Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Assimilation and Its Discontents

Item

Title

Assimilation and Its Discontents

Author

Zhou, Min

Research Area

Social Processes

Topic

Immigration

Abstract

This essay offers a review of the scholarly literature on immigrant assimilation, looking at how classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how alternative theories are developed to address assimilation's discontents. The essay first revisits the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of assimilation and investigates why even normative pathways can lead to divergent assimilation outcomes. It then discusses new theoretical development in this area, highlighting the central ideas and conceptualization of the segmented assimilation theory and the neoclassical assimilation theory. The author emphasizes how multilevel determinants interact to produce unconventional pathways that have profound implication for success or failure of assimilation. She also suggests that researchers problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention to how immigrants and their offspring, rather than social scientists themselves, imagine and frame these notions because subjective conceptualization can influence strategies that result in vastly different pathways and outcomes. The essay concludes with a discussion on issues for future research.

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Identifier

etrds0016

extracted text

Assimilation and Its Discontents
MIN ZHOU

Abstract
This essay offers a review of the scholarly literature on immigrant assimilation,
looking at how classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes
of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how
alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents. The essay
first revisits the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of
assimilation and investigates why even normative pathways can lead to divergent
assimilation outcomes. It then discusses new theoretical development in this area,
highlighting the central ideas and conceptualization of the segmented assimilation
theory and the neoclassical assimilation theory. The author emphasizes how multilevel determinants interact to produce unconventional pathways that have profound
implication for success or failure of assimilation. She also suggests that researchers
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention to how
immigrants and their offspring, rather than social scientists themselves, imagine and
frame these notions because subjective conceptualization can influence strategies
that result in vastly different pathways and outcomes. The essay concludes with a
discussion on issues for future research.

INTRODUCTION
As a nation of immigrants, assimilation was an unspoken ideology
in the United States. Newcomers of diverse origins and cultures were
expected to shed their ethnic distinctiveness and “melt” into a single peoplehood—“American”—as soon as possible. Recall Theodore
Roosevelt’s proclamation that there was “no room in this country for
hyphenated Americans” (New York Times, 1915, p. 1). At the turn of the
twentieth century, the American public was deeply concerned about the
assimilability of “new” immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins with cultures quite different from those of “older stock” Americans. However, instead of a proactive national policy response aiming at
assimilation, the American nation adopted a restrictive immigration policy,
based on the national origins quota system, to largely cut off the flow of
immigrants from outside Northern and Western Europe. “Americanization”
programs were implemented through public schools in the hands of local
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

officials, all ran under the assumption that immigrants’ cultures and ways
were backward, uncivilized, and incompatible with American core cultural
values of individualism, liberty, equality, and democracy. Assimilation was
entirely left to market forces and immigrant’s own agency—having the right
values, work ethics, and perseverance.
Nonetheless, assimilation seemed to work wonders without much direct
policy intervention. At the wake of the immigration reform in the 1960s,
the seemingly unassimilable immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins and their offspring had become fully assimilated and indistinguishably “white” (Lieberson & Waters, 1988). Even among Americans of Asian
ancestry, assimilation outcomes were remarkable as Chinese and Japanese
Americans, the groups that had been legally excluded from American society,
made impressive inroad into the American mainstream and were applauded
“the model minority” (Petersen, 1966; US News and World Report, 1966).
US immigration policy reform of the 1960s has brought about continuously
massive influx of immigrants. The largely non-European, non-Protestant,
culturally heterogeneous and socioeconomically diverse newcomers pose
significant challenges to assimilation while changing the classical assimilation story. Some immigrant group members are able to obtain well-paying
jobs in the mainstream labor market and own homes in affluent urban
or suburb communities upon arrival while still speaking little or heavily
accented English. Other immigrant group members struggle at the host
society’s bottom even with high aspiration and hard work, yet still find not
only their own pathways to upward social mobility blocked but also those
of their children who have been thoroughly acculturated.
In public discourse and scholarly work in recent decades, however, “assimilation” has become a highly controversial and politically charged term, partly
because of its association with the ideal of Anglo-conformity, or “the melting pot,” and forced Americanization, partly because of the daunting reality of assimilation failure and increased racial/ethnic inequality, and partly
because of the effects of ethnic consciousness movements that promotes multiculturalism. In this essay, I review the scholarly literature to examine how
classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
THE CLASSICAL ASSIMILATION PERSPECTIVE
In the scholarly literature, assimilation, often used interchangeably with
the term adaptation, integration, or incorporation, refers to the process by

Assimilation and Its Discontents

3

which the characteristics of immigrant group members come to resemble
those of natives in host societies. The classical assimilation perspective on
immigrant incorporation has been influential in intellectual thinking since
the early twentieth century. The theoretical orientation is guided by three
explicit or implicit assumptions: an undifferentiated or unified host society;
the inferiority or undesirability of things from the old world; and a natural,
unidimensional, and irreversible process toward assimilation. Classical
assimilation theories operate on the premise that the host society consists
of a single mainstream dominated by a majority group (in the case of the
United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs), that immigrants
of diverse backgrounds must abandon their old cultural ways, including
languages, values, norms, behavioral patterns and anything ethnic and learn
or adopt the ways of the dominant majority group, and that their success
is measured against the standards set by the dominant majority group, or
by how much they eventually become indistinguishable from members
of the dominant majority group. Even though immigrants initially find
themselves in a situation what Robert E. Park called the marginal man, being
simultaneously pulled in the direction of the host culture but drawn back
by the original culture, they are gradually sucked into a race relations cycle
of contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation in a sequence of
succeeding generations (Park, 1928).
The early formulation of the classical assimilation theory emphasized
biotic and economic forces (impersonal competition) and social forces
(contact, communication and cooperation) to the neglect of structural
constraints. Other scholars have contributed to the theoretical development
by considering the potency of contextual and institutional factors, such as
phenotypical ranking and the racial/ethnic hierarchy, to be of paramount
significance in determining the rate of assimilation (Warner & Srole, 1945).
These scholars recognize that ethnic/racial minorities face more obstacles
than others to assimilation because of their ascribed traits (e.g., skin color)
and/or visibly different cultural traits (e.g., language of origin and religion).
Differences in social status and access to opportunities based on language
and culture will disappear over the course of several generations. However,
the assimilation of readily identifiable ethnic/racial minorities, especially
blacks, is likely to be confined within racial-caste boundaries for a lengthier
period of time. Thus, ascribed characteristics and cultural traits interact
with economic and social forces to set the speed of complete assimilation for
various immigrant groups.
Milton M. Gordon (1964) has developed a multistage typology of assimilation to capture the complexity of the process. The typology involves seven
stages: cultural, structural, marital, identificational, attitude-receptional,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

behavior-receptional, and civic assimilation. As a necessary first step, immigrants begin their incorporation into their new country through cultural
assimilation, or acculturation, referring to the change in cultural patterns
to those of the host dominant group, such as language, beliefs, and values.
The second stage is structural assimilation, referring the establishment of
the primary relations with host society’s dominant group and the entrance
into its formal and informal institutions. Structural assimilation is the most
critical stage in that it influences the subsequent stages. Marital assimilation
refers to widespread intermarriages. Identificational assimilation entails
relinquishing ties and allegiance to the country of origin and the achievement of the host country’s sense of peoplehood and national identity. The
next two stages, attitude-receptional and behavior-receptional, refer to the
changed attitudes and behavior leads to diminishing prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity or nativity. The end result is civic assimilation,
which indicates the absence of immigrant-native conflicts via complete
convergence.
At the core of Gordon typology are cultural and structural assimilation. For
Gordon, acculturation does not automatically lead to structural assimilation
or any other types, but may take place and continue indefinitely even when
no other type of assimilation occurs. He hints that ethnic groups may remain
distinguished from one another for a long period of time because of spatial
isolation and lack of contact. Structural assimilation, in contrast, is the “keystone of the arch of assimilation” that will inevitably lead to other stages of
assimilation. Although vague about how groups advance from one stage to
another and what causes change, Gordon anticipates that most ethnic groups
will eventually lose all their ethnic markers and cease to exist as distinctive
ethnic groups as they become fully assimilated.
From the classical perspective, sophisticated theoretical models are developed to empirically predict the rates and outcomes of assimilation. The most
widely applied models are drawn upon insight from the classical stratification theories. The dependent variables are usually measured by levels of
education, occupation, and incomes, among others, in reference to host society’s dominant group or to the native-born segment of the national-origin
group. The key determinants include family socioeconomic status (SES) and
own human capital characteristics. Cultural assimilation is rarely considered
a dependent variable but is instead treated as an important determinant of
structural and other types of assimilation. Specifically, distinctive ethnic traits
such as old-world cultures, native languages, and ethnic enclaves, as well as
ethnicity in the abstract, are taken as disadvantages, or burdensome baggage,
that hinder assimilation. However, these ethnic disadvantages should have
fading negative effects on succeeding generations, whose members adopt the

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primary language of the host country as their primary medium of communication and become more and more similar to natives in lifestyle, mannerism,
outlook, and worldview. The length of time since immigration and nativity
are thus considered vital in predicting assimilation outcomes.
Although complete acculturation of an ethnic group to the dominant American way of life may not ensure all ethnic groups’ full social participation in
the host society, immigrants are expected first to free themselves from their
old cultures in order to begin rising up from marginal positions. America
seemed to have absorbed the great waves of immigrants who arrived at the
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, primarily from Europe.
Before the surge of contemporary immigration of the 1960s, German, Irish,
and Italian Catholics, Polish and Russian Jews, and most other Eastern European immigrants had achieved acceptance among an initially hostile native
WASP population, and their offspring had thoroughly been absorbed into the
society’s white majority through residential, educational, and occupational
mobility and intermarriages without much trace of their ethnic distinctiveness (Alba, 1985; Gans, 1979; Waters, 1990).
ANOMALIES
Earlier patterns do not seem to readily repeat themselves in contemporary
times, where immigration to the United States is of a very different sort.
In 1965, US Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, abolishing the national
origins quota system and replacing it with a preference system that favors
family-sponsored and employer-sponsor immigrations. Between 1970
and 2011, the United States admitted nearly 33 million immigrants, 44%
from Latin America (20% from Mexico alone), 34% from Asia, and only
13% from Europe. Post-1965 immigrant groups have not converged to the
non-Hispanic white majority in the ways predicted by classical assimilation
theories. Instead, empirical research has observed several anomalies. The
first anomaly concerns the persistent intergenerational disadvantages.
Classical theories predict assimilation as a function of the length of residence
in the host society and succeeding generations. However, this is not how it
seems to work. Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz (2008)’s powerful longitudinal study of Mexican Americans is a case in point: members of the third
and fourth generation had not experienced the erosion of ethnic identity,
widespread intermarriages with members of the dominant majority group,
residential integration, and attitudinal-receptive or behavioral receptive
assimilation; and the initially low SES of the immigrant generation was
reproduced through racialization in the next generations. Other studies
have consistently revealed that longer US residence is correlated with more
maladaptive outcomes, whether measured in terms of school performance,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aspirations, and behavior; that immigrant poverty is reproduced, rather than
diminishes, in the second generation for some national origin groups but
not others; that intergroup differences in levels of schooling and economic
attainment persist in the second and later generations; and that human capital investment yields different returns for different racial/ethnic groups (i.e.,
schooling did not equally commensurate with occupational advancement
for African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Mexican Americans as
for non-Hispanic whites across generations).
Another anomaly is what Herbert Gans describes as “the second generation decline” (Gans, 1992). Gans points to the significance of family SES and
its interaction with culture that affect the assimilation of the “new” second
generation (children of post-1965 immigrants). Immigrant children from less
fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds had a much harder time than their
peers from middleclass backgrounds to succeed in school and later in the
labor market. While their families lack resources to guide them onto the paths
to success, these children often construct their own acculturation in response
to structural disadvantages. Schools, American peers, and the media exert
powerful influences on immigrant children. The prevailing youth culture and
the freedoms (particularly personal choices in dress, dating, and sexual practices) unavailable in their parents’ old country also overwhelm them. Because
of exposure, these children are likely to develop expectations of life in America much higher than those of their parents; and they will neither be willing
to accept immigrant parental work norms nor work in “un-American” conditions as many of their parents do. Thus, some of the children may not even
be able to carry out their parents’ wishes and expectations of moving up and
“making it in America,” much less to fulfill their own expectations, and their
rapid acculturation reinforces their structural disadvantages. Gans considers these divergent patterns as various bumps (either imposed by the host
society or invented by the immigrants themselves) on the road to eventual
assimilation into “nonethnic” America.
Still another anomaly is the peculiar outcomes of contemporary immigrant
incorporation. In America’s fastest growing knowledge-intensive industries,
foreign-born engineers and other highly skilled professionals disproportionately take up various key technical positions and, for some, even ownership
positions with limited acculturation. In some immigrant enclaves, ethnic life
enriched by the development of ethnic economies opens up alternative paths
to social mobility even without English language proficiency. In upscale
middle-class suburbs, wealthy immigrants with sufficient financial capital
purchase and move into homes, jumping several steps ahead and bypassing
the traditional bottom-up order. However, in inner cities, working class
immigrant families are struggling just to get by, combating poverty, crime,
and social exclusion, without much hope to ever moving up to middleclass

