Formation of ethnic and racial identities: narratives by young Asian-American professionals

This article examines Asian-American professionals’ ethnic and pan-ethnic attachments and identities through fifteen autobiographical essays. Classical assimilation theory predicts that well-educated Asian-American professionals will be highly acculturated into the white middle class, with little retention of their ethnic subculture; yet many of our essayists had strong, bicultural orientations. Their high level of social assimilation, reflected in their friendships and intimate relationships with whites, indicates that Asian Americans can socially assimilate without relinquishing their culture. Most of the 1.5 and second-generation essayists tried to hide their ethnic culture and non-white characteristics during their early school years. Yet, they experienced a painful but gradual establishment of an ethnic identity, usually beginning in their college years. Some contributors also expressed varying degrees of pan-Asian identity and a moderate level of Third World racial identity.     

Longings and belongings: Indian American youth identity,folk dance competitions,and the construction of ‘tradition’

This article examines the development of the ‘cultural competition’ as a site for the production of multiple identities by Indian American youths on American college campuses. Through the examination of two categories of folk dance competitions (bhangra and raas-garba) at a private university in Washington, DC, we argue that these competitions appear to resist hybridity and produce rhetoric that marginalizes diasporic culture in favour of the ‘pure’ and ‘authentic’ culture of the homeland. However, the goal of expressing uncontaminated ‘authentic’ culture is not realized as diasporic identities and cultures consistently interrupt and undermine homogenizing narratives of ‘tradition’ and ‘authenticity’. We also demonstrate that these folk dance groups often reinforce an ethno-regional distinctiveness rather than a hybrid or pan-Indian identity.     

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.     

‘I'm American,not Japanese!’: the struggle for racial citizenship among later-generation Japanese Americans

Abstract

As one of the oldest Asian American groups in the USA, most Japanese Americans are of the third and fourth generations and have become well integrated in mainstream American society. However, they are still racialized as foreigners simply because of their Asian appearance. Their Asian phenotype continues to have a foreigner connotation because of large-scale immigration from Asia and an American national identity that is racially defined as white. This paper analyses how later-generation Japanese Americans are racialized as outsiders in their daily interaction with mainstream Americans, which is often accompanied by essentialized assumptions that they are also culturally foreign. In response, they engage in everyday struggles for racial citizenship by demanding inclusion in the national community as Americans despite their racial differences. It is uncertain whether such attempts to contest their racialization will cause current mono-racial notions of American identity to be reconsidered in more inclusive and multiracial ways.     

Declining racial disadvantage in the British labour market

The recruitment of black and Asian migrant workers in the 1950s and 1960s to the least desirable sectors of the British labour market arguably ‐ for some commentators ‐ set in motion a cycle of cumulative disadvantage, with the disadvantage experienced by migrant workers inhibiting the opportunities of their sons and daughters. While some of the more recent commentators have concentrated on the persistence of disadvantage, others have begun to indicate the progress made by the minority ethnic groups relative to whites. This article evaluates the character of that progress for the period 1966–1991, through a secondary analysis of published data from the decennial census and the Labour Force Survey. Despite the disadvantaged start for the black and Asian minority ethnic groups, and despite the persistence of discrimination, they have made considerable progress over this time‐span relative to whites in terms of their membership of the Registrar General's socio‐economic groups. The decline in differentials has occurred in the context of upward collective social mobility for each of the three main minority ethnic groups during the period. However, substantial gender differences continue to characterize the labour market distribution of each of the groups and, on the whole, they are more substantial than ethnic group differences.     

The reigning misperception about culture and Asian American achievement

ABSTRACT

Asian Americans graduate from college at higher rates than other groups, and evince educational outcomes that match or exceed those of their parents. They comprise about 25 per cent of the student body in Ivy League institutions, despite making up only 6 per cent of the U.S. population. While it may be tempting to reduce Asian American academic achievement to Asian culture, and Confucian values more specifically, we provide disconfirming evidence, both within the United States and beyond, to show the fallacy of this logic. Contemporary U.S. Asian immigrants are “hyper-selected”: they are more likely to have graduated from college than their non-migrant counterparts, and also more likely to be college-educated than the U.S. mean. Hyper-selectivity and its spillover effects explain the exceptional educational outcomes of Asian Americans. It is time that we laid to rest the reigning misperception that Asian American academic achievement can be reduced to Asian culture or Confucian values.     

Do second-generation Asian Americans face a systematic disadvantage in occupational attainment? Comment on Tran,Lee and Huang

ABSTRACT

We critically review and discuss several methodological problems with their analysis. Their definition of the occupational hierarchy is unclear, and their inadequate statistical models exacerbate the vagueness of their results. They ignore gender interactions, and the age range of their target population seems too narrow for their research concerns. Their interpretation of their own statistical findings on occupational attainment is fundamentally flawed although they refuse to acknowledge it. Their reported results cannot be replicated based on the information that they are willing to reveal about their analysis which suggests additional, undisclosed errors. In our reanalysis of their data using more appropriate methods, we find that rather than being systematically disadvantaged, the occupational attainment of most second-generation Asian Americans has either achieved parity with whites or has exceeded them after controlling for age, educational level, and survey year.     

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.     

Are second-generation Filipinos ‘becoming’ Asian American or Latino? Historical colonialism,culture and panethnicity

Abstract

This article examines how second-generation Filipinos understand their panethnic identity, given their historical connection with both Asians and Latinos, two of the largest panethnic groups in the USA. While previous studies show panethnicity to be a function of shared political interests or class status, I argue that the cultural residuals of historical colonialism in the Philippines, by both Spain and the USA, shape how Filipinos negotiate panethnic boundaries with Asians and Latinos, albeit in different ways. Filipinos cite the cultural remnants of US colonialism as a reason to racially demarcate themselves from Asians, and they allude to the legacies of Spanish colonialism to blur boundaries with Latinos. While the colonial history of Filipinos is unique, these findings have implications for better understanding racialization in an increasingly multiethnic society – namely, how historical legacies in sending societies interact with new racial contexts to influence panethnic identity development.     

Review article: Colour and the American system of justice

A. Leon Higginbotham, In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process ‐the Colonial Period; New York, Oxford University Press, 1978. 536 pp. £8.50.