No abstract

Entering the debate over segmented assimilation, this paper seeks to refocus discussion on a core, but neglected claim: that inter-group disparities among immigrant offspring derive from differences in a contextual feature shared by immigrant and immigrant descendants: a nationality's mode of incorporation. The paper engages in both theoretical and empirical assessment. We critically examine the concept of mode of incorporation, demonstrating that its operational implications have not been correctly understood; consequently, the core hypothesis has never been appropriately tested. The second part of the paper implements those tests, making use of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey. We do so by using nationality as a proxy for mode of incorporation, systematically contrasting more advantaged against less advantaged nationalities. We show: (a) that tests systematically varying modes classified as more or less advantageous yield inconsistent outcomes; (b) that positive or negative modes of incorporation are associated with few long-lasting effects; (c) that differences in governmental reception are particularly unlikely to be associated with interethnic disparities; and (d) that compared to theoretically relevant nationalities, neither Mexicans, a nationality assigned to a negative mode of incorporation, nor pre-Mariel Cubans, a nationality assigned to positive mode of incorporation, prove distinctive.2

A long-standing debate is concerned over how long premigration socioeconomic differences persisted for immigrants and their descendants who entered at the turn-of-thetwentieth century. Some researchers argue that differences exist today, over 100 years after first arrival, while others argue that most differences disappeared after the third generation. However, none of this research has directly measured pre-migration socioeconomic status nor has it directly linked immigrants to their children. I create a new panel dataset that follows immigrants and their children from the sending country through settlement. Specifically, I link ship manifest records to census records to track how long premigration socioeconomic differences persist across generations. Passenger records provide a wealth of information of individuals including the occupation before arrival. I analyze how long premigration differences persist within and between groups. Whereas premigration socioeconomic status is associated with the first generation's economic outcomes after settlement, many of these differences disappear by the second generation. These results suggest that background is not destiny for immigrant descendants. As scholars and politicians debate about whether countries should admit primarily high-skilled or low-skilled immigrants, the results from this article tell us whether such selection policies are necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in a period of open borders.Acknowledgements: Dylan Connor, Leah Boustan, Zach Ward, and participants at McGill's Centre on Population Dynamics speaker series provided useful comments on this article. All mistakes are my own.From its inception to the mid-1920s, the United States had an open immigration policy with a few ethno-racial exceptions. Millions of immigrants entered the US and were subsequently absorbed into the labor market. A long-standing debate is concerned over how long initial differences in socioeconomic status persisted for these immigrant groups (Waters 1990; Waters and Lieberson 1989;Alba et al. 2001;Borjas 1994Borjas , 2001. Whereas some researchers argue that the United States is a melting-pot, quickly dissolving background differences, others argue that there was strong socioeconomic persistence for groups leading to long-term differences that lasted for over 100 years. Much of this research, however, has relied on synthetic-cohort analyses since there are few datasets that link immigrant parents to their offspring. However, with the development of panel datasets using full-count censuses and other historical sources, there has been a resurgence of research seeking to understand how long socioeconomic differences persist (Abramitzky et al. 2014;Connor 2018b;Ward 2018). This study enters this debate by investigating how long differences in premigration socioeconomic status lasted within and across immigrant groups who entered at the turn of the twentieth century.Specifically, this article develops a new dataset that tracks within-family intergenerational mobility ...

Assimilation research largely assumes that Southern and Eastern European immigrants achieved assimilation due to job ladders within manufacturing firms in the first half of the twentieth century. But this literature has never tested these claims and often acknowledges that little is known about whether Italians and Slavs experienced upward mobility. Did manufacturing allow for the upward advancement among European-origin groups? Using unique datasets containing employment histories in three manufacturing companies – A.M. Byers Company, Pullman-Standard Manufacturing, and Ford Motor Company - between 1900 and 1950, this article is the first to analyze occupational mobility within factories among European-origin groups. Results suggest that organizational structures within firms through the formation of internal labor markets did little to counter or prevent other forces that kept migrants from achieving upward mobility. Migrants ended their careers within firms where they began – positions at the bottom of the occupational hierarchy – which runs contrary to assimilation research.

After decades of de-unionization, research suggests that Hispanics-and Hispanic immigrants in particular-may revitalize organized labor in the United States. Most of this research consists of case studies of individual organizing campaigns (see, e.g., Milkman 2006). In 2009, however, Rosenfeld and Kleykamp (hereafter RK) set out to determine whether these campaigns had produced quantifiable gains at the national level. By analyzing detailed data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), they found that when compared to native-born whites "many Hispanic subgroups are no less likely," and some Hispanic subgroups are "more likely," to join or belong to labor unions (Rosenfeld and Kleykamp 2009:933). These results are important, for they buttress the hopes of both Hispanic workers, who view union membership as a potential avenue to upward mobility, and union organizers, who view immigrants as a potential source of new members. RK note that overall union density is low in the United States, and that unionization is therefore unlikely to usher in widespread assimilation absent a "fundamental restructuring of the institutional underpinnings of organized 473107A SRXXX10.