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status. But most vexing is the intergroup differences in academic achievement among those from similar social class backgrounds. While immigrant
children are overrepresented on lists of award-winners or on academic fast
tracks, many others from the same schools are also vulnerable to multiple
high risk behaviors, school failure, street gangs, and youth crime.
These anomalies indicate a significant gap between theory and reality and
raise concerns about the relevance and applicability of classic assimilation
theories for predicting assimilation outcomes of post-1965 immigrants.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY
The segmented assimilation theory emerged in the early 1990s to address
the anomalies. Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou (1993) first introduced the
theoretical idea in their seminal work entitled “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants among Post-1965 Immigrant
Youth.” As a middle-range theory, the segmented assimilation theory rejects
the classical assumption of an undifferentiated and white middleclass core to
which all immigrants assimilate and redefines the American mainstream as
one that is shaped by the system of racial and class stratifications to exclude
the marginal segments of the population. It places the process of becoming
American, in terms of both acculturation and structural assimilation, in the
context of a host society consisting of segregated and unequal segments and
considers this process to be multidirectional leading to varied outcomes of
convergence (to natives) as well as divergence. Unlike the classical theory
that predicts eventual assimilation over time and across generations, the segmented assimilation theory focuses on predicting and explaining divergent
outcomes, that is, why some national-origin groups are more likely than others to move head onto the host society’s mainstream or to get trapped on the
margins and are excluded from assimilating into the mainstream intergenerationally.
From the segmented assimilation perspective, three main patterns of incorporation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring are readily
discernible. The first is the classical upward-mobility pattern: Acculturation
and integration into the normative structures of the host society’s mainstream. In America, this is a time-honored pathway of severing ethnic ties,
unlearning old-world values, norms, and behavioral patterns, and adapting
to the WASP core culture associated with middleclass status. The second is
the downward-mobility pattern: acculturation and integration into the host
society’s margins. This is the pathway of adapting to the native or hybrid
(native and immigrant mixed) oppositional subcultures associated with

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

marginalization—being trapped on the bottom rungs of the host society’s
mobility ladder and in direct opposition to the WASP core culture. The third
is a contemporary upward-mobility pattern: Socioeconomic integration into
the host society’s mainstream with lagged or selective acculturation and
deliberate preservation of an ethnic group’s values and norms, social ties,
and community organizations. This is the pathway of achieving middleclass
status based on resources generated within the ethnic community.
Empirically, segmented assimilation is measured by observable SES indicators, such as educational attainment, employment status, income, and homeownership, with reference to the host society’s dominant group or marginal
groups. For the children of immigrants, indicators of downward assimilation
may also include high school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration,
for these variables are strong predictors of future low educational attainment,
low occupational status, low income, and low likelihood of homeownership.
Possible determinants include those individual-level factors, such as parental
SES, English language ability, place of birth, age upon arrival, and length of
residence in the United States, and structural factors, such as racial status
and place of residence, which are specified in classical assimilation models.
The segmented assimilation perspective diverts from the classical perspective with regard to the effects of these determinants. It assumes that the most
determinants in the classical models are important by default but focuses
instead the interaction between variables related to the group-specific contexts of exit and reception.
The context of exit entails a set of premigration characteristics, including
social class status already attained by the immigrants in their homelands,
resources that immigrants bring with them (such as money, knowledge,
and job skills) to the new country, and immigrants’ means of migration,
motivation, aspirations, and customary practices. These characteristics not
only affect individual and family mobility, but also affect the national-origin
or ethnic group as a whole. For example, an immigrant group overrepresented by the well-educated and highly skilled is likely to generate stronger
ethnic capital that benefits all group members including those of low SES
background. The context of reception includes a set of host society factors
corresponding to group-level characteristics, including the social position
of the ethnic group in the host society’s racial stratification system; public
attitudes, government policies, and labor market conditions receptive or
hostile to the group; and the strength and viability of the pre-existing
ethnic community. The segmented assimilation theory posits that particular contexts of exit and reception interact to create distinctive modes of
incorporation, or ethno cultural patterns and strategies of socioeconomic
integration, giving rise to opportunities or constraints for group members,

Assimilation and Its Discontents

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independent of individual and family SES and other major demographic
characteristics.
Numerous qualitative and quantitative works in the US context have
produced evidence in support of segmented assimilation predictions. That
is, immigrants and their children are unlikely to assimilate into a single
mainstream; rather, they are moving upwardly, downwardly, or horizontally
in a highly stratified society that is also racialized. While the trend of class
reproduction (i.e., middleclass immigrant generation generally reproduces
middleclass second generation) remains significant, racial/ethnic inequality
in adaptation outcomes has also been strikingly salient across generations,
defying the convention wisdom of assimilation and social mobility. On
educational achievement, for example, second-generation Asians generally
fare better than second-generation Latinos, as well as all native-born peers,
of similar family SES; second-generation Chinese Americans of lower family
SES fare better than their native-born non-Asian peers of higher family
SES. On acculturation, second-generation members of some groups have
abandoned their ethnic ways and have been thoroughly assimilate into the
mainstream culture in terms of language, religion, values, and ways, but
still find it hard to achieve success in structural assimilation. For example,
Gonzalez (2011) shows that undocumented status and social stigma attached
to it put some second generation members in a state of “developmental
limbo.” Their legal right to education as a protected space is not extended
beyond high school, and they face a bleak future with blocked mobility just
like their parents even when they have been fully acculturated and adhered
to the same aspirations as their American peers. There are also cases in which
second-generation members of some group have achieved success on both
measures of acculturation and structural assimilation, but still feel being
excluded from the American nation, as in the example of Asian Americans as
simultaneously the model minority and perpetual foreigners (Zhou, 2004).
SECOND-GENERATION ADVANTAGE AS A CRITIQUE TO SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION
Segmented assimilation, focusing on the interaction between class and
race/ethnicity and between group-level and individual-level determinants,
can be viewed as a more nuanced alternative theory to the classical perspective. It should be noted that downward assimilation is only one of
several possible outcomes predicted by the segmented assimilation theory.
Curiously, the segmented assimilation theory is often misinterpreted as suggesting and predicting one single outcome—downward assimilation—and
thereby criticized as being overtly pessimistic about the immigrant second
generation. Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway (2008) advanced
a notion of “second generation advantage” as a critique to segmented

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

assimilation. On the basis of findings from their study of New York’s
second generation, they showed that all children of immigrants under
study were doing better than their native-born comparison groups with
no sign of downward assimilation: West Indians were doing better than
African-Americans, Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans, and
Chinese and Russians were doing as well as or better than native whites.
They suggest that all members of the second generation benefit from having
more options than their immigrant parents to simultaneously maintain
ethnic cultural beliefs and practices and create new norms and beliefs as
they are moving ahead in society.
The point of disagreement seems to be on the reference group. In the segmented assimilation perspective, the reference is the generation population
or non-Hispanic white. In the second-generation advantage model, the reference group is the native population of the racial group. I would caution
that immigrant offspring of low SES family background and racial minority
status are at a higher risk than others of being trapped in the host society’s
racial stratification system.
Nonetheless, to refute the segmented assimilation theory or to state that
the second generation is doing just fine and is sooner or later moving into
the mainstream middle class regardless of ethnicity or immigrant origin,
one must demonstrate that both of the following cases are true: first, the
proportions of those falling into the major indicators of downward assimilation (e.g., dropping out of high school, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration)
are insignificant for each national-origin or ethnic group; and second, the
differences in outcomes are randomly distributed across racial/ethnic or
national-origin groups, regardless of the group’s modes of incorporation.
NEOCLASSICAL ASSIMILATION THEORY
Richard Alba and Victor Nee developed a neoclassical assimilation theory
in their seminal work, Remaking the American Mainstream (2003), to address
the anomalies noted above while critically engaged with segmented assimilation. As the most enthusiastic defenders of assimilationism, Alba and Nee
argue that the anomalies are merely adverse effects of contemporary structural changes that classical theories fail to anticipate. They point out that four
decades of extremely low immigration between 1920 and 1960 caused gradual decline of ethnic communities and cultures but that the continuously high
rate of mass immigration after 1965 has limited the host society’s “breathing space” for absorbing and integrating immigrants as ethnic communities are constantly replenished. Moreover, the growing “hourglass” economy,
with knowledge-intensive, high paying jobs at one end and labor-intensive,
lowing-paying jobs at the other, has taken away several rungs of the mobility

Assimilation and Its Discontents

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ladder that are crucial for enabling immigrants, especially those with little education and few job skills, who started from the bottom to climb up.
While these structural changes set new road blocks to assimilation, other
major institutional changes, such as civil rights legislation, immigration policy reform, and multiculturalism, have reshaped the host society, making it
more favorable for the assimilation of newcomers and their children today
than in the past despite of persistent racial inequality. They thus contend
that assimilation should work for contemporary immigrants too, because it
worked so well in the past for turn-of-the-twentieth-century European immigrants under more precarious circumstances.
Alba and Nee’s neoclassical assimilation theory reconceptualizes the American mainstream as one that encompasses “a core set of interrelated institutional structures and organizations regulated by rules and practices that
weaken, even undermine, the influence of ethnic origins per se,” that it may
include members of formerly excluded ethnic or racial groups, and that it
may contain not just the middle class or affluence suburbanites but the working class or the central-city poor. They suggest that all immigrants and their
descendants will eventually assimilate, but not necessarily in a single direction and toward a single core as predicted by classical theoretical models.
Their modified theory of assimilation allows much room for predicting immigrants, particularly those of non-European origin and low SES backgrounds,
to incorporate into the mainstream at different rates and by different measures. Alba and Nee’s so-defined American mainstream is all inclusive with
no margins. Nevertheless, their notion of successful assimilation still explicitly refers to the incorporation into the middleclass core, not the segments of
the mainstream occupied by working or lower classes.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The existing research on immigrant assimilation tells us that race, ethnicity, or national origin, matters in predicting outcomes. For example,
being Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese, has a significantly positive effect
on second-generation school outcomes, such as GPA and high school
graduation, and being Puerto Rican or Mexican has a significantly negative
effect, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors such as parental
education, occupation, and income. Moreover, children of Asian immigrants
are doing better than other minority groups and whites, but children of
Latino immigrants are still trailing behind whites by a significant large
margin even when they fare better than their native coethnics. Therefore,
exactly how ethnicity matters has remained unresolved, partly because of
the conceptual muddle and partly because of data limitation.

