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Layout 1 mexican americans and immigrant incorporation by edward e. telles 29winter 2010 contexts Contexts, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 28-33. ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2010 American Sociological Association. All rights reserved. For permission to photocopy or reproduce, see http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ctx.2010.9.1.28. The European American experience of incorporation is often described using the language and framework of “assim- ilation,” wherein immigrants or their descendants eventually become an indistinguishable part of the dominant or main- stream society. However, an increasing number of sociologists argue that this may not always be true: today’s immigrants are far less homogenous and encounter distinct circumstances and conditions when they arrive in the U.S. and as they become part of its society. For example, unlike the immigration of pre- dominately low-skilled Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, today’s immigrants are mostly from Latin America and Asia, they have varied skills and educational backgrounds, and many work in labor markets that offer fewer opportuni- ties than before. The experience of today’s immigrants with American society and culture, in other words, is more varied and uncertain than the old models can allow. At the extreme, pundits like political scientist Samuel Hunt- ington have argued that some new immigrants have not assim- ilated (or will not assimilate) and so they are a threat to American national unity. Similar, though usually more muted, claims about immigrant assimilation often involve cultural, eco- nomic and political worries about the new immigrants, which incidentally were similar to those raised during previous cycles of immigration. In any case, a careful examination of the evidence is impor- tant in order to design appropriate immigration and immigrant incorpo- ration policies. For examining the full range and complexity of the contemporary incor- poration process, Mexican Americans, with their history, size, and internal diversity, are a very useful group. Their multiple generations since immigra- tion, variation in their class back- grounds, the kinds of cities and neighborhoods they grew up in, and their skin color may reveal much about diverse patterns of immigrant incorporation in American society today. Unlike the study of most other non-European groups, the study of Mexican Americans allows analysts to examine the sociological outcomes of adults into the third and fourth generations since immigration. some history According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about 30 million people of Mexican origin currently live in the United States, and 13 million of them are immigrants. Mexicans comprise the largest group of immigrants in the U.S.—28 percent—so what happens to them and their descendants largely reflects what will happen to today’s immigrants in general. Moreover, Mexicans have been “coming to America” for over 150 years (before Americans came to them), and so there are several generations of U.S.-born Mexican Americans for us to study. (Ironically, analysts have mostly overlooked the fact that Mexican immigration is part of the old, or classic, period of immigration—seen as primarily European—as well as the new.) Each of these generations, successively more removed from the first-generation immigrant experience, informs our under- standing of incorporation. But first, we must start with approximately 100,000 Mexi- cans who instantly became Americans following the annexation of nearly half of Mexico’s one-time territory. Since that year, Mex- ican immigration has been continuous, with a spike from 1910 through 1930. A second peak, beginning in 1980, continues today. Mexico shares a 2,000-mile bor- der with the United States. Until recently, Mexican immigration has been largely seasonal or cyclical and largely undocumented. The relative ease of entry and tight restrictions set by the U.S. government on immigrant visas for Mexicans have created a steady undocumented flow, which has increased in recent years. Demog- raphers estimate that 7million undoc- umented Mexican immigrants now live in the U.S. The issue of race has also been important to the Mexican American experience throughout history. The U.S. based its conquest of the for- merly Mexican territory (the current U.S. Southwest) on ideas of manifest destiny and the racial inferiority of the Sociologists, public policy-makers, and the general public usually try to anticipate how modern immigrants and their descendants will become part of American society by comparing their experiences to those of European immigrants a century or more ago. Ph ot o by G et ty Im ag es ,E th an M ill er area’s racially mixed inhabitants. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, race-based reasoning was often used to segregate and limit Mexican American mobility. However, prior to the civil rights movement, Mexican American leaders strategically empha- sized their Spanish roots and sought a white status for the group to diminish their racial stigma. These leaders associated their belief in whiteness with the goal of middle-class assimilation, which they saw as possible for groups like southern and central Europeans, who were not considered fully white at the time. Indeed, historians like David Roediger show that European Americans were able to become white and thus fully included in American society through state benefits, such as homeownership subsidies, that were largely denied to African Americans. Mexican Americans didn’t, however, succeed in position- ing themselves on the “white track.” Jim Crow-like segrega- tion persisted against them until the 1960s, when a Chicano movement in response to discrimination in education and other spaces emerged among young Mexican Americans. The move- ment encouraged ethnic