Recent immigration from the south and the east has undermined the popular belief that Europe is a set of ethnically and culturally unchanging states. In response, Europeans have turned to American history for insights into managing diversity. Extrapolating from America's experience, however, requires careful analysis. The success of the United States in integrating peoples rested partly in political and socioeconomic conditions that may not hold in all places at all times. Moreover, current discussions of “multiculturalism” may be misleading in regard both to the connotations of the term and to the history of immigrant group assimilation in the United States.
In the study of the history of immigration and ethnicity scholars often write about their own ethnic groups. For several reasons that pattern has led to an over-emphasis on the new immigrants of the early twentieth century, a limitation of focus to the experiences of the first and second generations of individual immigrant groups, and a disinterest in immigration and ethnicity as processes. Efforts to produce comparative studies of various kinds and to use survey data as a source of primary information about later generations may help correct those shortcomings.
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