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Conceptually, ethnicity is often treated as a structural construct in some
models and a cultural construct in other models, depending on the theoretical orientation of the researcher. The structural perspective emphasizes the
influence of host-society’s macro social structures, that is, the extent to which
racial/ethnic minority groups are constrained by the broader stratification
systems and networks of social relations within it. The cultural perspective
emphasizes the influence of ethnic cultures and community forces. Social
scientists from both perspectives have attempted to develop statistical models to quantitatively measure the effect of “structure” and “culture.” Under
ideal circumstances, these models would include indicators illuminating
pre-migration situations. However, because of data limitations, many social
scientists typically attempt to control for “structure” by documenting specific contexts of exit, identifying aspects of post-migration social structures,
and operationalizing those components for which they have data. This is
not only a conventional practice but also a reasonable approach, since many
postmigration social structural differences (in the SES of persons who came
to the United States as adults) are likely to either reflect, or be carryovers
from, premigration differences. However, even the most sophisticated statistical model accounts for only some of the variance, leaving a large residual
unexplained. More intractable are questions of how to conceptualize and
measure ethnicity. Given the constraints of the data, many social scientists
have tried valiantly to make progress on this front and have come up with
measures that are ingenious, although not fully convincing. In the end,
much weight is given to the effect of a discrete dummy variable of ethnicity,
the exact meaning or contents of which remains a black box.
Since ethnicity cannot be simply viewed as either a structural or a cultural
construct, how to measure it requires innovative thinking beyond existing
theoretical frameworks. One possibility is to pay closer attention to mesolevel
dynamics from an ethnic enclave perspective to look at how group-specific
cultural values and behavioral patterns are interacting with both internal and
external structural exigencies. Classical assimilation theories posit that ethnic
enclaves are beneficial only to the extent that they meet new immigrants’ survival needs, reorganize their economic and social lives, and ease resettlement
problems in the new land and that, in the long run, they will become a trap
inhibiting assimilation. However, ethnic enclaves are shaped by immigration
selectivity, and may not be easily dichotomized as either a springboard or a
trap for upward social mobility.
While some ethnic enclaves may decline into ghettos or ’super-ghettos
concentrating poverty, others can generate ethnic resources conducive to
social mobility. Different patterns of ethnic change imply an interaction
between macro structural forces and meso community forces, which produces varied ethnic social environments within immigrant neighborhoods.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

13

Take Los Angeles’ Koreatown for example. Koreatown is a typical urban
neighborhood dominated by ethnic minorities (93%), the foreign born
(69%), and the poor (31%). Most of the residents are recent immigrants
from Korea, Mexico, and Central America. Korean immigrant children
do better in school than their Latino peers even when they come from
families with similar income levels. This is not because Korean families
value education more than Mexican families, but rather they are exposed to
different ethnic social environments. The Korean community has developed
an extensive system of supplementary education. This ethnic system of
supplementary education include nonprofit ethnic language schools and
private institution, offering academic tutoring and enrichment, standardize
test drills, college preparation, and related counseling services, to support
immigrant education in addition to public education. In contrast, owing
to negative immigrant selectivity with high proportions of the low skilled
and undocumented, the Mexican community, located in Koreatown, lacks
similar ethnic resources to assist immigrant children’s education despite
strong parental values toward education. Yet, neighborhood-based resources
created by the Korean community are not accessible to other group members
sharing the same neighborhood. Hence, how to develop better measures to
capture meso-contextual complexities of the ethnic community will shed
lights on our understanding of intergroup variations on outcomes.
Another possibility is to look beyond the national context to understand
intergroup variation in assimilation outcomes. Current research has shown
that contemporary immigrants are now found to achieve economic success
and social status, depending not exclusively on rapid acculturation and
entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, but on ethnic resources
mobilized within diasporic communities, as well as (at least for some) on
cultivating strong social networks across national borders. In this sense,
immigrant transnationalism can serve as an alternative means to social
integration into, rather than disintegration from, the host society (Zhou &
Lee, 2013).
A third possibility is to pay closer attention to micro level processes from a
subject-centered perspective, by which immigrants define and measure success based on their own lived experiences. In my collaborative research on
Los Angeles second generation Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mexicans, we find
that different ethnic groups frame “success” using different reference groups
(Zhou, Lee, Vallejo, Tafoya-Estrada, & Xiong, 2008). That is, they judge how
well they fare in society in comparison to their own ethnic group rather
than to the society’s dominant group—non-Hispanic white. These different
frames of success produce variations on aspirations and expectations, which
can either expand or constrain opportunities and consequently reinforce
intergroup disparities. This subject-centered approach allows for microlevel

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

analysis within the macrostructural framework, enabling us to look beyond
predictable patterns to understand both the obvious and subtle reasons
group members make certain choices and pursue particular pathways.
Last but not least, in the existing research, there seems to be a disconnection
between quantitative and qualitative studies. Sophisticated quantitative
models have been developed to examine intergroup differences in outcomes
but tend to produce similar results that largely miss the group-specific
nuances, dynamics, and mechanisms of adaptational processes. Qualitative
studies are attentive to details of these processes but lack generalizability.
The different methodological approaches yield significant findings that
inform each other. Therefore, future research should aim to develop better
measures and multilevel models, through the mixed methods approach, to
accurately capture the contexts of exit and reception in accounting for varied
effects of ethnicity.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The scholarly literature on assimilation and its discontents underscores
three important points. First, we should revisit the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of assimilation and investigate why
even normative pathways can lead to divergent outcomes. Second, we
should critically examine how multi level determinants interact to produce
unconventional pathways leading to positive outcomes. Third, we should to
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention
to how our subjects (immigrants and their offspring), rather than ourselves
(social scientists), imagine and conceptualize these notions and examine
why subjective conceptualization may influence strategies with profound
implications for success. In sum, by innovatively engage in mixed-methods
research, we can gain a better understanding of the reasons beyond family
SES and acculturation, that account from interethnic disparities in assimilation. While the best research design can more accurately predict future
possibilities, only time can tell about the real assimilation outcomes beyond
the second generation.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. D. (1985). Italian Americans: Into the twilight of ethnicity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and the new
immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in
America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1–20.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

15

Gans, H. (1992). Second generation decline: Scenarios for the economic and ethnic futures of the post-1965 American immigrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15,
173–191.
Gonzalez, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal
contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76, 602–619.
Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national
origins. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Kasinitz, P., Mollenkopf, J. H., Waters, M. C., & Holdaway, J. (2008). Inheriting the city:
The children of immigrants come of age. New York, MA: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lieberson, S., & Waters, M. (1988). From many strands: Ethnic and racial groups in contemporary America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
New York Times (1915). Roosevelt bars the hyphenated. October 13, p.1.
Park, R. E. (1928). Human migration and the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881–93.
Petersen, W. (1966). Success Story, Japanese-American Style. New York Times Magazine, January 9.
Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation
and its variants among post-1965 immigrant youth. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 530, 74–96.
Telles, E. E., & Ortiz, V. (2008). Generations of exclusion: Mexican Americans, assimilation,
and race. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
US News and World Report. (1966). Success of one minority group in U.S., December
26.
Warner, W. L., & Srole, L. (1945). The social systems of American ethnic groups. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Waters, M. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zhou, M. (2004). Are Asian Americans becoming white? Contexts, 3, 29–37.
Zhou, M., & Lee, R. (2013). Transnationalism and community building: Chinese
immigrant organizations in the United States. ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 647, 22–49.
Zhou, M., Lee, J., Vallejo, J. A., Tafoya-Estrada, R., & Xiong, Y. S. (2008). Success
attained, deterred, and denied: Divergent pathways to social mobility among the
new second generation in Los Angeles. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 620, 37–61.

MIN ZHOU SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Min Zhou, PhD is Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor of Sociology at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, and Professor of Sociology & Asian
American Studies/Walter & Shirley Wang Endowed Chair of US-China
Relations & Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles,
USA. Her main areas of research include international migration; ethnic and
racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education, and the new second

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

generation; and Asia and Asian America, and she has published widely in
these areas. She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of
an Urban Enclave (Temple University Press, 1992), Contemporary Chinese
America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (Temple
University Press, 2009), and The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American
Studies (UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2011); coauthor of
Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the
United States (with Bankston, Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998); and
coeditor of Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (with
Lee, Routledge, 2004) and Contemporary Asian America. (with Gatewood, New York University Press, 1st ed. 2000, 2nd ed. 2007). Homepage:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/zhou/
RELATED ESSAYS
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Migrant Networks (Sociology), Filiz Garip and Asad L. Asad
Ethnic Enclaves (Sociology), Steven J. Gold
Education for Mobility or Status Reproduction? (Sociology), Karyn Lacy
Immigration and the Changing Status of Asian Americans (Sociology),
Jennifer Lee
Immigrant Sociocultural Adaptation, Identification, and Belonging (Sociology), Sarah J. Mahler
Visualizing Globalization (Sociology), Matthew C. Mahutga and Robert
Nash-Parker
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Cultural Conflict (Sociology), Ian Mullins
Culture and Globalization (Sociology), Frederick F. Wherry



Assimilation and Its Discontents
MIN ZHOU

Abstract
This essay offers a review of the scholarly literature on immigrant assimilation,
looking at how classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes
of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how
alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents. The essay
first revisits the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of
assimilation and investigates why even normative pathways can lead to divergent
assimilation outcomes. It then discusses new theoretical development in this area,
highlighting the central ideas and conceptualization of the segmented assimilation
theory and the neoclassical assimilation theory. The author emphasizes how multilevel determinants interact to produce unconventional pathways that have profound
implication for success or failure of assimilation. She also suggests that researchers
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention to how
immigrants and their offspring, rather than social scientists themselves, imagine and
frame these notions because subjective conceptualization can influence strategies
that result in vastly different pathways and outcomes. The essay concludes with a
discussion on issues for future research.

INTRODUCTION
As a nation of immigrants, assimilation was an unspoken ideology
in the United States. Newcomers of diverse origins and cultures were
expected to shed their ethnic distinctiveness and “melt” into a single peoplehood—“American”—as soon as possible. Recall Theodore
Roosevelt’s proclamation that there was “no room in this country for
hyphenated Americans” (New York Times, 1915, p. 1). At the turn of the
twentieth century, the American public was deeply concerned about the
assimilability of “new” immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins with cultures quite different from those of “older stock” Americans. However, instead of a proactive national policy response aiming at
assimilation, the American nation adopted a restrictive immigration policy,
based on the national origins quota system, to largely cut off the flow of
immigrants from outside Northern and Western Europe. “Americanization”
programs were implemented through public schools in the hands of local
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

officials, all ran under the assumption that immigrants’ cultures and ways
were backward, uncivilized, and incompatible with American core cultural
values of individualism, liberty, equality, and democracy. Assimilation was
entirely left to market forces and immigrant’s own agency—having the right
values, work ethics, and perseverance.
Nonetheless, assimilation seemed to work wonders without much direct
policy intervention. At the wake of the immigration reform in the 1960s,
the seemingly unassimilable immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins and their offspring had become fully assimilated and indistinguishably “white” (Lieberson & Waters, 1988). Even among Americans of Asian
ancestry, assimilation outcomes were remarkable as Chinese and Japanese
Americans, the groups that had been legally excluded from American society,
made impressive inroad into the American mainstream and were applauded
“the model minority” (Petersen, 1966; US News and World Report, 1966).
US immigration policy reform of the 1960s has brought about continuously
massive influx of immigrants. The largely non-European, non-Protestant,
culturally heterogeneous and socioeconomically diverse newcomers pose
significant challenges to assimilation while changing the classical assimilation story. Some immigrant group members are able to obtain well-paying
jobs in the mainstream labor market and own homes in affluent urban
or suburb communities upon arrival while still speaking little or heavily
accented English. Other immigrant group members struggle at the host
society’s bottom even with high aspiration and hard work, yet still find not
only their own pathways to upward social mobility blocked but also those
of their children who have been thoroughly acculturated.
In public discourse and scholarly work in recent decades, however, “assimilation” has become a highly controversial and politically charged term, partly
because of its association with the ideal of Anglo-conformity, or “the melting pot,” and forced Americanization, partly because of the daunting reality of assimilation failure and increased racial/ethnic inequality, and partly
because of the effects of ethnic consciousness movements that promotes multiculturalism. In this essay, I review the scholarly literature to examine how
classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
THE CLASSICAL ASSIMILATION PERSPECTIVE
In the scholarly literature, assimilation, often used interchangeably with
the term adaptation, integration, or incorporation, refers to the process by