and racial pride by opposing contin- ued discrimination and exclusion and drew on symbols of historic colonization. Only a fewMexican Americans today can trace their ances- try to the U.S. Southwest prior to 1848, when it was part of Mexico, but this experience arguably has implications for the Mexican-origin population overall. This history of colonization and subsequent immigration, the persistence of racial stigma- tization by American society, and the particular demographics involved in Mexican immigration and settlement make the Mex- ican American case unique and informative. the mexican american study project, 1965 to 2000 In 1993, my collaborator, Vilma Ortiz, and I stumbled upon several dusty boxes containing the questionnaires for a 1965 representative survey of Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and San Antonio. We believed that a follow up survey of these respondents and their children would provide a rare but much- needed understanding of the intergenerational incorporation experiences of the Mexican American population. Indeed, based upon this data set, we initiated a 35-year longitudinal study. In 2000, we set out to re-interview 684 of the surviving respon- dents and 758 of their children. The original respondents were fairly evenly divided into three generations: immigrants (1st generation), the children of immigrants (2nd), and the grandchildren of immigrants (or later generations-since-immigration—the 3rd+). Their children, then, are of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th+ generations. Using their responses from 2000, we examined change across these four generations regarding education, socioeconomic status, lan- guage, intermarriage, residential segregation, identity, and political participation. We found that Mexican Americans experienced a diverse pattern of incorporation in the late 20th century. This included rapid assimila- tion on some dimensions, slower assim- ilation and even ethnic persistence on others, and persistent socioeconomic disadvantage across generations. In terms of English language acqui- sition and development of strong American identities, these Mexican Americans generally exhibit rapid and complete assim- ilation by the second generation. They show slower rates of assimilation on language, religion, intermarriage, and residen- tial integration, although patterns can also indicate substantial ethnic persistence. For example, 36 percent of the 4th gener- ation continues to speak Spanish fluently (although only 11 percent can read Spanish), and 55 percent feel their ethnicity is very important to them (but, often also feel that “being American” is very important to them). Spanish fluency clearly erodes over each generation, but only slowly. The results for education and socioeconomic status show far more incomplete assimilation. Schooling rapidly improves in the 2nd generation compared to the 1st but an educational gap with non-Hispanic whites remains in the 3rd and even by the 4th and 5th generation among Mexican Americans. (This stands in contrast to the European immigrants of the previous century who experienced full educational assimilation by the 3rd.) Although we see that conditions for Mexican Americans in 2000 have reportedly improved from their parents in 1965, the education and socioeconomic status gap with non-His- panic white Americans remains large, regardless of how many generations they have been in the U.S. The 2000 U.S. Census 30 contexts.org The experience of today’s immigrants with American society and culture is more varied and uncertain than the old models can allow. Ph ot o by G et ty Im ag es ,S pe nc er Pl at t showed that, among 35 to 54 year olds born in the in the U.S., only 74 percent of Mexican Americans had completed high school compared to 90 percent of non-Hispanic whites, 84 percent of blacks, and 95 percent of Asians. The graph at right illustrates the contrasting incorpora- tion trajectories for Mexican Americans on Spanish language retention and education. While we see a large gain in educa- tion between immigrants and their 2nd-generation children, there is a slight decline in education to the 3rd and 4th gen- eration. Figure 1 also reveals a slow but certain linear trend toward universal English monolingualism. In other words, edu- cational assimilation remains elusive, but complete linguistic assimilation—or the loss of Spanish bilingualism—is nearly reached by the 5th generation. Indeed, consistent with at least a dozen other studies, our evidence suggests that when the education of parents and other factors are similar across generational groups, educational attain- ment actually decreases in each subsequent generation. the continuing importance of race and ethnicity A high percentage of the Mexican Americans in our study claim a non-white racial identity. Even into the 3rd and 4th gen- erations, the majority see themselves as non-white and believe they are stereotyped because of their ancestry. Nearly half report personal incidents of racial discrimination. Race continues to be important for them, and Mexican continues to be a race-like category in the popular imagination in much of the Southwest. In addition, the predominance and undocumented status of Mexican immigration coupled with large doses of anti-Mexican nativism may stigmatize all members of the group, whether immigrant or U.S.-born. In many places, Mexican Americans are intermediate in the racial hierarchy, situated between whites and blacks (and newly arrived Mexican immigrants). Our survey did not directly examine the process through which race or racial stigma lim- its Mexican Americans. However, based on our in-depth inter- views and other evidence, it seems that this occurs through both personal and institutional racial discrimination as well as through the internalization of a race-based stigma (which may affect life strategies and ambitions, especially during school- ing). The geographical proximity of