6) Scenario 2: E(Yc ) > E(Ya ). This is the situation where immigrant children living in a high SES community benefit from full assimilation (Path 1). In this case, s < c 2 < 0 (7) Scenario 3: E(Yc ) < E(Ya ). This is the situation where immigrant children living in a high SES community are disadvantaged from full assimilation, just like immigrant children living in a low SES community, albeit at a smaller magnitude. In this case,
Data and Research Methods Data Our empirical work draws upon data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Add Health is a school-based survey of adolescents in grades 7-12 at the baseline in 1994-1995. At the school level, 80 high schools (defined as any school containing the 11 th^ grade) were selected from a list of 26,666, with probability of selection weighted in proportion to enrollment size. These schools are representative of U.S. high schools with respect to size, school type, region, ethnic makeup, and school type. After the selection of the high schools, a feeder school (usually a middle school) that contributed students to each high school was identified and included in the study for all schools not containing 7th^ and 8 th^ grades. The total sample of schools includes 52 such feeder schools in addition to the 80 high schools (Bearman, Jones, and Udry 1997). The in-school portion of the survey was administered to all students in the sampled schools who were present on the day of the survey. The in-school questionnaire covered topics such as demographic characteristics, parental education and occupation, health status, academic grades, and friendships, and was completed by more than 90,000 adolescents. Each student was asked to name up to 10 close friends in the same school in this portion of the survey, making it possible to map friendship networks within a school. A smaller “core” sample was selected to complete more in-depth interviews at home. This group included some 200 adolescents from each of the 80 high school/middle school pairs. In addition, separate samples were drawn among adolescents with certain characteristics, such as the disabled, twins and sibling pairs, and certain ethnic groups, making a total of 20,745 completed interviews. Additional topics covered by this portion of the survey include national origins of students and of their parents, language spoken in the home, and many detailed measures of health risk behaviors, family dynamics, and psycho- social adjustment. Three waves of the in-home surveys have now been conducted. The Wave 1 interviews took place between April and December of 1995. Respondents’ parents were also interviewed
separately at this time. Wave 2 re-interviewed Wave 1 respondents (except those who had been in 12 th grade during Wave 1) between April and August of 1996. Wave 3 interviews were conducted between August 2001 and April 2002 with all Wave 1 respondents who could be located. The cumulative attrition rate between Wave 1 and Wave 3 was approximately 27%, yielding 15,197 completed interviews in Wave 3. In all statistical analyses of the data, we use appropriate weights to account for stratified sampling, non-proportionate non-responses, and non-proportionate attrition.^5 There are a few unique features of the Add Health study that make it a good data source for the proposed study. First, not only is its sample large and nationally representative, it also contains over- samples of Chinese (334), Cubans (450), and Puerto Ricans (437). As a result, we have adequate sample sizes of both Asian and Hispanic first and second generation adolescents. Unfortunately, we do not have an adequate sample size of other groups, such as Caribbean or African-origin adolescents. Therefore, we limit our analysis to Asians and Hispanics, who in any case make up more than 75% of current immigrants to the United States (Malone et al 2003). There have been previous studies of immigrant children using the data (e.g., Bankston and Zhou 2002; Harker 2001; Harris 1999; Harris, Harker, and Guo 2003). Second, at Wave 1, the study collected residential location of each respondent included in the in-home interview and provided to researchers (under special arrangement) the attributes of neighborhood and community contexts, either linked from external sources such as the U.S. Census or created by the aggregation of respondent reports. As discussed earlier, information about community contexts is crucial to our attempt to test empirical implications of segmented assimilation theory. Third, Add Health collected valuable friendship network data at the school level in Wave 1. As will be described below, one of our operationalizations of assimilation capitalizes on these unique data. Fourth, the Add Health home interview collected a wealth of information covering a variety of topics, such as academic performance, psychological well-being, and at-risk behavior. Finally, the study is longitudinal, covering six to seven
(^5) We also appropriately correct for standard errors in regression analyses due to clustering, stratification,
and using weights.