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3

which the characteristics of immigrant group members come to resemble
those of natives in host societies. The classical assimilation perspective on
immigrant incorporation has been influential in intellectual thinking since
the early twentieth century. The theoretical orientation is guided by three
explicit or implicit assumptions: an undifferentiated or unified host society;
the inferiority or undesirability of things from the old world; and a natural,
unidimensional, and irreversible process toward assimilation. Classical
assimilation theories operate on the premise that the host society consists
of a single mainstream dominated by a majority group (in the case of the
United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs), that immigrants
of diverse backgrounds must abandon their old cultural ways, including
languages, values, norms, behavioral patterns and anything ethnic and learn
or adopt the ways of the dominant majority group, and that their success
is measured against the standards set by the dominant majority group, or
by how much they eventually become indistinguishable from members
of the dominant majority group. Even though immigrants initially find
themselves in a situation what Robert E. Park called the marginal man, being
simultaneously pulled in the direction of the host culture but drawn back
by the original culture, they are gradually sucked into a race relations cycle
of contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation in a sequence of
succeeding generations (Park, 1928).
The early formulation of the classical assimilation theory emphasized
biotic and economic forces (impersonal competition) and social forces
(contact, communication and cooperation) to the neglect of structural
constraints. Other scholars have contributed to the theoretical development
by considering the potency of contextual and institutional factors, such as
phenotypical ranking and the racial/ethnic hierarchy, to be of paramount
significance in determining the rate of assimilation (Warner & Srole, 1945).
These scholars recognize that ethnic/racial minorities face more obstacles
than others to assimilation because of their ascribed traits (e.g., skin color)
and/or visibly different cultural traits (e.g., language of origin and religion).
Differences in social status and access to opportunities based on language
and culture will disappear over the course of several generations. However,
the assimilation of readily identifiable ethnic/racial minorities, especially
blacks, is likely to be confined within racial-caste boundaries for a lengthier
period of time. Thus, ascribed characteristics and cultural traits interact
with economic and social forces to set the speed of complete assimilation for
various immigrant groups.
Milton M. Gordon (1964) has developed a multistage typology of assimilation to capture the complexity of the process. The typology involves seven
stages: cultural, structural, marital, identificational, attitude-receptional,

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behavior-receptional, and civic assimilation. As a necessary first step, immigrants begin their incorporation into their new country through cultural
assimilation, or acculturation, referring to the change in cultural patterns
to those of the host dominant group, such as language, beliefs, and values.
The second stage is structural assimilation, referring the establishment of
the primary relations with host society’s dominant group and the entrance
into its formal and informal institutions. Structural assimilation is the most
critical stage in that it influences the subsequent stages. Marital assimilation
refers to widespread intermarriages. Identificational assimilation entails
relinquishing ties and allegiance to the country of origin and the achievement of the host country’s sense of peoplehood and national identity. The
next two stages, attitude-receptional and behavior-receptional, refer to the
changed attitudes and behavior leads to diminishing prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity or nativity. The end result is civic assimilation,
which indicates the absence of immigrant-native conflicts via complete
convergence.
At the core of Gordon typology are cultural and structural assimilation. For
Gordon, acculturation does not automatically lead to structural assimilation
or any other types, but may take place and continue indefinitely even when
no other type of assimilation occurs. He hints that ethnic groups may remain
distinguished from one another for a long period of time because of spatial
isolation and lack of contact. Structural assimilation, in contrast, is the “keystone of the arch of assimilation” that will inevitably lead to other stages of
assimilation. Although vague about how groups advance from one stage to
another and what causes change, Gordon anticipates that most ethnic groups
will eventually lose all their ethnic markers and cease to exist as distinctive
ethnic groups as they become fully assimilated.
From the classical perspective, sophisticated theoretical models are developed to empirically predict the rates and outcomes of assimilation. The most
widely applied models are drawn upon insight from the classical stratification theories. The dependent variables are usually measured by levels of
education, occupation, and incomes, among others, in reference to host society’s dominant group or to the native-born segment of the national-origin
group. The key determinants include family socioeconomic status (SES) and
own human capital characteristics. Cultural assimilation is rarely considered
a dependent variable but is instead treated as an important determinant of
structural and other types of assimilation. Specifically, distinctive ethnic traits
such as old-world cultures, native languages, and ethnic enclaves, as well as
ethnicity in the abstract, are taken as disadvantages, or burdensome baggage,
that hinder assimilation. However, these ethnic disadvantages should have
fading negative effects on succeeding generations, whose members adopt the

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5

primary language of the host country as their primary medium of communication and become more and more similar to natives in lifestyle, mannerism,
outlook, and worldview. The length of time since immigration and nativity
are thus considered vital in predicting assimilation outcomes.
Although complete acculturation of an ethnic group to the dominant American way of life may not ensure all ethnic groups’ full social participation in
the host society, immigrants are expected first to free themselves from their
old cultures in order to begin rising up from marginal positions. America
seemed to have absorbed the great waves of immigrants who arrived at the
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, primarily from Europe.
Before the surge of contemporary immigration of the 1960s, German, Irish,
and Italian Catholics, Polish and Russian Jews, and most other Eastern European immigrants had achieved acceptance among an initially hostile native
WASP population, and their offspring had thoroughly been absorbed into the
society’s white majority through residential, educational, and occupational
mobility and intermarriages without much trace of their ethnic distinctiveness (Alba, 1985; Gans, 1979; Waters, 1990).
ANOMALIES
Earlier patterns do not seem to readily repeat themselves in contemporary
times, where immigration to the United States is of a very different sort.
In 1965, US Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, abolishing the national
origins quota system and replacing it with a preference system that favors
family-sponsored and employer-sponsor immigrations. Between 1970
and 2011, the United States admitted nearly 33 million immigrants, 44%
from Latin America (20% from Mexico alone), 34% from Asia, and only
13% from Europe. Post-1965 immigrant groups have not converged to the
non-Hispanic white majority in the ways predicted by classical assimilation
theories. Instead, empirical research has observed several anomalies. The
first anomaly concerns the persistent intergenerational disadvantages.
Classical theories predict assimilation as a function of the length of residence
in the host society and succeeding generations. However, this is not how it
seems to work. Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz (2008)’s powerful longitudinal study of Mexican Americans is a case in point: members of the third
and fourth generation had not experienced the erosion of ethnic identity,
widespread intermarriages with members of the dominant majority group,
residential integration, and attitudinal-receptive or behavioral receptive
assimilation; and the initially low SES of the immigrant generation was
reproduced through racialization in the next generations. Other studies
have consistently revealed that longer US residence is correlated with more
maladaptive outcomes, whether measured in terms of school performance,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aspirations, and behavior; that immigrant poverty is reproduced, rather than
diminishes, in the second generation for some national origin groups but
not others; that intergroup differences in levels of schooling and economic
attainment persist in the second and later generations; and that human capital investment yields different returns for different racial/ethnic groups (i.e.,
schooling did not equally commensurate with occupational advancement
for African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Mexican Americans as
for non-Hispanic whites across generations).
Another anomaly is what Herbert Gans describes as “the second generation decline” (Gans, 1992). Gans points to the significance of family SES and
its interaction with culture that affect the assimilation of the “new” second
generation (children of post-1965 immigrants). Immigrant children from less
fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds had a much harder time than their
peers from middleclass backgrounds to succeed in school and later in the
labor market. While their families lack resources to guide them onto the paths
to success, these children often construct their own acculturation in response
to structural disadvantages. Schools, American peers, and the media exert
powerful influences on immigrant children. The prevailing youth culture and
the freedoms (particularly personal choices in dress, dating, and sexual practices) unavailable in their parents’ old country also overwhelm them. Because
of exposure, these children are likely to develop expectations of life in America much higher than those of their parents; and they will neither be willing
to accept immigrant parental work norms nor work in “un-American” conditions as many of their parents do. Thus, some of the children may not even
be able to carry out their parents’ wishes and expectations of moving up and
“making it in America,” much less to fulfill their own expectations, and their
rapid acculturation reinforces their structural disadvantages. Gans considers these divergent patterns as various bumps (either imposed by the host
society or invented by the immigrants themselves) on the road to eventual
assimilation into “nonethnic” America.
Still another anomaly is the peculiar outcomes of contemporary immigrant
incorporation. In America’s fastest growing knowledge-intensive industries,
foreign-born engineers and other highly skilled professionals disproportionately take up various key technical positions and, for some, even ownership
positions with limited acculturation. In some immigrant enclaves, ethnic life
enriched by the development of ethnic economies opens up alternative paths
to social mobility even without English language proficiency. In upscale
middle-class suburbs, wealthy immigrants with sufficient financial capital
purchase and move into homes, jumping several steps ahead and bypassing
the traditional bottom-up order. However, in inner cities, working class
immigrant families are struggling just to get by, combating poverty, crime,
and social exclusion, without much hope to ever moving up to middleclass

Assimilation and Its Discontents

7

status. But most vexing is the intergroup differences in academic achievement among those from similar social class backgrounds. While immigrant
children are overrepresented on lists of award-winners or on academic fast
tracks, many others from the same schools are also vulnerable to multiple
high risk behaviors, school failure, street gangs, and youth crime.
These anomalies indicate a significant gap between theory and reality and
raise concerns about the relevance and applicability of classic assimilation
theories for predicting assimilation outcomes of post-1965 immigrants.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY
The segmented assimilation theory emerged in the early 1990s to address
the anomalies. Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou (1993) first introduced the
theoretical idea in their seminal work entitled “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants among Post-1965 Immigrant
Youth.” As a middle-range theory, the segmented assimilation theory rejects
the classical assumption of an undifferentiated and white middleclass core to
which all immigrants assimilate and redefines the American mainstream as
one that is shaped by the system of racial and class stratifications to exclude
the marginal segments of the population. It places the process of becoming
American, in terms of both acculturation and structural assimilation, in the
context of a host society consisting of segregated and unequal segments and
considers this process to be multidirectional leading to varied outcomes of
convergence (to natives) as well as divergence. Unlike the classical theory
that predicts eventual assimilation over time and across generations, the segmented assimilation theory focuses on predicting and explaining divergent
outcomes, that is, why some national-origin groups are more likely than others to move head onto the host society’s mainstream or to get trapped on the
margins and are excluded from assimilating into the mainstream intergenerationally.
From the segmented assimilation perspective, three main patterns of incorporation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring are readily
discernible. The first is the classical upward-mobility pattern: Acculturation
and integration into the normative structures of the host society’s mainstream. In America, this is a time-honored pathway of severing ethnic ties,
unlearning old-world values, norms, and behavioral patterns, and adapting
to the WASP core culture associated with middleclass status. The second is
the downward-mobility pattern: acculturation and integration into the host
society’s margins. This is the pathway of adapting to the native or hybrid
(native and immigrant mixed) oppositional subcultures associated with

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

marginalization—being trapped on the bottom rungs of the host society’s
mobility ladder and in direct opposition to the WASP core culture. The third
is a contemporary upward-mobility pattern: Socioeconomic integration into
the host society’s mainstream with lagged or selective acculturation and
deliberate preservation of an ethnic group’s values and norms, social ties,
and community organizations. This is the pathway of achieving middleclass
status based on resources generated within the ethnic community.
Empirically, segmented assimilation is measured by observable SES indicators, such as educational attainment, employment status, income, and homeownership, with reference to the host society’s dominant group or marginal
groups. For the children of immigrants, indicators of downward assimilation
may also include high school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration,
for these variables are strong predictors of future low educational attainment,
low occupational status, low income, and low likelihood of homeownership.
Possible determinants include those individual-level factors, such as parental
SES, English language ability, place of birth, age upon arrival, and length of
residence in the United States, and structural factors, such as racial status
and place of residence, which are specified in classical assimilation models.
The segmented assimilation perspective diverts from the classical perspective with regard to the effects of these determinants. It assumes that the most
determinants in the classical models are important by default but focuses
instead the interaction between variables related to the group-specific contexts of exit and reception.
The context of exit entails a set of premigration characteristics, including
social class status already attained by the immigrants in their homelands,
resources that immigrants bring with them (such as money, knowledge,
and job skills) to the new country, and immigrants’ means of migration,
motivation, aspirations, and customary practices. These characteristics not
only affect individual and family mobility, but also affect the national-origin
or ethnic group as a whole. For example, an immigrant group overrepresented by the well-educated and highly skilled is likely to generate stronger
ethnic capital that benefits all group members including those of low SES
background. The context of reception includes a set of host society factors
corresponding to group-level characteristics, including the social position
of the ethnic group in the host society’s racial stratification system; public
attitudes, government policies, and labor market conditions receptive or
hostile to the group; and the strength and viability of the pre-existing
ethnic community. The segmented assimilation theory posits that particular contexts of exit and reception interact to create distinctive modes of
incorporation, or ethno cultural patterns and strategies of socioeconomic
integration, giving rise to opportunities or constraints for group members,

