This article presents an introduction to essays on the book Beyond the Melting Pot. The essays were originally presented at a symposium at the 1998 annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society. The essays touch on many points in the immigration landscape today, from immigration's impacts on African Americans to immigration transnationalism, and identify a number of continuities and discontinuities between contemporary metropolis and that of nearly four decades ago. Further, Nathan Glazer's response provides his reflections on how well the book's portrait and predictions have held u
n this article, I study the educational attainments of the adult offspring of immigrants, analyzing data from the 1996 panel of the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). Fielded annually since 1993 by Statistics Canada, respondents are asked for the first time in 1996 to report the birthplaces of their parents, making it possible to define and study not only the foreign-born population (the first generation), but also the second generation (Canadian born to foreign-born parents) and the third-plus generation (Canadian born to Canadian-born parents). The survey also asked respondents to indicate if they are members of a visible minority group, thus permitting a limited assessment of whether or not: color conditions educational achievements of immigrant offspring. I find that "1.5" and second generation adults, age 20-64 have more years of schooling and higher percentages completing high school compared with the third-plus generation. Contrary to the segmented "underclass" assimilation model found in the United States, adult visible minority immigrant offspring in Canada exceed the educational attainments of other not-visible-minority groups. Although the analysis is hampered by small sample numbers, the results point to country differences in historical and contemporary race relations, and call for additional national and cross-national research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
To assess the relative roles of race and ethnicity in shaping patterns of residential segregation, this article utilizes indices of segregation and a geographic mapping strategy to examine the residential patterns of West Indian blacks in the greater New York City area. The socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhoods occupied by West Indian blacks are also examined and compared to those of areas occupied by African Americans. The results indicate that, on one hand, West Indians are largely denied access to residential areas occupied predominantly by whites and are confined to areas of large black concentrations. On the other hand, West Indians appear to have carved out somewhat separate residential enclaves within these largely black areas, and there is evidence to indicate that these areas are of somewhat higher quality than areas occupied by similar concentrations of African Americans. The discussion of these results focuses on the reciprocal relationship between the formation of these distinct residential enclaves and the maintenance of a distinct West Indian ethnic identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
n this paper two gaps in North American immigrant homeownership research are addressed. The first concerns the lack of studies (especially in Canada) that identify changes in homeownership rates by skin color over time, and the second relates to the shortage of comparative research between Canada and the United States on this topic. In this paper the homeownership levels and attainment rates of Black, Chinese, Filipino, White, and South Asian immigrants are compared in Canada and the United States for 1970/1971–2000/2001. For the most part, greater similarities than differences are found between the two countries. Both Canadian and U.S. Chinese and White immigrants have the highest adjusted homeownership rates of all groups, at times even exceeding comparably positioned native-born households. Black immigrants, on the other hand, tend to have the lowest ownership rates of all groups, particularly in the United States, with Filipinos and South Asians situated between these extremes. Most of these differences stem from disparities that exist at arrival, however, and not from differential advancement into homeownershi [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
Using data from the public use microdata sample of the 1990 U.S. census, we examine the socioeconomic attainment patterns of Africans in the United States, within the context of the assimilation and selectivity perspectives. Three primary findings emerge from this study. First, we find that white African men and men from English-speaking Africa have higher net hourly earnings than their nonwhite and non-English-speaking counterparts. Second, we find that while South African men have higher net hourly earnings than men from a number of selected African countries, there is no statistically significant difference between the net hourly earnings of South African women and women from these selected African countries. Third, we find no statistically significant difference between the net hourly earnings of black African and black American men and women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];