The social mobility of immigrants depends not just on the opportunity structure of the receiving society, but also on the past experiences and the sociocultural repertoires that immigrants bring with them on arrival. This becomes clear in a comparison of two ethnic groups that migrated from one Caribbean country to the Netherlands: the Afro-Surinamese and Indo-Surinamese. While both groups left Surinam at the same time and settled into very similar conditions in the Netherlands, their pre- migration histories differed considerably. These different premigration legacies seem crucial to understanding the current differences in the economic and educational performance of these immigrants and their offspring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
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
This study examines immigrant integration in the low socioeconomic stratum in Trinidad. Integration is operationalized as participation in overlapping societal spheres. The study also focuses on corollary aspects of access and goals. While several factors facilitated participation in the social sphere, labor market participation was inhibited by conditions of open unemployment and underemployment. These exigencies had elicited strategies of subsistence from first generation immigrants whose work-related attitudes, ethics, and wage expectation levels functioned to their advantage and led in their competitiveness in a difficult labor market. Some of the second generation were disengaging themselves from their parents' level of labor market activity but relocating farther from the mainstream labor market into a marginalized peer stratum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR];
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];
his article presents a documentation note of the 10th Migration Dialogue seminar held March 7-9, 2002 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Migration Dialogue seminars provide a setting for 40 opinion leaders from Europe and North America to learn about and discuss the major migration management issues of the twenty-first century. The following are three central issues explored in the 2002 seminar. First, the Dominican Republic economy grew rapidly in the 1990s, 6-8 percent per year, as thousands of rural women especially found sewing jobs in free-trade zones. Why did emigration pressure remain so high despite rapid job creation? Are emigration and remittances substitutes for socioeconomic reforms, notably in the education system and the labor market? Do remittances, which account for almost 105 of the Dominican Republic's $16 billion gross domestic product, increase or decrease the desire to emigrate? Second, Hispaniola is a relatively small island shared by peoples with different origins, histories, and languages. The population of the Dominican Republic and Haiti are each 8-9 million. Some 500,000 to 800,000 Haitian nationals live in the Dominican Republic, equivalent to almost 10 percent of Haiti's population.;
