Abstract
In Education and Immigration, Grace Kao, Elizabeth Vaquera, and Kimberly Goyette engage with one of the most compelling American ideologies: the notion that the “right” cultural values determine an immigrant group’s ability to achieve the American Dream. From Oscar Lewis’ (1966) “culture of poverty” theory to the publication of “Tiger Mom” in Amy Chua’s and Jed Rubenfeld’s book The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (2014), the idea that cultural values are at the heart of the success or failure of different immigrant groups is deeply embedded in our national narrative. From beginning to end, the authors achieve the overarching goals of the book: to provide readers with a sense of how children of immigrants are doing in school and to demonstrate the wide range of factors that shape those educational trajectories and outcomes. The primary message of the book is that “not all immigrant adults and children begin with comparable resources, so that in education there is no single immigrant story that can summarize the experience of all immigrants” (p. 188).
The book has a number of strengths, beginning with a widely accessible review of scholarly literature on assimilation. Throughout the text, the authors walk the reader through the historical and political context necessary to understand who has been coming to American shores since the nation’s inception, why immigrants from around the globe have been drawn, pushed, or forced here, and under what conditions those immigrants have been able to make a living. As part of their attempt to redirect the understanding of immigrant incorporation from a discussion of cultural values to a discussion that centers on an understanding of the variable structural limitations and opportunities that have been in place at different times in this nation’s history, Kao et al. analyze how policy has routinely been modified in direct relation to the characteristics of immigrant groups coming to the United States. Of particular importance is the following point: immigration policy has been characterized by an attempt to limit immigrant access, whether that entails limiting potential migrants’ access to the United States or limiting educational and labor market opportunities for immigrants (and in some cases, their U.S.-born children) once here. There has not been a moment in this nation’s history when immigration policy has not made certain groups ineligible for rights that have a direct bearing on life outcomes, such as citizenship, land ownership, or access to education. Particularly, immigration policies in the last two decades have made it easier to surveil, deport, and restrict access to social services, all of which are practices that shape opportunities for successful incorporation among immigrants and their children.
The scholarly and historical overview presented in the first few chapters is complemented by the strength of the analysis of contemporary data on immigrants and their children in the remaining chapters. Drawing on data from the 2008 American Community Survey, Kao et al. analyze disaggregated data which demonstrate how foreign-born members of panethnic groups (e.g., Asians, Hispanics, and Africans) compare in terms of educational attainment, median household income, poverty measures, household size, language use in the home, and English proficiency to the averages for the panethnic groups as a whole. The data lend support to the authors’ claims that there are factors beyond cultural values which shape the educational outcomes of adult immigrants, such as immigration policies, the “push” factors in home countries, and the resources accessible to immigrants in the United States. Since panethnic categories oversimplify within-group variations (e.g., the high rates of poverty and low human capital of Hmong immigrants in contrast to Asian Indians), the data are of particular significance because the authors are able to present data for national origin groups which provide a fuller portrait of the resources that different immigrant groups bring when they arrive in the United States. The data support the claims that part of the explanation for why some immigrant groups do extremely well in the United States has to do with the fact that large proportions of those groups are not only high school graduates, but are also college graduates. It is much easier to understand why foreign-born Asian Indians, 91 percent of whom have a high school diploma and 74 percent of whom are college graduates, fare much better (as do their children) than foreign-born Mexicans, 38 percent of whom have graduated from high school and 5 percent of whom have a college degree. Educational attainment data for these groups correspond to very different median income levels for each group: the median household income for immigrant Asian Indians is over $93,000, compared to $36,000 for Mexican immigrants. The panethnic data makes clear that the average family situation for an Asian child is more likely to entail a high income and college-educated parents than the average family situation of a Hispanic child, and the advantages of that are far-reaching.
The three empirical chapters of the book establish that there are substantial differences across immigrant groups. In their analysis, Kao et al. pay close attention to the complex ways that immigration status, national origins, class, race, and ethnicity work together to produce these differences. Throughout the book, they remind readers that immigrants come from a wide variety of environments, with an equally wide range of educational and economic resources. The analysis consistently highlights the fact that immigrants from different parts of the world, migrating under a range of circumstances, do not start off in the United States on the same footing. The wide variability in the types of resources that immigrants bring to the United States sets them on different trajectories and provides varied opportunities in the United States. The authors also make a strong case for the claim that the racial hierarchy in America plays a key role in the incorporation of different groups into American society. How immigrants are perceived and absorbed into a racial landscape which is often quite distinct from anything they have experienced in their home countries shapes the opportunities that their children encounter in the United States, both inside and outside of school.
There are three themes raised by Kao et al. which deserve continued consideration by immigration and education scholars: (1) the impact of immigration policies in the post-9/11 context, (2) transnational practices among today’s immigrants, and (3) the significant overlap between immigrant status and minority status among today’s immigrant youth. The authors include a brief discussion of immigration policy in the post-9/11 context, noting how public policy and political discourse have seamlessly joined counter-terrorism efforts with concerns over undocumented “aliens” and border control. Fear of immigration/immigrants and the conceptual and legal ties between immigration and terrorism have had a significant impact on the opportunities of immigrants, including minors who lack legal status. The failure of CIRCA in 2007 and over a decade’s worth of efforts to pass a federal DREAM Act means that educational opportunities are severely limited for particular immigrant groups, as are job opportunities. Kao et al. also note that an emerging literature on transnational practices may suggest that our current focus on assimilation to an American mainstream may not be a useful framework for understanding the relationship to the United States for all immigrants. The existence of migrant families who are seasonal workers, as well as those who see themselves as members of a global labor force with the resources to choose their nation of preferred employment, makes clear that the assumptions that immigrants come to the United States permanently and that they wish to assimilate into an American middle class may not always apply. Finally, the authors voice a critical demand for scholars to move beyond scholarship that studies the effects of race and ethnicity on educational outcomes in isolation from the impacts of immigration status. With 60 percent of Hispanic and 80 percent of Asian youth now residing in immigrant families, it behooves scholars to recognize that for many children of immigrants, the conceptual distinction between immigration status and minority status is significantly blurred.
The authors of Education and Immigration have done a remarkable job of crafting a timely, up-to-date, and highly accessible treatment of the history of immigration to the United States, paired with an analysis of contemporary data that provides a portrait of the resources brought to the United States by the immigrant generation and the educational outcomes of their children. The narrative they weave consistently reminds the reader that the trajectories of various immigrant groups are complex and multi-faceted and that a full understanding of immigrant trajectories in the United States must move beyond the simplistic notion that success is determined by having the right “cultural values.”