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Immigrant Assimilation (a subset cultural assimilation) is a complex process in which an immigrant fully integrates himself or herself into a new country. An immigrant converging to the American life and becoming part of a community and social network would be an example of immigrant assimilation. Social scientists rely on four primary benchmarks to assess immigrant assimilation. These measurements are socioeconomic status, geographic distribution, language attainment, and intermarriage. William A.V. Clark defines immigrant assimilation "as a way of understanding the social dynamics of American society and that it is the process that occurs spontaneously and often unintended in the course of interaction between majority and minority groups"..

Overview

Historically, sociology owes its birth to the desire to understand the great changes that our society underwent at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the most important social changes being immigration. The assimilation of immigrants in the nineteenth century and the twentieth-century has been a major focus in social research. It has been found that Between 1880 and 1920, the United States had taken in roughly 24 million immigrants.. This increase in immigration can be attributed to many historical changes one being the cold war politics from the 1960s through the 1980s and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.[1]. Over 1.8 million Jews (including some non-Jewish family members) emigrated from the Former Soviet Union.[2]. The major destination countries for Former Soviet Union Jewish immigrants between 1968 and 2000 were Israel (about 1.1 million), the United States (over 400,000), Germany (about 130,000), and Canada (about 30,000).[3]. The beginnng of the twenty-first century has also marked a massive era of immigration, and sociologist are once trying to make sense of the impact that immigration has on society and the impact it has on immigrants themselves..

Examples of Immigrant Assimilation

An example of immigrant assimilation in America is Muslim girls joining girl scouts and Muslim boys joining boy scouts. A 12-year-old Somali immigrant has discovered that the trademark green sash — with its American flag, troop number and colorful merit badges reduces the number of looks she receives from others.[4] The girl-scout uniformm distracts people from the girl's traditional Muslim dress. Scattered Muslim communities across the United States are forming Girl Scout troops as a sort of assimilation tool to help girls who often feel alienated from the mainstream culture, and to give Muslims a neighborly aura.[5].

Assimilation, sometimes known as integration or incorporation, is the process by which the characteristics of members of immigrant groups and host societies come to resemble one another.[6]. An example of immigrant assimilation would be an immigrant who as achieved upward mobility, personal success, financial success, and has been fully accepted or integrated into a community.

History

Theoretical Explanations

Researchers have attempted to explain the assimilation rate for post 1965 immigrants in the United States with experiences of immigrants who entered the United States between 1880 and 1920.. Many of the methods and theories that are used to assess immigrant assimilation today are derived from earlier immigrant studies. One of the leading theories in understanding immigrant assimilation came from William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki whom published "The Polish Peasant in Europe and America". William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki's study on Polish immigrants(1880-1910)assessed how these immigrants built an institutional community in the United States during the Napoleonic War.[7] Another influence on immigrant assimilation came from Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and William I. Thomas, in which they trained graduate students to study the experiences of immigrants in Chicago. Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and William I. Thomas provided these graduate students with theoretical tools such as Park's theory on collective behavior.. The third theory on immigrant assimilation comes from Gordon's book, Assimilation in American life. Gordon highlighted the generational change in immigrant groups, it states that the first generation or foreign born were less assimilated and less exposed to American life than their American-born children (the [second generation]), and their grandchildren (third-generation) were more like the American mainstream than their parents..

Theoretical Models to Immigrant Assimilation

When assessing immigrant assimilation researchers need to be aware that the process of assimilation is changing and therefore must understand three important theories to assimilation. The first, classic and new assimilation model sees immigrants and native-born people following a "straight-line" or a convergence.[8] This theory sees immigrants becoming more similar over time in norms, values, behaviors, and characteristics.[9] This theory also expects those immigrants residing the longest in the host population, as well as the members of later generations, to show greater similarities with the majority group than immigrants who have spent less time in the host society.[10]The second, [racial]/ethnic disadvantage model states that immigrant's chances to assimilate are "blocked". An example of this model would be discrimination and institutional barriers to employment and other opportunities.[11]. The third, the segmented assimilation model theorizes that structural barriers, such as poor urban schools, cut off access to employment and other opportunities — obstacles that often are particularly severe in the case of the most disadvantaged members of immigrant groups, and such impediments can lead to stagnant or downward mobility, even as the children of other immigrants follow divergent paths toward classic straight-line assimilation. [12].

Core Measurements to Immigrant Assimilation

Researchers have assessed that assimilation exists among immigrants because we can measure assimilation on four primary benchmarks. These core measurable aspects of immigrant assimilation that were formulated to study European immigrants are still the starting points for understanding current immigrant assimilation. These measurable aspects of assimilation are socioeconomic status, spatial concentration, language attainment, and intermarriage.

1. Socioeconomic Status is defined by educational attainment, occupation, and income. By measuring socioeconomic status researchers want to find out if immigrants eventually catch up to native-born people in terms of human capital characteristics.

2. Spatial Concentration is defined by geography or residential patterns. The spatial residential model (based on theories of Park) proposed by Massey states that increasing socioeconomic attainment, longer residence in the U.S, and higher generational status lead to decreasing residential concentration for a particular ethnic group..

