Consumer (dis-)interest in genetic ancestry testing: the roles of race,immigration, and ancestral certainty

Genetic ancestry testing (GAT) is marketed as a way to make up for missing knowledge about one’s ancestry. Previous research questions the GAT industry’s ability to fulfill this promise in terms of the validity and reliability of test results. We instead explore the demand side of GAT, evaluating who is most and least likely to express interest in GAT. Using data from an original, nationwide survey of over 100,000 American adults, we find that GAT interest is related to both self-identified race and immigrant generation, with Asian Americans and first-generation immigrants expressing the least interest. Our quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests interest is further shaped by a pre-existing sense of ancestral certainty, leading some individuals to decline GAT, even if it were free. How interest and ancestral certainty are patterned has implications for who is included in – and thus for the conclusions that can be drawn from – genetic ancestry databases.     

Ethnicity,reception and the growth of American immigration

Deportation has always been a feature of the American political, social and economic discourse. A twin effect of immigration, deportation concerns who is granted the right to stay and who is removed from the country. Amid the growing debate on reform, this essay casts light on the changing nature of deportation law during the last century. Paying attention to the reception which immigrants receive and the perceptions of threat and economic competition which natives often perceive, this work evaluates how policy has shifted in response to the changing face of newcomers. As immigration law becomes intertwined with criminal law, so do the stipulations governing entry and exit. Within a politically charged social space, American immigration is a story punctuated with racialized and criminalized images of immigrants. Bridging ethnic and racial currents, this work seeks to understand how these effects continue to shape contemporary immigration policy.     

How normative debates about immigration shape analyses of the assimilation processes of second-generation youth: lessons from Spanish Legacies

In Spanish Legacies, Portes, Aparicio, and Haller offer the results of their longitudinal study on the assimilation of the children of immigrants in Spanish society. Thanks to their study design, which parallels the earlier Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study conducted by Portes and Rumbaut, the authors are able to compare assimilation trajectories in Spain with those of second-generation youth in the United States. This comparison raises important considerations about how immigration policy shapes assimilation processes. More centrally, the contrast between the cases invites a deeper consideration of normative questions that not only undergird immigration policy but also shape the assimilation experiences of the second generation. The juxtaposition of the two cases also elicits provocations about how the sociological theories about assimilation might have been different if they had been developed based on the Spanish, rather than the American, experience, and how those Spanish-inflected theories might support different directions of inquiry.     

“Second generation” refugees and multilingualism: identity,race and language transmission

This paper explores the language practices, attitudes to languages and the inter-generational transmission of heritage languages amongst the UK-born adult children of refugee parents. The paper draws on empirical data from a research project based on 45 qualitative interviews with three groups of “second generation” refugees, whose parents came as Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, Kurdish refugees from Turkey and as refugees from Vietnam. The paper explores the ways in which language is central to political discussions and to national policies on race, cohesion, diversity, “Britishness” and citizenship. These debates and policies ignore and often silence the positive role of heritage languages. This paper highlights the importance of heritage languages as a signifier for a number of wider issues of identity, which intersect with race and refugee backgrounds in complex ways.     

Symbolic ethnicity and Herbert Gans: race,religion, and politics in the twenty-first century

This article attempts to assess some of Herb Gans’s influential contributions, not only in his important paper on symbolic ethnicity, but also his wider discussion of the changing role of race, ethnicity, and religion in American society. In a period spanning more than half a century, he has helped to raise key questions and to suggest avenues of research that have stimulated debates and the re-evaluation of a complex, controversial, and highly dynamic field of social science research and policy.     

Defining “American” in the context of immigration: a case study of Helping Hands Elementary

Immigration has dramatically changed the face of the nation in the last thirty years, yet it is unclear how children currently define “Americanness” in light of these demographic and cultural shifts. This research explores how elementary students define what it means to be American in the context of immigration-driven diversity. Based on a survey of fourth and fifth graders in an elementary school located in a high-immigrant community, the author shows that despite the diversity of the school and local surroundings, and the multicultural ideology espoused by school staff, students predominately defined “American” in ethnocultural terms – specifically, as white, US-born, and English-speaking. At the same time, a small group of students challenged this narrative and defined Americans in pluralist terms. This study suggests that schools aiming to create inclusive learning communities in an increasingly diverse nation may need more direct approaches to teaching a culturally pluralist model of America.     

