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Existing frameworks of assimilation and group boundaries are limited in making sense of experiences of racial ambiguity. What happens when racial groups are mistaken for other groups, and how does this phenomenon relate to the racial hierarchy? This paper investigates the on-the-ground mechanisms of racial ambiguity that formal institutions, like the Census, do not capture, yet are the lived realities for many immigrant groups. Through analysis of 120 interviews and supplemental observations, I find that the racialization of second-generation South Asians shifts between racial ambiguity and racial legibility in daily life. I present a theoretical concept – localized racialization – to reveal the transient, yet defining, racial experiences of groups residing in the racial middle. Localized racialization centres multiple factors of skin colour, intersectional status markers, and situational contexts that tether racial experiences to the local. This study's South Asian participants reveal persistent racial dynamism at the micro-interactional level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twentieth century, European migrants' ethnic and racial status changed as they joined the mainstream. Assimilation theory identified socioeconomic mobility as the driver of this outcome. More recently, non-European migrants have also achieved socioeconomic parity with the mainstream. Yet, a puzzle has emerged: unlike earlier European migrants these non-Europeans remain "racialized". They are both a part of, and excluded from, the majority group. This paper proffers a transnational amendment to assimilation theory. While socioeconomic parity matters so too does the similarity between the imagined racial status of the origin and host country. Groups originating from geographies that are imagined as outside of transnational Whiteness remain a "racial minority". Groups originating from geographies that are imagined as within transnational Whiteness are already White and, thereby, assimilated. To delineate this transnational approach to assimilation and inclusion, we provide examples from Europeans' and non-Europeans' assimilation trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the identities that North American lifestyle migrants in Ecuador adopt as they adjust to life in a new racialized social environment. It is based on qualitative interviews with migrants from North America, as well as ethnographic field notes. North Americans describe their growing community in racialized terms and adopt a series of practices that demonstrate anxiety about their position in the racialized social order of Ecuador. The paper discusses the strategies that North American migrants engage in to diminish the importance of their racialized identities in Ecuador. I identify two main practices that complicate North American incorporation in Ecuador: self-policing practices that aim to optimize Ecuadorians' perceptions of them; and desires for integration and ethnic mobility, which seek to erase their ‘Otherness’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Western European national policies increasingly portray diversity as negative and migrants as ‘others’ who do not belong to the national community. This article examines how local governments articulate alternative discourses of belonging based on residents' shared membership in the civic life of the city. In a Dutch case study, the ways in which local policymakers diverge from exclusionary national narratives are examined. It is argued that discourses about urban citizenship offer opportunities for the inclusion of migrants by drawing new boundaries between ‘good’ citizens and those who are unwilling to participate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper aims to improve contemporary understanding of intergenerational variation in English (L2) and ethnic language (L1) proficiency. Analysis using wave 1 data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU) on 1,032 fifteen-year-olds living in England across six generations shows that there is a strong effect of generation on L1 and L2 proficiency. Intergenerational variations in individual attitudes to assimilation, family contact factors and community contact factors affect oral and literal proficiency in both languages. Pro-assimilation attitudes have a strong association with increasing oral and literal proficiency in L2 across all generations, but especially for earlier generations. Anti-assimilation attitudes have neither similar associations with L1 proficiency, nor negative associations with L2 proficiency. Frequent visits to parental birth countries have the strongest positive associations with L1 maintenance. Exposure to L2 in school and local neighbourhood settings does not contribute to increased L2 proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic and religious minority identity is a subject of intense public debate and academic scrutiny. While assimilation theories anticipate convergence of identity across the generations, discussions of reactive ethnicity, transnational identification and religious revival suggest that there may be a deepening or shifting of minority identity in the second generation. Yet the empirical evidence in support of these different perspectives is far from conclusive. Drawing on a rich data source for the UK, this paper addresses the question of whether minority ethnic groups in Britain show identity assimilation in the second generation. It concludes that both public and private forms of identification with the majority increase across generations, and minority identities tend to become less salient. This is true across ethnic groups, although there are differences in underlying levels and patterns of identity, reflecting variation in contexts of reception and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how children of immigrants from Turkey are integrated into Swedish society. The educational achievements and labour market outcomes of this group are compared with the performance of the offspring of native-born parents. The aim of the study is to explore whether we can observe a tendency towards ‘downward mobility’ among young people of immigrant background in Sweden and thereby provide reflections on the existing formulation of the ‘segmented assimilation’ theory. Findings show that descendants of immigrants seemnotto be in the process of downward assimilation, that is, social exclusion and therefore formation of a distinct ‘underclass’ in Sweden. The concept of ‘subordinate inclusion’ is a more appropriate description of the experiences of children of immigrants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using longitudinal data, this paper analyses the effect of different forms of social capital on the likelihood of employment and the occupational status of first generation immigrant men in Germany. This allows me to examine to what extent social capital of the bonding and the bridging types yield different returns. The study considers how contacts with natives, co-ethnic ties and family-based social capital are beneficial to the economic position of immigrant men. Random effects and fixed effects models show that strong inter-ethnic ties are beneficial both for employment and occupational status. There is no effect of co-ethnic ties and family-based social capital. It is concluded that, when using panel data, bridging social capital contributes to a better economic position and bonding social capital does not. