Problems and Prospects of Studying Immigrant Adaptation from the 1990 Population Census: From Generational Comparisons to the Process of “Becoming American” 1

With the loss of the question on parental birthplace in the 1980 and 1990 censuses, there are serious obstacles to current research on immigrant adaption based on the traditional logic of intergenerational progress. The tremendous diversity across contemporary immigrant streams from more dian 40 country/region-of-origin groups, however, reinforces the singular importance of census data for national studies of the post-1965 immigrants and their children. A potentially useful research strategy is to examine variations in socioeconomic adaptation by duration of American residence among immigrants who arrived as children or teenagers. Exploratory investigation using this framework reveals a dominant pattern of successful adaptation with greater exposure to American society (“becoming American”), but also some mixed patterns that are more consistent with the segmented assimilation model.