Defining difference,forging unity: The co‐construction of race,ethnicity and nation in Belize

This article examines competing nationalist projects which compete to constitute a Belizean nation: pluralist nationalism constructs the nation as ethnically diverse; synthetic nationalism attempts to submerge ethnic or racial difference into a shared national identity; hegemonic nationalism works to attach preferentially a single racial identity to the nation and exclude other identities. Within these projects, the homogenizing processes which construct national sameness are integrally related to the individualizing processes which constitute subnational difference: both national sameness and subnational differences are constituted in terms of race, ethnicity, or a conflation of the two. The article explores how the essentialization of racial, ethnic and national identities facilitates their assimilation of one another.     

Segmented assimilation and socio-economic integration of Chinese immigrant children in the USA

Research on the new second generation has paid much attention to testing one of the hypotheses posed by segmented assimilation theory – downward assimilation into America's underclass – and has neglected to examine other possible outcomes. In this paper, I address a much understudied pathway – assimilation by way of the ethnic community – based on a case study of Chinese immigrant children in the USA. I show that the children of Chinese immigrants have made inroads into mainstream America through educational achievement, not only because of the strong value their parents put on education but also because resources generated in the ethnic community help actualize that value. The Chinese American experience suggests that, in order to advance to the rank of middle-class Americans, immigrant parents have chosen the ethnic way to facilitate children's social mobility and achieved success. Paradoxically, ‘assimilated’ children have also relied on ethnicity for empowerment to fight negative stereotyping of the racialized other.     

Being black,foreign and woman: African immigrant identities in the United States

This paper contextualizes racial and ethnic identities in shaping African women’s work lives in the USA. While the literature on black immigrant groups has posited that ethnic identities are often deployed to shield black immigrants from racism, my findings indicate that for a group of African women, their racial and ethnic identities are viewed as potential sources of discrimination. As black immigrant women from middle-class backgrounds in their home countries, they also articulate experiences with racism and downward social and occupational mobility. Accounting for how race and ethnicity intersect in the lives of black immigrant groups can nuance our understanding of racial identities and highlight diversity in experiences among national and regional groups. Focusing on particular health-care settings further suggests the importance of professional contexts in shaping the identity formations of recent black immigrants.     

Defining immigrant newcomers in new destinations: symbolic boundaries in Williamsburg,Virginia

Abstract

This article examines media representations of immigration in Williamsburg, Virginia, a ‘new immigrant destination’ in the USA. Through a content analysis of coverage in Williamsburg's local newspaper, we explore how reporters, columnists and readers draw on nationally and internationally circulating discourses to produce public interpretations of immigration issues and construct symbolic boundaries between and among in-groups and ‘others’ in the community. ‘National boundaries drawn locally’ captures how media actors use nationally recognizable frames to interpret local issues and define the parameters of community and national belonging. ‘Localized symbolic boundaries’ take their meanings from place-based, cultural understandings, specific economic conditions and demographics in the local setting. Newspaper discussions in Williamsburg distinguish between ‘deserving’ foreign student workers (primarily from Eastern Europe and Asia) and ‘undeserving’, racialized, Latino ‘others’. Our analysis advances theories of boundary construction and holds implications for the politics of belonging more generally in other immigrant-receiving contexts.     

Family ideation,immigration, and the racial state: explaining divergent family reunification policies in Britain and the US

Why do family reunification policies differ across liberal democracies? Established literature explains differentiation through reference to the logics of distinct “national models” of immigration policy-making. Drawing on critical race and feminist scholarship, this paper finds consistent racial logics in the political histories of family reunification policies in Britain and the US during the mid-twentieth century. In a context where the geopolitical power of each country was conditioned by an assertive antiracist internationalism, “family” provided a colourblind, ideational platform to rearticulate the state-based racial project of white supremacy. Despite an original convergence, family reunification diverged because of the context-specific racialization of the immigrant family in each case. In rooting divergent reunification policies in the logics of the racial state, this paper contributes to efforts to incorporate race into the sociology of immigration. The paper also develops recent feminist scholarship on the role of “family ideation” in building liberal-democratic immigration systems.     

Gendered segmented assimilation: earnings trajectories of African immigrant women and men

Racial stratification in immigrant earnings has been widely influential in theories of immigrant socioeconomic assimilation, but discussions of how racial stratification might differ by gender are underdeveloped. Segmented assimilation theory attempts to explain the underlying mechanisms that cause racial disparities, but it fails to incorporate gendered dynamics like occupational sex segregation and the feminization of particular labour flows. In this paper, we address that gap. Using data from the 1990 decennial census and the American Community Survey in 2009–11, we compare the earnings of black and white African migrants to US-born blacks and whites separately by gender. Our findings indicate that black African migrant women experience no racial disadvantage in their earnings, but black African migrant men do. Our results highlight the importance of examining racial differences in immigrant earnings interacting with gender.     