3. Language Attainment is defined as the ability to speak English and the loss of the individual's mother tongue. The three-generation model of language assimilation states that the first generation makes some progress in language assimilation but remains dominant in their native tongue, the second generation is bilingual, and the third-generation only speaks English.

4. Intermarriage is defined by race and only occasionally by ethnicity and generation. High rates of intermarriage are considered to be an indication of social integration because it reveals intimate and profound relations between people of different groups, intermarriage reduces the ability of families to pass on to their children a consistent ethnic culture and thus is an agent of assimilation.

Policies on Immigrant Assimilation

When considering immigrant assimilation it is important to consider why immigrants migrate. One reason immigrants migrated was The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act(IRCA), which legalized 2.3 million formally undocumented Mexican Immigrants. This Act freed these newly legalized immigrants from the fear of being apprehended, and it was found that many of these immigrants moved to states beyond the nearest U.S-Mexican border..

Debates over Immigrant Assimilation

The main question that arises from immigrant assimilation is do immigrants in fact assimilate? Do immigrants fully integrate into American society? Researchers have been able to compare immigrants from both the 19th century and 20th century and see if immigrants assimilate into society. Some researchers and economists have concluded that after a period of time immigrants eventually catch up to native-born in terms of human capital earnings. However others have argued that immigrants do not ever catch to native born people, when it comes to human capital.

Modifications for Assessing Immigrant Assimilation

Studies on immigrant assimilation in the 19th century and 20th century present something that is quite puzzling. Researchers conclude that immigrants had a hard time catching up to the same human capital characteristics as native-born people in the 19th century but studies in the 20th century suggest that immigrants eventually catch up to native born people. Timothy J. Hatton explains this puzzle on immigrant assimilation in the 19th century and in the 20th century. He explores how recent studies have been producing misleading results between the two. Hatton focuses his research on the specification of the earnings function..Hatton argues that that specification of the earnings function should be improved in two ways. First, immigrants who arrived as children should be treated separately from those who arrived as adults..Second, specification of the earnings function should be better approximate to the true shape of age-earnings profiles.. Hatton points out that with these modifications , the patterns of immigrant earnings which have emerged make more sense with those of the 20th century and with traditional views on immigrant assimilation in the 19th century..

Owning a Home and Immigrant Assimilation

It is believed that immigrants can move the up the ladder through hard work, which is in fact true for some immigrants but are all immigrants assimilating? Owning a home can be seen as a step into assimilation. William A.V. Clark explores this link in his book "Immigrants and the American Dream Remarking the Middle Class". Clark is aware that the process of assimilation is more than just being able to purchase a home. He argues that "homeownership" is one of the steps of assimilation, it is becoming part of the community and a neighborhood, and being a part of the daily activities that take place in a community..

Naturalization and Immigrant Assimilation

When immigrants are sworn in as citizens, they are undergoing one of the many steps of immigrant assimilation. Citizenship is one of the most significant dimensions of assimilation outside of marriage. .The immigration debate focuses not only the number of immigrants who should be admitted, who should be allowed to be admitted but it is also looks at the processes of incorporation, and most importantly how citizenship should be extended and to who it should be extended to. For example, should it be extended to those who arrive illegally.. Allowing for naturalization of immigrants can create tension in assimilation. On one hand, those who favor the admission of immigrants input that these new residents will help build and enrich the American democratic process.. However others argue that the nature and legitimacy of the nation may be challenged and perhaps even threatened..

New Immigrant Gateways and Immigrant Assimilation

The 21st century has marked a change in immigrant settlement. Although it is changing, the overwhelming majority of immigrants still settle in traditional gateway states such as Florida, New York, California, Illinois, Texas, and Massachusetts..It has found that immigrants settle in traditional gateways where there are large populations of foreign-born people. Walters and Jimenez have illustrated the changes in the geographic distribution and the rates of growth of immigration in the United States.. They show the number of foreign-born individuals in states where the foreign-born population grew by a factor of two or more between 1990 and 2000..Walters and Jimenez found that the largest percentage growth in the foreign-born population, was found in either the Midwest or the South in additional none of the traditional gateways were included in this large percentage growth..Walters and Jimenez noted that a reason these traditional gateways did not have an increase at the same rate of the new gateways was because, new gateways did not have many immigrants to begin with. Walters and Jimenez have argued that this new change in geography could possibly change the way researchers assess immigrant assimilation. They argue that these new gateways are unique and they propose that immigrant assimilation may be different from the experiences of immigrants in more traditional gateways in at least three ways. First, the long history of immigration in these established gateways means that the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies in these traditional gateways are more structured or established on the other hand these new gateways do not have much immigration history therefore the place of immigrants in terms of class, racial, and ethnic hierarchies is less defined and immigrants may have more influence to define their position..Second, the size of new gateways may influence immigrant assimilation..Having a smaller gateway may influence the level of segregation among immigrants and native-born people. Third, the difference in institutional arrangements may influence immigrant assimilation. Traditional gateways unlike new gateways have many institutions set up to help immigrants which include legal-aid, bureaus, social organizations. Finally, Walters and Jimenez have only speculated that these differences may influence immigrant assimilation and the way researchers should assess immigrant assimilation.