Assimilation and Its Discontents

9

independent of individual and family SES and other major demographic
characteristics.
Numerous qualitative and quantitative works in the US context have
produced evidence in support of segmented assimilation predictions. That
is, immigrants and their children are unlikely to assimilate into a single
mainstream; rather, they are moving upwardly, downwardly, or horizontally
in a highly stratified society that is also racialized. While the trend of class
reproduction (i.e., middleclass immigrant generation generally reproduces
middleclass second generation) remains significant, racial/ethnic inequality
in adaptation outcomes has also been strikingly salient across generations,
defying the convention wisdom of assimilation and social mobility. On
educational achievement, for example, second-generation Asians generally
fare better than second-generation Latinos, as well as all native-born peers,
of similar family SES; second-generation Chinese Americans of lower family
SES fare better than their native-born non-Asian peers of higher family
SES. On acculturation, second-generation members of some groups have
abandoned their ethnic ways and have been thoroughly assimilate into the
mainstream culture in terms of language, religion, values, and ways, but
still find it hard to achieve success in structural assimilation. For example,
Gonzalez (2011) shows that undocumented status and social stigma attached
to it put some second generation members in a state of “developmental
limbo.” Their legal right to education as a protected space is not extended
beyond high school, and they face a bleak future with blocked mobility just
like their parents even when they have been fully acculturated and adhered
to the same aspirations as their American peers. There are also cases in which
second-generation members of some group have achieved success on both
measures of acculturation and structural assimilation, but still feel being
excluded from the American nation, as in the example of Asian Americans as
simultaneously the model minority and perpetual foreigners (Zhou, 2004).
SECOND-GENERATION ADVANTAGE AS A CRITIQUE TO SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION
Segmented assimilation, focusing on the interaction between class and
race/ethnicity and between group-level and individual-level determinants,
can be viewed as a more nuanced alternative theory to the classical perspective. It should be noted that downward assimilation is only one of
several possible outcomes predicted by the segmented assimilation theory.
Curiously, the segmented assimilation theory is often misinterpreted as suggesting and predicting one single outcome—downward assimilation—and
thereby criticized as being overtly pessimistic about the immigrant second
generation. Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway (2008) advanced
a notion of “second generation advantage” as a critique to segmented

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assimilation. On the basis of findings from their study of New York’s
second generation, they showed that all children of immigrants under
study were doing better than their native-born comparison groups with
no sign of downward assimilation: West Indians were doing better than
African-Americans, Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans, and
Chinese and Russians were doing as well as or better than native whites.
They suggest that all members of the second generation benefit from having
more options than their immigrant parents to simultaneously maintain
ethnic cultural beliefs and practices and create new norms and beliefs as
they are moving ahead in society.
The point of disagreement seems to be on the reference group. In the segmented assimilation perspective, the reference is the generation population
or non-Hispanic white. In the second-generation advantage model, the reference group is the native population of the racial group. I would caution
that immigrant offspring of low SES family background and racial minority
status are at a higher risk than others of being trapped in the host society’s
racial stratification system.
Nonetheless, to refute the segmented assimilation theory or to state that
the second generation is doing just fine and is sooner or later moving into
the mainstream middle class regardless of ethnicity or immigrant origin,
one must demonstrate that both of the following cases are true: first, the
proportions of those falling into the major indicators of downward assimilation (e.g., dropping out of high school, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration)
are insignificant for each national-origin or ethnic group; and second, the
differences in outcomes are randomly distributed across racial/ethnic or
national-origin groups, regardless of the group’s modes of incorporation.
NEOCLASSICAL ASSIMILATION THEORY
Richard Alba and Victor Nee developed a neoclassical assimilation theory
in their seminal work, Remaking the American Mainstream (2003), to address
the anomalies noted above while critically engaged with segmented assimilation. As the most enthusiastic defenders of assimilationism, Alba and Nee
argue that the anomalies are merely adverse effects of contemporary structural changes that classical theories fail to anticipate. They point out that four
decades of extremely low immigration between 1920 and 1960 caused gradual decline of ethnic communities and cultures but that the continuously high
rate of mass immigration after 1965 has limited the host society’s “breathing space” for absorbing and integrating immigrants as ethnic communities are constantly replenished. Moreover, the growing “hourglass” economy,
with knowledge-intensive, high paying jobs at one end and labor-intensive,
lowing-paying jobs at the other, has taken away several rungs of the mobility

Assimilation and Its Discontents

11

ladder that are crucial for enabling immigrants, especially those with little education and few job skills, who started from the bottom to climb up.
While these structural changes set new road blocks to assimilation, other
major institutional changes, such as civil rights legislation, immigration policy reform, and multiculturalism, have reshaped the host society, making it
more favorable for the assimilation of newcomers and their children today
than in the past despite of persistent racial inequality. They thus contend
that assimilation should work for contemporary immigrants too, because it
worked so well in the past for turn-of-the-twentieth-century European immigrants under more precarious circumstances.
Alba and Nee’s neoclassical assimilation theory reconceptualizes the American mainstream as one that encompasses “a core set of interrelated institutional structures and organizations regulated by rules and practices that
weaken, even undermine, the influence of ethnic origins per se,” that it may
include members of formerly excluded ethnic or racial groups, and that it
may contain not just the middle class or affluence suburbanites but the working class or the central-city poor. They suggest that all immigrants and their
descendants will eventually assimilate, but not necessarily in a single direction and toward a single core as predicted by classical theoretical models.
Their modified theory of assimilation allows much room for predicting immigrants, particularly those of non-European origin and low SES backgrounds,
to incorporate into the mainstream at different rates and by different measures. Alba and Nee’s so-defined American mainstream is all inclusive with
no margins. Nevertheless, their notion of successful assimilation still explicitly refers to the incorporation into the middleclass core, not the segments of
the mainstream occupied by working or lower classes.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The existing research on immigrant assimilation tells us that race, ethnicity, or national origin, matters in predicting outcomes. For example,
being Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese, has a significantly positive effect
on second-generation school outcomes, such as GPA and high school
graduation, and being Puerto Rican or Mexican has a significantly negative
effect, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors such as parental
education, occupation, and income. Moreover, children of Asian immigrants
are doing better than other minority groups and whites, but children of
Latino immigrants are still trailing behind whites by a significant large
margin even when they fare better than their native coethnics. Therefore,
exactly how ethnicity matters has remained unresolved, partly because of
the conceptual muddle and partly because of data limitation.

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Conceptually, ethnicity is often treated as a structural construct in some
models and a cultural construct in other models, depending on the theoretical orientation of the researcher. The structural perspective emphasizes the
influence of host-society’s macro social structures, that is, the extent to which
racial/ethnic minority groups are constrained by the broader stratification
systems and networks of social relations within it. The cultural perspective
emphasizes the influence of ethnic cultures and community forces. Social
scientists from both perspectives have attempted to develop statistical models to quantitatively measure the effect of “structure” and “culture.” Under
ideal circumstances, these models would include indicators illuminating
pre-migration situations. However, because of data limitations, many social
scientists typically attempt to control for “structure” by documenting specific contexts of exit, identifying aspects of post-migration social structures,
and operationalizing those components for which they have data. This is
not only a conventional practice but also a reasonable approach, since many
postmigration social structural differences (in the SES of persons who came
to the United States as adults) are likely to either reflect, or be carryovers
from, premigration differences. However, even the most sophisticated statistical model accounts for only some of the variance, leaving a large residual
unexplained. More intractable are questions of how to conceptualize and
measure ethnicity. Given the constraints of the data, many social scientists
have tried valiantly to make progress on this front and have come up with
measures that are ingenious, although not fully convincing. In the end,
much weight is given to the effect of a discrete dummy variable of ethnicity,
the exact meaning or contents of which remains a black box.
Since ethnicity cannot be simply viewed as either a structural or a cultural
construct, how to measure it requires innovative thinking beyond existing
theoretical frameworks. One possibility is to pay closer attention to mesolevel
dynamics from an ethnic enclave perspective to look at how group-specific
cultural values and behavioral patterns are interacting with both internal and
external structural exigencies. Classical assimilation theories posit that ethnic
enclaves are beneficial only to the extent that they meet new immigrants’ survival needs, reorganize their economic and social lives, and ease resettlement
problems in the new land and that, in the long run, they will become a trap
inhibiting assimilation. However, ethnic enclaves are shaped by immigration
selectivity, and may not be easily dichotomized as either a springboard or a
trap for upward social mobility.
While some ethnic enclaves may decline into ghettos or ’super-ghettos
concentrating poverty, others can generate ethnic resources conducive to
social mobility. Different patterns of ethnic change imply an interaction
between macro structural forces and meso community forces, which produces varied ethnic social environments within immigrant neighborhoods.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

13

Take Los Angeles’ Koreatown for example. Koreatown is a typical urban
neighborhood dominated by ethnic minorities (93%), the foreign born
(69%), and the poor (31%). Most of the residents are recent immigrants
from Korea, Mexico, and Central America. Korean immigrant children
do better in school than their Latino peers even when they come from
families with similar income levels. This is not because Korean families
value education more than Mexican families, but rather they are exposed to
different ethnic social environments. The Korean community has developed
an extensive system of supplementary education. This ethnic system of
supplementary education include nonprofit ethnic language schools and
private institution, offering academic tutoring and enrichment, standardize
test drills, college preparation, and related counseling services, to support
immigrant education in addition to public education. In contrast, owing
to negative immigrant selectivity with high proportions of the low skilled
and undocumented, the Mexican community, located in Koreatown, lacks
similar ethnic resources to assist immigrant children’s education despite
strong parental values toward education. Yet, neighborhood-based resources
created by the Korean community are not accessible to other group members
sharing the same neighborhood. Hence, how to develop better measures to
capture meso-contextual complexities of the ethnic community will shed
lights on our understanding of intergroup variations on outcomes.
Another possibility is to look beyond the national context to understand
intergroup variation in assimilation outcomes. Current research has shown
that contemporary immigrants are now found to achieve economic success
and social status, depending not exclusively on rapid acculturation and
entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, but on ethnic resources
mobilized within diasporic communities, as well as (at least for some) on
cultivating strong social networks across national borders. In this sense,
immigrant transnationalism can serve as an alternative means to social
integration into, rather than disintegration from, the host society (Zhou &
Lee, 2013).
A third possibility is to pay closer attention to micro level processes from a
subject-centered perspective, by which immigrants define and measure success based on their own lived experiences. In my collaborative research on
Los Angeles second generation Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mexicans, we find
that different ethnic groups frame “success” using different reference groups
(Zhou, Lee, Vallejo, Tafoya-Estrada, & Xiong, 2008). That is, they judge how
well they fare in society in comparison to their own ethnic group rather
than to the society’s dominant group—non-Hispanic white. These different
frames of success produce variations on aspirations and expectations, which
can either expand or constrain opportunities and consequently reinforce
intergroup disparities. This subject-centered approach allows for microlevel

