Setting “Spanish legacies” into further context: some findings and thoughts from CILS4EU

This contribution compares some major findings of “Spanish Legacies” to findings from the CILS4EU study that has been conducted in four other European countries. Despite the differences in the immigration history and the composition of the immigrant youth, basic results of psychosocial adaptation are surprisingly similar for England, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. This confirms the mostly optimistic picture of the future of the second generation in Europe as drawn for Spain. In a sense, the similarities suggest that the role of the receiving context might be less important than is expected in overarching theoretical frameworks such as “segmented assimilation”. Some aspects of integration that are not covered in “Spanish Legacies” could raise more doubts on the smoothness of the adaptation processes for some immigrants groups.     

Spain: an extreme case of successful integration of second-generation immigrants with transfers of best practices applicable to other European countries?

This volume presents cutting-edge research on integration and adaptation processes of second-generation immigrant adolescents in Spain that no doubt constitutes an important and timely contribution to the migration-integration debate. Principal findings of the Investigación Longitudinal de la Segunda Generación study indicate a comparatively smooth integration of second-generation immigrant adolescents, arguably best explained by the theoretical hypotheses of neo-assimilationism and segmented assimilation. The major strengths of the study pertain to research design and methodology, and theoretical grounding that enables it to have far-reaching implications for future research on migrant youth in Spain and beyond. The focus here is primarily on questions of transferability of major findings to other European countries, such as Sweden. In essence, the authors’ findings raise a number of important questions regarding the feasibility (or infeasibility) of Spain’s laissez-a-faire approach to integration in countries with contrasting modes of incorporation.     

Will the new second generation experience ‘downward assimilation’? Segmented assimilation re-assessed

Research on the “new second generation” in the United States has been deeply influenced by the hypothesis of “segmented assimilation”, which contends that the children of immigrants are at risk of downward mobility into a “new rainbow underclass”. This article seeks to assess that assertion, focusing on the experience of Mexicans, the overwhelmingly largest of today’s second-generation groups, and a population of predominantly working- or lower-class origins. The empirical component of this article rests on analysis of a combined sample of the 1996–2001 Current Population Survey.     

Linguistic Syncretism and Language Ideologies: Transforming Sociolinguistic Hierarchy on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)

Recent work in linguistic anthropology highlights the role of linguistic ideologies, or cultural conceptions of language, in transforming social relations and linguistic structure and use. This article examines the links between language attitudes and uses in their institutional and interactional contexts on Rapa Nui, a Polynesian island community that is part of the Chilean nation-state. By the 1970s, a sociolinguistic hierarchy and functional compartmentalization of languages between Spanish and Rapa Nui—what I will describe as "colonial diglossia"—had become established in the community, which was rapidly becoming bilingual. Language shift toward Spanish has continued to advance since then. However, rising Rapa Nui syncretic language practice and consciousness, combined with the political successes of a local indigenous movement and changes in the local economy, are now contributing to the breakdown of colonial diglossia, generating better conditions for the maintenance of the Rapa Nui language.     

Lessons from an “old” second generation in the US: fresh evidence on assimilation theories

Taking a multilevel approach and accounting for the complex interaction between sending and host countries, Origins and Destinations: The Making of the Second Generation brings new insights to the divergent outcomes of immigrant children in the US. Using the same data of several award winning books, it directly challenges some of the predictions of assimilation theories and the hyperselectivity model.     

How arbitrary is language?

It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of words is essentially arbitrary—typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning. However, there are numerous reported instances of systematic sound–meaning mappings in language, and this systematicity has been claimed to be important for early language development. In a large-scale corpus analysis of English, we show that sound–meaning mappings are more systematic than would be expected by chance. Furthermore, this systematicity is more pronounced for words involved in the early stages of language acquisition and reduces in later vocabulary development. We propose that the vocabulary is structured to enable systematicity in early language learning to promote language acquisition, while also incorporating arbitrariness for later language in order to facilitate communicative expressivity and efficiency.     

The white race is shrinking: Perceptions of race in Canada and some speculations on the political economy of race classification

Movements for the recognition and official establishment of particular languages in India, among the many hundreds that have been identified and classified by linguists, grammarians, and census takers, have been prominent and recurring features of politics in the subcontinent for a century-and-a-half. These movements have invariably been competitive in character, demanding preference for one, and displacement of other, actual or potential rivals. Further, they have sometimes been associated with hostile and venomous characterizations of both a rival language and its speakers, leading to intercommunal/interethnic violence. Despite the turbulent history of such movements in modern India, viable compromises have been reached concerning the status of the multiplicity of Indian languages and their hierarchical ordering for various purposes. These compromises, however, have profound consequences for the life chances, including the empowerment and disempowerment, of all India’s citizens. These consequences have only recently begun to attract scholarly attention.     

Bilingual beginnings to learning words

At the macrostructure level of language milestones, language acquisition follows a nearly identical course whether children grow up with one or with two languages. However, at the microstructure level, experimental research is revealing that the same proclivities and learning mechanisms that support language acquisition unfold somewhat differently in bilingual versus monolingual environments. This paper synthesizes recent findings in the area of early bilingualism by focusing on the question of how bilingual infants come to apply their phonetic sensitivities to word learning, as they must to learn minimal pair words (e.g. ‘cat’ and ‘mat’). To this end, the paper reviews antecedent achievements by bilinguals throughout infancy and early childhood in the following areas: language discrimination and separation, speech perception, phonetic and phonotactic development, word recognition, word learning and aspects of conceptual development that underlie word learning. Special consideration is given to the role of language dominance, and to the unique challenges to language acquisition posed by a bilingual environment.     

Taurine serves as sole source of nitrogen for aerobic and anaerobic growth by <Emphasis Type="Italic">Klebsiella</Emphasis> sp.

The sulfur of taurine can be assimilated by Klebsiella sp. during aerobic growth, but not fermentative growth. However, taurine’s N can be utilized by this bacterium as sole nitrogen source for both aerobic and anaerobic growth. Two other amino-containing sulfonates (3-aminopropanesulfonate and cysteate) were also examined for their abilities to serve as nitrogen sources for Klebsiella sp. during the different growth conditions. The result shows that 3-aminopropanesulfonate only supports aerobic growth while cysteate does not under either condition.     

The origins of “new assimilation theory”

Boundaries play an important role in Richard Alba’s articulation of new assimilation theory, as is evident in the major works he has produced during the past two decades. This article traces his interest in boundaries to “The Twilight of Ethnicity among Americans of European Ancestry: The Case of Italians”, an article he published in ERS in 1985. It is in this article and a related book published the same year that one can begin to trace the evolution of his thinking on both ethnic boundaries and the cultural content contained within those boundaries.     

Do Migrants Degrade Coastal Environments? Migration,Natural Resource Extraction and Poverty in North Sulawesi,Indonesia

Recent literature on migration and the environment has identified key mediating variables such as how migrants extract resources from the environment for their livelihoods, the rate and efficiency of extraction, and the social and economic context within which their extraction occurs. This paper investigates these variables in a new ecological setting using data from coastal fishing villages in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. We do not find as many differences between migrant and non-migrant families regarding destructive fishing behavior, technology, and investment as might have been expected from earlier theories. Instead, the context and timing of migrant assimilation seems to be more important in explaining apparent associations of migration and environmental impacts than simply migrants themselves. This finding fits well with recent literature in the field of international migration and immigrant incorporation.