Abstract
How does context shape the social integration of children of immigrants? Are there similarities between the extensively studied patterns of incorporation of second generation immigrants in the United States and those observed in other countries? What are the structural elements explaining divergent or similar patterns? Alejandro Portes, Rosa Aparicio, and William Haller answer these questions in Spanish Legacies: The Coming of Age of the Second Generation by carefully dissecting data from children of immigrants living in Spain.
Spanish Legacies is part of a consistent body of work aimed at identifying patterns of social integration for young children of immigrants. Its amassed evidence tests the limits of not only the segmented assimilation theory, but also of other salient perspectives in the field such as resistance to acculturation (Huntington 2004), new-assimilationism (Alba and Nee 2003), second generation advantage (Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, Waters, and Holdaway 2008), and exclusion (Telles and Ortiz 2008). Segmented assimilation is one of the most influential social theories on the integration of second generation immigrants to post-industrial societies. It posits that there are alternative modes of incorporation that deviate from the mainstream ideas about integration supported by new-assimilationism. According to segmented assimilation, whether children of immigrants follow dissonant, consonant, or selective acculturation depends on four key elements: immigrant family background, family pace of acculturation and incidence of normative integration, barriers to cultural and economic integration, and community resources to confront those barriers.
The theory was developed using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS), which collected data from families of 77 different countries of origin living in San Diego and Miami in 1992 (baseline) and in 1995 (follow-up). To test the universality of segmented assimilation theory, this study needed to be replicated in a non-American context. Between the mid-1990s and the Great Recession, there was a large inflow of migrants into southern Europe, and particularly to Spain; the similarities in the composition of this migration flow opened a window of opportunity to launch the ILSEG study (Longitudinal Study of the Second Generation in Spain). ILSEG collected data in 2008 (baseline) and 2012 (follow-up) in Madrid and Barcelona. The total sample contains information on 7,310 families, including a control group of native families.
Although both Spanish Legacies and Portes’s 2001 Legacies (with Rubén Rumbaut) start with histories of twelve immigrant families, the structure of Spanish Legacies aims to highlight how different contexts shape immigrant integration. It is an example of comparative sociology at its best. After a review of the theories of second-generation adaptation (Chapter 2), background information on Spain-bound immigration (Chapter 3), and descriptions of CILS and ILSEG (Chapter 4), the authors constantly associate results from both studies in four substantive chapters: immigrant parents (Chapter 5), psychological adaptation (Chapter 6), educational goals and achievements (Chapter 7), and labor market participation (Chapter 8).
Based on their comparative analysis, the authors reached four main conclusions. First, there is no empirical support for the perspectives of resistance to acculturation, second generation advantage, or generations of exclusion. Second, there is robust evidence showing that the process of acculturation of children of immigrants in Spain (before 2012) is in line with the neo-assimilationist perspective. Furthermore, although the ILSEG sample is still in the early stages of its life cycle, the analysis uncovered substantial differences by national origin that are elucidated by segmented assimilation theory. In particular, it identifies factors that explain selective and downward acculturation, for Chinese and Dominican immigrants respectively, among others.
Third, modes of incorporation of first generation immigrants are not extended to their offspring in Spain; in tandem with segmented assimilation, the results show that they are pivotal in the selective acculturation of their children. Fourth, despite similarities observed in the acculturation patterns of immigrant children in the United States and Spain, there are two stark differences that might facilitate a more uniform pattern of acculturation of children of immigrants in Spain, but not in the United States. The levels of ambition, measured by children’s aspirations and expectations, are not as high in the Spanish study as those observed in the United States and are similar to those reported by native-born Spanish children. There are no differences in expectations and, therefore, no perceived inequality. Perceptions of discrimination among children of immigrants and Spanish-born children are similar and are lower than the levels reported in the early 1990s in the United States. The lack of a uniform process of racialization, and therefore exclusion, results in the absence of a reactive ethnicity among immigrant children and in higher and increasing levels of self-identification as Spanish without other hyphenated nationalities as in the American case.
According to the patterns observed, there are variants in the paths of acculturation of children of immigrants from similar regions of origin across contexts of reception. The question is, then: Apart from the more homogeneous levels of ambition between second generation immigrants and natives and the low levels of discrimination, which are the other structural elements that might explain the successful acculturation in Spain? Portes, Aparicio, and Haller identify three elements: the lack of a preexisting model of integration in Spain (e.g., relative to the French or British models) and its pragmatic character; the rapid response of the educational system at the local and regional levels; and the strong presence of immigrant organizations sponsored in part by the Spanish government. Immigrant organizations have served as bridges between the local and regional administrations and the immigrant communities.
Even though these identified elements are present, there are other elements that an American reader unfamiliar with the Spanish and European contexts might have benefited from. Differences in immigration policies underlie important variants in models of integration that are inexorably associated with patterns of acculturation of first and second generation immigrants. For example, CILS was collected a few years after the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which, after granting legal status to 1.6 million unauthorized immigrants (Kerwin, Brick, and Kilberg 2012), marked the beginning of restrictive immigration policies in the United States. In Spain, extraordinary and (most importantly) permanent regularization programs granted legal status to more than one million unauthorized immigrants between 1996 and 2007. Another important element associated with contextual variation is the different levels of observed inequality between the two countries. Gini coefficients in Spain between 2008 and 2012 were consistently lower than those in the United States between 1992 and 1995. Fiske’s stereotype content model (2012), in which higher inequality leads to the magnification of social hierarchies, might aid in explaining differential levels of ambition in the observed contexts.
Legacies (Portes and Rumbaut 2001), Ethnicites (Rumbaut and Portes 2001), and, undoubtedly, Spanish Legacies constitute a trilogy that advances our understanding of core mechanisms behind identity formation, adaptation, and integration processes in increasingly diverse but still contextually different postindustrial societies.