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

analysis within the macrostructural framework, enabling us to look beyond
predictable patterns to understand both the obvious and subtle reasons
group members make certain choices and pursue particular pathways.
Last but not least, in the existing research, there seems to be a disconnection
between quantitative and qualitative studies. Sophisticated quantitative
models have been developed to examine intergroup differences in outcomes
but tend to produce similar results that largely miss the group-specific
nuances, dynamics, and mechanisms of adaptational processes. Qualitative
studies are attentive to details of these processes but lack generalizability.
The different methodological approaches yield significant findings that
inform each other. Therefore, future research should aim to develop better
measures and multilevel models, through the mixed methods approach, to
accurately capture the contexts of exit and reception in accounting for varied
effects of ethnicity.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The scholarly literature on assimilation and its discontents underscores
three important points. First, we should revisit the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of assimilation and investigate why
even normative pathways can lead to divergent outcomes. Second, we
should critically examine how multi level determinants interact to produce
unconventional pathways leading to positive outcomes. Third, we should to
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention
to how our subjects (immigrants and their offspring), rather than ourselves
(social scientists), imagine and conceptualize these notions and examine
why subjective conceptualization may influence strategies with profound
implications for success. In sum, by innovatively engage in mixed-methods
research, we can gain a better understanding of the reasons beyond family
SES and acculturation, that account from interethnic disparities in assimilation. While the best research design can more accurately predict future
possibilities, only time can tell about the real assimilation outcomes beyond
the second generation.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. D. (1985). Italian Americans: Into the twilight of ethnicity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and the new
immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in
America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1–20.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

15

Gans, H. (1992). Second generation decline: Scenarios for the economic and ethnic futures of the post-1965 American immigrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15,
173–191.
Gonzalez, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal
contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76, 602–619.
Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national
origins. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Kasinitz, P., Mollenkopf, J. H., Waters, M. C., & Holdaway, J. (2008). Inheriting the city:
The children of immigrants come of age. New York, MA: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lieberson, S., & Waters, M. (1988). From many strands: Ethnic and racial groups in contemporary America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
New York Times (1915). Roosevelt bars the hyphenated. October 13, p.1.
Park, R. E. (1928). Human migration and the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881–93.
Petersen, W. (1966). Success Story, Japanese-American Style. New York Times Magazine, January 9.
Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation
and its variants among post-1965 immigrant youth. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 530, 74–96.
Telles, E. E., & Ortiz, V. (2008). Generations of exclusion: Mexican Americans, assimilation,
and race. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
US News and World Report. (1966). Success of one minority group in U.S., December
26.
Warner, W. L., & Srole, L. (1945). The social systems of American ethnic groups. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Waters, M. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zhou, M. (2004). Are Asian Americans becoming white? Contexts, 3, 29–37.
Zhou, M., & Lee, R. (2013). Transnationalism and community building: Chinese
immigrant organizations in the United States. ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 647, 22–49.
Zhou, M., Lee, J., Vallejo, J. A., Tafoya-Estrada, R., & Xiong, Y. S. (2008). Success
attained, deterred, and denied: Divergent pathways to social mobility among the
new second generation in Los Angeles. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 620, 37–61.

MIN ZHOU SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Min Zhou, PhD is Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor of Sociology at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, and Professor of Sociology & Asian
American Studies/Walter & Shirley Wang Endowed Chair of US-China
Relations & Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles,
USA. Her main areas of research include international migration; ethnic and
racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education, and the new second

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

generation; and Asia and Asian America, and she has published widely in
these areas. She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of
an Urban Enclave (Temple University Press, 1992), Contemporary Chinese
America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (Temple
University Press, 2009), and The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American
Studies (UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2011); coauthor of
Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the
United States (with Bankston, Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998); and
coeditor of Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (with
Lee, Routledge, 2004) and Contemporary Asian America. (with Gatewood, New York University Press, 1st ed. 2000, 2nd ed. 2007). Homepage:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/zhou/
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Ethnic Enclaves (Sociology), Steven J. Gold
Education for Mobility or Status Reproduction? (Sociology), Karyn Lacy
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Culture and Globalization (Sociology), Frederick F. Wherry


Assimilation and Its Discontents
MIN ZHOU

Abstract
This essay offers a review of the scholarly literature on immigrant assimilation,
looking at how classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes
of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how
alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents. The essay
first revisits the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of
assimilation and investigates why even normative pathways can lead to divergent
assimilation outcomes. It then discusses new theoretical development in this area,
highlighting the central ideas and conceptualization of the segmented assimilation
theory and the neoclassical assimilation theory. The author emphasizes how multilevel determinants interact to produce unconventional pathways that have profound
implication for success or failure of assimilation. She also suggests that researchers
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention to how
immigrants and their offspring, rather than social scientists themselves, imagine and
frame these notions because subjective conceptualization can influence strategies
that result in vastly different pathways and outcomes. The essay concludes with a
discussion on issues for future research.

INTRODUCTION
As a nation of immigrants, assimilation was an unspoken ideology
in the United States. Newcomers of diverse origins and cultures were
expected to shed their ethnic distinctiveness and “melt” into a single peoplehood—“American”—as soon as possible. Recall Theodore
Roosevelt’s proclamation that there was “no room in this country for
hyphenated Americans” (New York Times, 1915, p. 1). At the turn of the
twentieth century, the American public was deeply concerned about the
assimilability of “new” immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins with cultures quite different from those of “older stock” Americans. However, instead of a proactive national policy response aiming at
assimilation, the American nation adopted a restrictive immigration policy,
based on the national origins quota system, to largely cut off the flow of
immigrants from outside Northern and Western Europe. “Americanization”
programs were implemented through public schools in the hands of local
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

officials, all ran under the assumption that immigrants’ cultures and ways
were backward, uncivilized, and incompatible with American core cultural
values of individualism, liberty, equality, and democracy. Assimilation was
entirely left to market forces and immigrant’s own agency—having the right
values, work ethics, and perseverance.
Nonetheless, assimilation seemed to work wonders without much direct
policy intervention. At the wake of the immigration reform in the 1960s,
the seemingly unassimilable immigrants of Southern and Eastern European
origins and their offspring had become fully assimilated and indistinguishably “white” (Lieberson & Waters, 1988). Even among Americans of Asian
ancestry, assimilation outcomes were remarkable as Chinese and Japanese
Americans, the groups that had been legally excluded from American society,
made impressive inroad into the American mainstream and were applauded
“the model minority” (Petersen, 1966; US News and World Report, 1966).
US immigration policy reform of the 1960s has brought about continuously
massive influx of immigrants. The largely non-European, non-Protestant,
culturally heterogeneous and socioeconomically diverse newcomers pose
significant challenges to assimilation while changing the classical assimilation story. Some immigrant group members are able to obtain well-paying
jobs in the mainstream labor market and own homes in affluent urban
or suburb communities upon arrival while still speaking little or heavily
accented English. Other immigrant group members struggle at the host
society’s bottom even with high aspiration and hard work, yet still find not
only their own pathways to upward social mobility blocked but also those
of their children who have been thoroughly acculturated.
In public discourse and scholarly work in recent decades, however, “assimilation” has become a highly controversial and politically charged term, partly
because of its association with the ideal of Anglo-conformity, or “the melting pot,” and forced Americanization, partly because of the daunting reality of assimilation failure and increased racial/ethnic inequality, and partly
because of the effects of ethnic consciousness movements that promotes multiculturalism. In this essay, I review the scholarly literature to examine how
classical assimilation theories explain the processes and outcomes of assimilation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring and how alternative theories are developed to address assimilation’s discontents.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
THE CLASSICAL ASSIMILATION PERSPECTIVE
In the scholarly literature, assimilation, often used interchangeably with
the term adaptation, integration, or incorporation, refers to the process by

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3

which the characteristics of immigrant group members come to resemble
those of natives in host societies. The classical assimilation perspective on
immigrant incorporation has been influential in intellectual thinking since
the early twentieth century. The theoretical orientation is guided by three
explicit or implicit assumptions: an undifferentiated or unified host society;
the inferiority or undesirability of things from the old world; and a natural,
unidimensional, and irreversible process toward assimilation. Classical
assimilation theories operate on the premise that the host society consists
of a single mainstream dominated by a majority group (in the case of the
United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, or WASPs), that immigrants
of diverse backgrounds must abandon their old cultural ways, including
languages, values, norms, behavioral patterns and anything ethnic and learn
or adopt the ways of the dominant majority group, and that their success
is measured against the standards set by the dominant majority group, or
by how much they eventually become indistinguishable from members
of the dominant majority group. Even though immigrants initially find
themselves in a situation what Robert E. Park called the marginal man, being
simultaneously pulled in the direction of the host culture but drawn back
by the original culture, they are gradually sucked into a race relations cycle
of contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation in a sequence of
succeeding generations (Park, 1928).
The early formulation of the classical assimilation theory emphasized
biotic and economic forces (impersonal competition) and social forces
(contact, communication and cooperation) to the neglect of structural
constraints. Other scholars have contributed to the theoretical development
by considering the potency of contextual and institutional factors, such as
phenotypical ranking and the racial/ethnic hierarchy, to be of paramount
significance in determining the rate of assimilation (Warner & Srole, 1945).
These scholars recognize that ethnic/racial minorities face more obstacles
than others to assimilation because of their ascribed traits (e.g., skin color)
and/or visibly different cultural traits (e.g., language of origin and religion).
Differences in social status and access to opportunities based on language
and culture will disappear over the course of several generations. However,
the assimilation of readily identifiable ethnic/racial minorities, especially
blacks, is likely to be confined within racial-caste boundaries for a lengthier
period of time. Thus, ascribed characteristics and cultural traits interact
with economic and social forces to set the speed of complete assimilation for
various immigrant groups.
Milton M. Gordon (1964) has developed a multistage typology of assimilation to capture the complexity of the process. The typology involves seven
stages: cultural, structural, marital, identificational, attitude-receptional,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

behavior-receptional, and civic assimilation. As a necessary first step, immigrants begin their incorporation into their new country through cultural
assimilation, or acculturation, referring to the change in cultural patterns
to those of the host dominant group, such as language, beliefs, and values.
The second stage is structural assimilation, referring the establishment of
the primary relations with host society’s dominant group and the entrance
into its formal and informal institutions. Structural assimilation is the most
critical stage in that it influences the subsequent stages. Marital assimilation
refers to widespread intermarriages. Identificational assimilation entails
relinquishing ties and allegiance to the country of origin and the achievement of the host country’s sense of peoplehood and national identity. The
next two stages, attitude-receptional and behavior-receptional, refer to the
changed attitudes and behavior leads to diminishing prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity or nativity. The end result is civic assimilation,
which indicates the absence of immigrant-native conflicts via complete
convergence.
At the core of Gordon typology are cultural and structural assimilation. For
Gordon, acculturation does not automatically lead to structural assimilation
or any other types, but may take place and continue indefinitely even when
no other type of assimilation occurs. He hints that ethnic groups may remain
distinguished from one another for a long period of time because of spatial
isolation and lack of contact. Structural assimilation, in contrast, is the “keystone of the arch of assimilation” that will inevitably lead to other stages of
assimilation. Although vague about how groups advance from one stage to
another and what causes change, Gordon anticipates that most ethnic groups
will eventually lose all their ethnic markers and cease to exist as distinctive
ethnic groups as they become fully assimilated.
From the classical perspective, sophisticated theoretical models are developed to empirically predict the rates and outcomes of assimilation. The most
widely applied models are drawn upon insight from the classical stratification theories. The dependent variables are usually measured by levels of
education, occupation, and incomes, among others, in reference to host society’s dominant group or to the native-born segment of the national-origin
group. The key determinants include family socioeconomic status (SES) and
own human capital characteristics. Cultural assimilation is rarely considered
a dependent variable but is instead treated as an important determinant of
structural and other types of assimilation. Specifically, distinctive ethnic traits
such as old-world cultures, native languages, and ethnic enclaves, as well as
ethnicity in the abstract, are taken as disadvantages, or burdensome baggage,
that hinder assimilation. However, these ethnic disadvantages should have
fading negative effects on succeeding generations, whose members adopt the