Racialization and religion: race,culture and difference in the study of antisemitism and Islamophobia

Abstract

It is striking to observe the virtual absence of an established literature on race and racism in the discussion of Islamophobia; something that is only marginally more present in the discussion of antisemitism. This special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies locates the contemporary study of antisemitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields of race and racism. As such it problematizes the extent to which discussion of the racialization of these minorities remains unrelated to each other, or is explored in distinct silos as a series of internal debates. By harnessing the explanatory power of long-established organizing concepts within the study of race and racism, this special issue makes a historically informed, theoretical and empirical contribution to aligning these analytical pursuits.     

Reconstructing race and gender in American cosmetic surgery

While scholars have examined how cosmetic surgery can reinforce gender norms, the development of racially specific standards is a more recent phenomenon that has received less scrutiny. This article examines how cosmetic surgeons conceptualize race and its intersection with gender. Through analysis of eighty surgeon-authored procedural guides, I find that surgeons engage in what I term the biological construction of social difference, mixing discourses of biology and physical difference with social and cultural discourses to describe patient beauty ideals. Surgeons develop an expert discourse on race and gender that is simultaneously about difference and beauty. The development of “ethnic” specific cosmetic surgery standards enshrines a “white” default referent even as it opens the door to other configurations of physical appearance. Cosmetic surgery implies that physical markers of race and gender are mutable – literally, via the surgeon’s scalpel – even as it relies on and reinforces established notions of racial difference.     

Life on the edge: immigrants confront the American health system

Abstract

On the basis of a study of forty health care delivery institutions in Florida, California, and New Jersey, this paper examines the interaction between the immigration and health systems in the USA. We investigate barriers to care encountered by the foreign born, especially unauthorized immigrants, and the systemic contradictions between demand for their labour and the absence of an effective immigration policy. Lack of access and high costs have forced the uninsured poor into a series of coping strategies, which we describe in relation to commercial medicine. We highlight regional differences and the importance of local politics and history in shaping health care alternatives for the foreign born.     

Explaining religious differences in immigrants' gender role attitudes: the changing impact of origin country and individual religiosity

Religion is often perceived as one of the main barriers to immigrant integration in Europe. By focusing on the contested area of immigrants' gender role attitudes, this study analyses data of first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origin countries and of different religious affiliations in comparison to the native population. It shows that higher levels of religiosity can explain immigrants' more traditional attitudes to some extent, but that origin country socialization acts as an important additional determinant of attitudes of the first generation. Among second-generation migrants, only Muslims continue to hold more traditional attitudes. Acculturation for longer-staying migrants is partly explained by declining religiosity, with some evidence for a decoupling of attitudes from religious beliefs among female migrants in particular. Intergenerational change, on the other hand, cannot be attributed to a decline in the role of religiosity.     

Negative incorporation,the next generation and involvement in transnational organizations

ABSTRACT

Can the negative aspects of incorporation – discrimination, marginalization, and frustration with life in a country of settlement – help us to understand next generation transnationalism? This question is applied to a small, non-representative sample of next generation individuals involved in Mexican and Salvadoran transnational political and philanthropic organizations operating in California and Washington, DC. The findings suggest that negative incorporation had some explanatory potential for the transnational mobilization of some respondents. However, the study also suggests the multiple trajectories and contexts that give rise to next generation transnationalism. Involvement in cross-border organizations appears not only to be a refuge for those who perceive the country of settlement negatively or a means through which individuals can respond to negative experiences; it can also be pursued by individuals that positively identify with the country of settlement and perceive its values favourably, indicating the need for a more synthetic understanding of this phenomenon.     

Clubs of culture and capital: immigrant and second-generation incorporation in a new destination school

The influx of Latin American immigrants into the US South since the early 1990s has changed the demographic face of the region, particularly among school-aged populations where the rate of growth among Latinos has been the fastest. Despite an emerging literature addressing changing racial and ethnic relations in the New US South, relatively little research has addressed the incorporation of Latino youths within southern schools. Relying on data from a four-year ethnographic and in-depth interview study in one North Carolina town, findings suggest powerful benefits of ethnic-identity based clubs for Latino youths in new immigrant destination schools. While both Latino and African American respondents faced discrimination within their community, Latino students received more formal support at school, which helped shield them from the negative impacts of discrimination.