Becoming White: How Military Service Turned Immigrants into Americans

Abstract

When do groups on the social periphery assimilate into the social core of a nation? Building on a diverse set of literatures, I argue that individual participation in military service creates a number of conditions that drive individuals to assimilate into a broader national culture. To test the theory, I focus on the case of World War I in the United States–a period that closely followed a massive wave of immigration into the United States. Using an instrumental variables strategy leveraging the exogenous timing of the war, I show that individuals of foreign, European nativity–especially, the Italians and Eastern Europeans–were more likely to assimilate into American society after serving in the U.S. military. The theory and results contribute to our understanding of the ways in which states make identity and the prospects for immigrant assimilation in an age without mass warfare.

Black and White Names: Evolution and Determinants

“…43 This assumes that there are cultural differences across regions, even within the same race. 44 Elsewhere, intermarriage rates have also been used to study the assimilation of immigrants (Fouka, Mazumder, and Tabellini 2022;Mazumder 2019).…”

Dragomir, Cristina‐Ioana. 2023. Making the immigrant soldier: How race, ethnicity, class and gender intersect in the US military. Chicago and Springfield: University of Illinois Press. pp. 258.

“…Much literature suggests that "individual participation in military service can be a powerful force of assimilation of periphery group members into the social core" (Mazumder, 2019), but the subjects of this study succeeded in attaining citizenship while failing to escape the burden of various personal and cultural characteristics that mark them as foreign and determine their professional status. While the US military seeks out immigrant soldiers and provides them a pathway to integration, this process of assimilation remains incomplete.…”

From Pluribus to Unum? The Civil War and Imagined Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century America

“…Much of this literature has largely focused on the institutional and physical manifestations of statehood: war expands the state's territory, enhances administrative and fiscal capacity, and promotes political representation (Bensel 1990;Cederman et al 2023;Dincecco and Wang 2018;Levi 1988;Queralt 2019;Rasler and Thompson 1985;Stasavage 2011;Thies 2005;Tilly 1992)-at least in early modern Europe and among populations able to effectively bargain with the state (Centeno 2002;Herbst 2000;Koehler-Derrick and Lee 2023). While some studies have linked warfare to nationalism and identity formation (Mann 1993;Mazumder 2019), to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to examine how war shapes the imagination of sovereignty-perhaps the most foundational characteristic of the state.…”