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5

primary language of the host country as their primary medium of communication and become more and more similar to natives in lifestyle, mannerism,
outlook, and worldview. The length of time since immigration and nativity
are thus considered vital in predicting assimilation outcomes.
Although complete acculturation of an ethnic group to the dominant American way of life may not ensure all ethnic groups’ full social participation in
the host society, immigrants are expected first to free themselves from their
old cultures in order to begin rising up from marginal positions. America
seemed to have absorbed the great waves of immigrants who arrived at the
late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, primarily from Europe.
Before the surge of contemporary immigration of the 1960s, German, Irish,
and Italian Catholics, Polish and Russian Jews, and most other Eastern European immigrants had achieved acceptance among an initially hostile native
WASP population, and their offspring had thoroughly been absorbed into the
society’s white majority through residential, educational, and occupational
mobility and intermarriages without much trace of their ethnic distinctiveness (Alba, 1985; Gans, 1979; Waters, 1990).
ANOMALIES
Earlier patterns do not seem to readily repeat themselves in contemporary
times, where immigration to the United States is of a very different sort.
In 1965, US Congress passed the Hart-Celler Act, abolishing the national
origins quota system and replacing it with a preference system that favors
family-sponsored and employer-sponsor immigrations. Between 1970
and 2011, the United States admitted nearly 33 million immigrants, 44%
from Latin America (20% from Mexico alone), 34% from Asia, and only
13% from Europe. Post-1965 immigrant groups have not converged to the
non-Hispanic white majority in the ways predicted by classical assimilation
theories. Instead, empirical research has observed several anomalies. The
first anomaly concerns the persistent intergenerational disadvantages.
Classical theories predict assimilation as a function of the length of residence
in the host society and succeeding generations. However, this is not how it
seems to work. Edward Telles and Vilma Ortiz (2008)’s powerful longitudinal study of Mexican Americans is a case in point: members of the third
and fourth generation had not experienced the erosion of ethnic identity,
widespread intermarriages with members of the dominant majority group,
residential integration, and attitudinal-receptive or behavioral receptive
assimilation; and the initially low SES of the immigrant generation was
reproduced through racialization in the next generations. Other studies
have consistently revealed that longer US residence is correlated with more
maladaptive outcomes, whether measured in terms of school performance,

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

aspirations, and behavior; that immigrant poverty is reproduced, rather than
diminishes, in the second generation for some national origin groups but
not others; that intergroup differences in levels of schooling and economic
attainment persist in the second and later generations; and that human capital investment yields different returns for different racial/ethnic groups (i.e.,
schooling did not equally commensurate with occupational advancement
for African Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, and Mexican Americans as
for non-Hispanic whites across generations).
Another anomaly is what Herbert Gans describes as “the second generation decline” (Gans, 1992). Gans points to the significance of family SES and
its interaction with culture that affect the assimilation of the “new” second
generation (children of post-1965 immigrants). Immigrant children from less
fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds had a much harder time than their
peers from middleclass backgrounds to succeed in school and later in the
labor market. While their families lack resources to guide them onto the paths
to success, these children often construct their own acculturation in response
to structural disadvantages. Schools, American peers, and the media exert
powerful influences on immigrant children. The prevailing youth culture and
the freedoms (particularly personal choices in dress, dating, and sexual practices) unavailable in their parents’ old country also overwhelm them. Because
of exposure, these children are likely to develop expectations of life in America much higher than those of their parents; and they will neither be willing
to accept immigrant parental work norms nor work in “un-American” conditions as many of their parents do. Thus, some of the children may not even
be able to carry out their parents’ wishes and expectations of moving up and
“making it in America,” much less to fulfill their own expectations, and their
rapid acculturation reinforces their structural disadvantages. Gans considers these divergent patterns as various bumps (either imposed by the host
society or invented by the immigrants themselves) on the road to eventual
assimilation into “nonethnic” America.
Still another anomaly is the peculiar outcomes of contemporary immigrant
incorporation. In America’s fastest growing knowledge-intensive industries,
foreign-born engineers and other highly skilled professionals disproportionately take up various key technical positions and, for some, even ownership
positions with limited acculturation. In some immigrant enclaves, ethnic life
enriched by the development of ethnic economies opens up alternative paths
to social mobility even without English language proficiency. In upscale
middle-class suburbs, wealthy immigrants with sufficient financial capital
purchase and move into homes, jumping several steps ahead and bypassing
the traditional bottom-up order. However, in inner cities, working class
immigrant families are struggling just to get by, combating poverty, crime,
and social exclusion, without much hope to ever moving up to middleclass

Assimilation and Its Discontents

7

status. But most vexing is the intergroup differences in academic achievement among those from similar social class backgrounds. While immigrant
children are overrepresented on lists of award-winners or on academic fast
tracks, many others from the same schools are also vulnerable to multiple
high risk behaviors, school failure, street gangs, and youth crime.
These anomalies indicate a significant gap between theory and reality and
raise concerns about the relevance and applicability of classic assimilation
theories for predicting assimilation outcomes of post-1965 immigrants.
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE THEORY
The segmented assimilation theory emerged in the early 1990s to address
the anomalies. Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou (1993) first introduced the
theoretical idea in their seminal work entitled “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants among Post-1965 Immigrant
Youth.” As a middle-range theory, the segmented assimilation theory rejects
the classical assumption of an undifferentiated and white middleclass core to
which all immigrants assimilate and redefines the American mainstream as
one that is shaped by the system of racial and class stratifications to exclude
the marginal segments of the population. It places the process of becoming
American, in terms of both acculturation and structural assimilation, in the
context of a host society consisting of segregated and unequal segments and
considers this process to be multidirectional leading to varied outcomes of
convergence (to natives) as well as divergence. Unlike the classical theory
that predicts eventual assimilation over time and across generations, the segmented assimilation theory focuses on predicting and explaining divergent
outcomes, that is, why some national-origin groups are more likely than others to move head onto the host society’s mainstream or to get trapped on the
margins and are excluded from assimilating into the mainstream intergenerationally.
From the segmented assimilation perspective, three main patterns of incorporation among contemporary immigrants and their offspring are readily
discernible. The first is the classical upward-mobility pattern: Acculturation
and integration into the normative structures of the host society’s mainstream. In America, this is a time-honored pathway of severing ethnic ties,
unlearning old-world values, norms, and behavioral patterns, and adapting
to the WASP core culture associated with middleclass status. The second is
the downward-mobility pattern: acculturation and integration into the host
society’s margins. This is the pathway of adapting to the native or hybrid
(native and immigrant mixed) oppositional subcultures associated with

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

marginalization—being trapped on the bottom rungs of the host society’s
mobility ladder and in direct opposition to the WASP core culture. The third
is a contemporary upward-mobility pattern: Socioeconomic integration into
the host society’s mainstream with lagged or selective acculturation and
deliberate preservation of an ethnic group’s values and norms, social ties,
and community organizations. This is the pathway of achieving middleclass
status based on resources generated within the ethnic community.
Empirically, segmented assimilation is measured by observable SES indicators, such as educational attainment, employment status, income, and homeownership, with reference to the host society’s dominant group or marginal
groups. For the children of immigrants, indicators of downward assimilation
may also include high school dropout, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration,
for these variables are strong predictors of future low educational attainment,
low occupational status, low income, and low likelihood of homeownership.
Possible determinants include those individual-level factors, such as parental
SES, English language ability, place of birth, age upon arrival, and length of
residence in the United States, and structural factors, such as racial status
and place of residence, which are specified in classical assimilation models.
The segmented assimilation perspective diverts from the classical perspective with regard to the effects of these determinants. It assumes that the most
determinants in the classical models are important by default but focuses
instead the interaction between variables related to the group-specific contexts of exit and reception.
The context of exit entails a set of premigration characteristics, including
social class status already attained by the immigrants in their homelands,
resources that immigrants bring with them (such as money, knowledge,
and job skills) to the new country, and immigrants’ means of migration,
motivation, aspirations, and customary practices. These characteristics not
only affect individual and family mobility, but also affect the national-origin
or ethnic group as a whole. For example, an immigrant group overrepresented by the well-educated and highly skilled is likely to generate stronger
ethnic capital that benefits all group members including those of low SES
background. The context of reception includes a set of host society factors
corresponding to group-level characteristics, including the social position
of the ethnic group in the host society’s racial stratification system; public
attitudes, government policies, and labor market conditions receptive or
hostile to the group; and the strength and viability of the pre-existing
ethnic community. The segmented assimilation theory posits that particular contexts of exit and reception interact to create distinctive modes of
incorporation, or ethno cultural patterns and strategies of socioeconomic
integration, giving rise to opportunities or constraints for group members,

Assimilation and Its Discontents

9

independent of individual and family SES and other major demographic
characteristics.
Numerous qualitative and quantitative works in the US context have
produced evidence in support of segmented assimilation predictions. That
is, immigrants and their children are unlikely to assimilate into a single
mainstream; rather, they are moving upwardly, downwardly, or horizontally
in a highly stratified society that is also racialized. While the trend of class
reproduction (i.e., middleclass immigrant generation generally reproduces
middleclass second generation) remains significant, racial/ethnic inequality
in adaptation outcomes has also been strikingly salient across generations,
defying the convention wisdom of assimilation and social mobility. On
educational achievement, for example, second-generation Asians generally
fare better than second-generation Latinos, as well as all native-born peers,
of similar family SES; second-generation Chinese Americans of lower family
SES fare better than their native-born non-Asian peers of higher family
SES. On acculturation, second-generation members of some groups have
abandoned their ethnic ways and have been thoroughly assimilate into the
mainstream culture in terms of language, religion, values, and ways, but
still find it hard to achieve success in structural assimilation. For example,
Gonzalez (2011) shows that undocumented status and social stigma attached
to it put some second generation members in a state of “developmental
limbo.” Their legal right to education as a protected space is not extended
beyond high school, and they face a bleak future with blocked mobility just
like their parents even when they have been fully acculturated and adhered
to the same aspirations as their American peers. There are also cases in which
second-generation members of some group have achieved success on both
measures of acculturation and structural assimilation, but still feel being
excluded from the American nation, as in the example of Asian Americans as
simultaneously the model minority and perpetual foreigners (Zhou, 2004).
SECOND-GENERATION ADVANTAGE AS A CRITIQUE TO SEGMENTED ASSIMILATION
Segmented assimilation, focusing on the interaction between class and
race/ethnicity and between group-level and individual-level determinants,
can be viewed as a more nuanced alternative theory to the classical perspective. It should be noted that downward assimilation is only one of
several possible outcomes predicted by the segmented assimilation theory.
Curiously, the segmented assimilation theory is often misinterpreted as suggesting and predicting one single outcome—downward assimilation—and
thereby criticized as being overtly pessimistic about the immigrant second
generation. Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway (2008) advanced
a notion of “second generation advantage” as a critique to segmented

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

assimilation. On the basis of findings from their study of New York’s
second generation, they showed that all children of immigrants under
study were doing better than their native-born comparison groups with
no sign of downward assimilation: West Indians were doing better than
African-Americans, Dominicans were doing better than Puerto Ricans, and
Chinese and Russians were doing as well as or better than native whites.
They suggest that all members of the second generation benefit from having
more options than their immigrant parents to simultaneously maintain
ethnic cultural beliefs and practices and create new norms and beliefs as
they are moving ahead in society.
The point of disagreement seems to be on the reference group. In the segmented assimilation perspective, the reference is the generation population
or non-Hispanic white. In the second-generation advantage model, the reference group is the native population of the racial group. I would caution
that immigrant offspring of low SES family background and racial minority
status are at a higher risk than others of being trapped in the host society’s
racial stratification system.
Nonetheless, to refute the segmented assimilation theory or to state that
the second generation is doing just fine and is sooner or later moving into
the mainstream middle class regardless of ethnicity or immigrant origin,
one must demonstrate that both of the following cases are true: first, the
proportions of those falling into the major indicators of downward assimilation (e.g., dropping out of high school, teenage pregnancy, and incarceration)
are insignificant for each national-origin or ethnic group; and second, the
differences in outcomes are randomly distributed across racial/ethnic or
national-origin groups, regardless of the group’s modes of incorporation.
NEOCLASSICAL ASSIMILATION THEORY
Richard Alba and Victor Nee developed a neoclassical assimilation theory
in their seminal work, Remaking the American Mainstream (2003), to address
the anomalies noted above while critically engaged with segmented assimilation. As the most enthusiastic defenders of assimilationism, Alba and Nee
argue that the anomalies are merely adverse effects of contemporary structural changes that classical theories fail to anticipate. They point out that four
decades of extremely low immigration between 1920 and 1960 caused gradual decline of ethnic communities and cultures but that the continuously high
rate of mass immigration after 1965 has limited the host society’s “breathing space” for absorbing and integrating immigrants as ethnic communities are constantly replenished. Moreover, the growing “hourglass” economy,
with knowledge-intensive, high paying jobs at one end and labor-intensive,
lowing-paying jobs at the other, has taken away several rungs of the mobility

Assimilation and Its Discontents

11

ladder that are crucial for enabling immigrants, especially those with little education and few job skills, who started from the bottom to climb up.
While these structural changes set new road blocks to assimilation, other
major institutional changes, such as civil rights legislation, immigration policy reform, and multiculturalism, have reshaped the host society, making it
more favorable for the assimilation of newcomers and their children today
than in the past despite of persistent racial inequality. They thus contend
that assimilation should work for contemporary immigrants too, because it
worked so well in the past for turn-of-the-twentieth-century European immigrants under more precarious circumstances.
Alba and Nee’s neoclassical assimilation theory reconceptualizes the American mainstream as one that encompasses “a core set of interrelated institutional structures and organizations regulated by rules and practices that
weaken, even undermine, the influence of ethnic origins per se,” that it may
include members of formerly excluded ethnic or racial groups, and that it
may contain not just the middle class or affluence suburbanites but the working class or the central-city poor. They suggest that all immigrants and their
descendants will eventually assimilate, but not necessarily in a single direction and toward a single core as predicted by classical theoretical models.
Their modified theory of assimilation allows much room for predicting immigrants, particularly those of non-European origin and low SES backgrounds,
to incorporate into the mainstream at different rates and by different measures. Alba and Nee’s so-defined American mainstream is all inclusive with
no margins. Nevertheless, their notion of successful assimilation still explicitly refers to the incorporation into the middleclass core, not the segments of
the mainstream occupied by working or lower classes.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
The existing research on immigrant assimilation tells us that race, ethnicity, or national origin, matters in predicting outcomes. For example,
being Chinese, Korean, or Vietnamese, has a significantly positive effect
on second-generation school outcomes, such as GPA and high school
graduation, and being Puerto Rican or Mexican has a significantly negative
effect, even when controlling for socioeconomic factors such as parental
education, occupation, and income. Moreover, children of Asian immigrants
are doing better than other minority groups and whites, but children of
Latino immigrants are still trailing behind whites by a significant large
margin even when they fare better than their native coethnics. Therefore,
exactly how ethnicity matters has remained unresolved, partly because of
the conceptual muddle and partly because of data limitation.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Conceptually, ethnicity is often treated as a structural construct in some
models and a cultural construct in other models, depending on the theoretical orientation of the researcher. The structural perspective emphasizes the
influence of host-society’s macro social structures, that is, the extent to which
racial/ethnic minority groups are constrained by the broader stratification
systems and networks of social relations within it. The cultural perspective
emphasizes the influence of ethnic cultures and community forces. Social
scientists from both perspectives have attempted to develop statistical models to quantitatively measure the effect of “structure” and “culture.” Under
ideal circumstances, these models would include indicators illuminating
pre-migration situations. However, because of data limitations, many social
scientists typically attempt to control for “structure” by documenting specific contexts of exit, identifying aspects of post-migration social structures,
and operationalizing those components for which they have data. This is
not only a conventional practice but also a reasonable approach, since many
postmigration social structural differences (in the SES of persons who came
to the United States as adults) are likely to either reflect, or be carryovers
from, premigration differences. However, even the most sophisticated statistical model accounts for only some of the variance, leaving a large residual
unexplained. More intractable are questions of how to conceptualize and
measure ethnicity. Given the constraints of the data, many social scientists
have tried valiantly to make progress on this front and have come up with
measures that are ingenious, although not fully convincing. In the end,
much weight is given to the effect of a discrete dummy variable of ethnicity,
the exact meaning or contents of which remains a black box.
Since ethnicity cannot be simply viewed as either a structural or a cultural
construct, how to measure it requires innovative thinking beyond existing
theoretical frameworks. One possibility is to pay closer attention to mesolevel
dynamics from an ethnic enclave perspective to look at how group-specific
cultural values and behavioral patterns are interacting with both internal and
external structural exigencies. Classical assimilation theories posit that ethnic
enclaves are beneficial only to the extent that they meet new immigrants’ survival needs, reorganize their economic and social lives, and ease resettlement
problems in the new land and that, in the long run, they will become a trap
inhibiting assimilation. However, ethnic enclaves are shaped by immigration
selectivity, and may not be easily dichotomized as either a springboard or a
trap for upward social mobility.
While some ethnic enclaves may decline into ghettos or ’super-ghettos
concentrating poverty, others can generate ethnic resources conducive to
social mobility. Different patterns of ethnic change imply an interaction
between macro structural forces and meso community forces, which produces varied ethnic social environments within immigrant neighborhoods.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

13

Take Los Angeles’ Koreatown for example. Koreatown is a typical urban
neighborhood dominated by ethnic minorities (93%), the foreign born
(69%), and the poor (31%). Most of the residents are recent immigrants
from Korea, Mexico, and Central America. Korean immigrant children
do better in school than their Latino peers even when they come from
families with similar income levels. This is not because Korean families
value education more than Mexican families, but rather they are exposed to
different ethnic social environments. The Korean community has developed
an extensive system of supplementary education. This ethnic system of
supplementary education include nonprofit ethnic language schools and
private institution, offering academic tutoring and enrichment, standardize
test drills, college preparation, and related counseling services, to support
immigrant education in addition to public education. In contrast, owing
to negative immigrant selectivity with high proportions of the low skilled
and undocumented, the Mexican community, located in Koreatown, lacks
similar ethnic resources to assist immigrant children’s education despite
strong parental values toward education. Yet, neighborhood-based resources
created by the Korean community are not accessible to other group members
sharing the same neighborhood. Hence, how to develop better measures to
capture meso-contextual complexities of the ethnic community will shed
lights on our understanding of intergroup variations on outcomes.
Another possibility is to look beyond the national context to understand
intergroup variation in assimilation outcomes. Current research has shown
that contemporary immigrants are now found to achieve economic success
and social status, depending not exclusively on rapid acculturation and
entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, but on ethnic resources
mobilized within diasporic communities, as well as (at least for some) on
cultivating strong social networks across national borders. In this sense,
immigrant transnationalism can serve as an alternative means to social
integration into, rather than disintegration from, the host society (Zhou &
Lee, 2013).
A third possibility is to pay closer attention to micro level processes from a
subject-centered perspective, by which immigrants define and measure success based on their own lived experiences. In my collaborative research on
Los Angeles second generation Chinese, Vietnamese, and Mexicans, we find
that different ethnic groups frame “success” using different reference groups
(Zhou, Lee, Vallejo, Tafoya-Estrada, & Xiong, 2008). That is, they judge how
well they fare in society in comparison to their own ethnic group rather
than to the society’s dominant group—non-Hispanic white. These different
frames of success produce variations on aspirations and expectations, which
can either expand or constrain opportunities and consequently reinforce
intergroup disparities. This subject-centered approach allows for microlevel

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

analysis within the macrostructural framework, enabling us to look beyond
predictable patterns to understand both the obvious and subtle reasons
group members make certain choices and pursue particular pathways.
Last but not least, in the existing research, there seems to be a disconnection
between quantitative and qualitative studies. Sophisticated quantitative
models have been developed to examine intergroup differences in outcomes
but tend to produce similar results that largely miss the group-specific
nuances, dynamics, and mechanisms of adaptational processes. Qualitative
studies are attentive to details of these processes but lack generalizability.
The different methodological approaches yield significant findings that
inform each other. Therefore, future research should aim to develop better
measures and multilevel models, through the mixed methods approach, to
accurately capture the contexts of exit and reception in accounting for varied
effects of ethnicity.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The scholarly literature on assimilation and its discontents underscores
three important points. First, we should revisit the commonly held assumptions underlying classical theories of assimilation and investigate why
even normative pathways can lead to divergent outcomes. Second, we
should critically examine how multi level determinants interact to produce
unconventional pathways leading to positive outcomes. Third, we should to
problematize the notions of “success” or “failure,” paying special attention
to how our subjects (immigrants and their offspring), rather than ourselves
(social scientists), imagine and conceptualize these notions and examine
why subjective conceptualization may influence strategies with profound
implications for success. In sum, by innovatively engage in mixed-methods
research, we can gain a better understanding of the reasons beyond family
SES and acculturation, that account from interethnic disparities in assimilation. While the best research design can more accurately predict future
possibilities, only time can tell about the real assimilation outcomes beyond
the second generation.
REFERENCES
Alba, R. D. (1985). Italian Americans: Into the twilight of ethnicity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and the new
immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in
America. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2, 1–20.

Assimilation and Its Discontents

15

Gans, H. (1992). Second generation decline: Scenarios for the economic and ethnic futures of the post-1965 American immigrants. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 15,
173–191.
Gonzalez, R. G. (2011). Learning to be illegal: Undocumented youth and shifting legal
contexts in the transition to adulthood. American Sociological Review, 76, 602–619.
Gordon, M. M. (1964). Assimilation in American life: The role of race, religion, and national
origins. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Kasinitz, P., Mollenkopf, J. H., Waters, M. C., & Holdaway, J. (2008). Inheriting the city:
The children of immigrants come of age. New York, MA: Russell Sage Foundation.
Lieberson, S., & Waters, M. (1988). From many strands: Ethnic and racial groups in contemporary America. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
New York Times (1915). Roosevelt bars the hyphenated. October 13, p.1.
Park, R. E. (1928). Human migration and the marginal man. American Journal of Sociology, 33, 881–93.
Petersen, W. (1966). Success Story, Japanese-American Style. New York Times Magazine, January 9.
Portes, A., & Zhou, M. (1993). The new second generation: Segmented assimilation
and its variants among post-1965 immigrant youth. The Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 530, 74–96.
Telles, E. E., & Ortiz, V. (2008). Generations of exclusion: Mexican Americans, assimilation,
and race. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
US News and World Report. (1966). Success of one minority group in U.S., December
26.
Warner, W. L., & Srole, L. (1945). The social systems of American ethnic groups. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Waters, M. (1990). Ethnic options: Choosing identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Zhou, M. (2004). Are Asian Americans becoming white? Contexts, 3, 29–37.
Zhou, M., & Lee, R. (2013). Transnationalism and community building: Chinese
immigrant organizations in the United States. ANNALS of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science, 647, 22–49.
Zhou, M., Lee, J., Vallejo, J. A., Tafoya-Estrada, R., & Xiong, Y. S. (2008). Success
attained, deterred, and denied: Divergent pathways to social mobility among the
new second generation in Los Angeles. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 620, 37–61.

MIN ZHOU SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Min Zhou, PhD is Tan Lark Sye Chair Professor of Sociology at Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, and Professor of Sociology & Asian
American Studies/Walter & Shirley Wang Endowed Chair of US-China
Relations & Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles,
USA. Her main areas of research include international migration; ethnic and
racial relations; ethnic entrepreneurship, education, and the new second

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

generation; and Asia and Asian America, and she has published widely in
these areas. She is the author of Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of
an Urban Enclave (Temple University Press, 1992), Contemporary Chinese
America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (Temple
University Press, 2009), and The Accidental Sociologist in Asian American
Studies (UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2011); coauthor of
Growing Up American: How Vietnamese Children Adapt to Life in the
United States (with Bankston, Russell Sage Foundation Press, 1998); and
coeditor of Asian American Youth: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity (with
Lee, Routledge, 2004) and Contemporary Asian America. (with Gatewood, New York University Press, 1st ed. 2000, 2nd ed. 2007). Homepage:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/zhou/
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