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Civil society is the foundation of a healthy democracy but its immigrant element has received little attention. This paper is a case study of immigrant organizations of highly skilled Asian Indians and Chinese immigrants in a suburban town of Edison, New Jersey. I find that civic participation of Asian Indian immigrants spills over into political incorporation while Chinese immigrant organizations remain marginalized. I argue that local processes of racialization are central in explaining differences in political incorporation of immigrants. In the local context, the Chinese are seen as successful but conformist model minorities and Asian Indians as invaders and troublemakers. The racialization of Asian Indians has resulted in more political activity and higher levels of political visibility of their organizations. The results highlight shortcomings of current assimilation theories, which give little space to civic and political incorporation and view human capital in an unqualifiedly positive light. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transnational organizations are primarily studied from the perspective of first-generation migrants and how cross-border interactions shape their identities. This study focusses on transnational activism among the second-generation, the children of refugees, asking how refugee status affects second-generation transnationalism. By analysing the case study of Vietnamese refugees in the United States, the largest refugee re-settlement effort in American history, the article analyses an originally curated database of transnational organizations (n = 632), as well as a survey of 80 organizational leaders. Findings show that participation in transnational organizations offers new ways of understanding one's identity and social mobility in the United States and in Vietnam. This transnational point of reference includes transnational labour market opportunities and the transforming of identities from learning about silenced histories in refugee families. Transnational activism creates an alternative reference category for integration outside the common reference groups including intergenerational mobility, native co-ethnics, and the general US population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross-ethnic friendships are at the heart of the immigration experience. We examine the incidence and change of co-ethnic friendship groups among 1.5 and second-generation immigrant youth in Canada using the nationally representative Ethnic Diversity Survey. We find that visible minority immigrant youth friendships are more co-ethic than those of non-visible minority immigrant youth. We also find visible minority individuals' friendship groups become more co-ethnic over time. In addition, we find differences in the pattern and direction of change across different visible minority immigrant youth groups. We interpret these findings in light of theories of assimilation and segmented assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the negative aspects of incorporation – discrimination, marginalization, and frustration with life in a country of settlement – help us to understand next generation transnationalism? This question is applied to a small, non-representative sample of next generation individuals involved in Mexican and Salvadoran transnational political and philanthropic organizations operating in California and Washington, DC. The findings suggest that negative incorporation had some explanatory potential for the transnational mobilization of some respondents. However, the study also suggests the multiple trajectories and contexts that give rise to next generation transnationalism. Involvement in cross-border organizations appears not only to be a refuge for those who perceive the country of settlement negatively or a means through which individuals can respond to negative experiences; it can also be pursued by individuals that positively identify with the country of settlement and perceive its values favourably, indicating the need for a more synthetic understanding of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Super-diversity has become the conceptual touchstone for a large body of research on immigration in European societies. Evolving from the ideas sketched by Steven Vertovec in his famous 2007 essay, the concept as deployed in research has become a successor to multiculturalism. The super-diversity lens has trained attention on horizontal processes of “living together” in very diverse settings, like some urban neighbourhoods where no group holds the majority status. However, we argue here that for a fuller understanding of integration, we need the vertical dimension of social power. This dimension is manifest through the mainstream, which permeates many institutions (including local ones such as schools) and becomes visible in the cultural adjustments made by members of immigrant-origin minorities, particularly among those who aspire to social mobility. The power axis represented by the mainstream is not strictly dependent on the demographic distribution of ethnic groups, given that white natives remain very powerful even when they are a numerical minority. At the same time, the character of the mainstream may be altered to some extent by the entry of individuals with non-white minority origins. To illustrate these ideas, we offer the examples of the “culturalization of citizenship” in the Netherlands and the social locations of young people of mixed background in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relative distribution of immigrants who have: strong sense of belonging to both Canada and the source country; strong sense of belonging to Canada only; strong sense of belonging to the source country only; and weak sense of belonging to Canada and the source country. It further examines four sets of determinants of these acculturation profiles, including source-country socio-economic and cultural characteristics, immigrant entry status, post-migration experience, and demographic characteristics. Using a large national representative sample of 7,000 immigrants in Canada from over 100 countries, this study finds that the overwhelming majority of immigrants have a strong sense of belonging to Canada with or without a strong sense of belonging to their source country. Source-country attributes are as important as immigrant entry status and post-migration experience in affecting immigrants’ sense of belonging to Canada and their source country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of ethnic resources in the educational success of immigrants is highly disputed. Combining arguments of segmented assimilation and Coleman's concept of family social capital, this study investigates whether speaking one's language of origin at home relates to achievement by facilitating the mobilization of resources or their transmission from parents to children. Mediating and moderating mechanisms are disentangled and empirically questioned in regression models that predict the mathematical competences of immigrant students from Turkey, Poland and the former Soviet Union. Based on data from the German National Educational Panel Study, the results contradict the assumption that foreign language use will contribute to education through mechanisms of social capital. Regardless of parental human capital or the group of origin, the language used at home does not affect the students’ learning when German language proficiency is accounted for. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many studies have focused on the importance of immigrants participating in the public spaces of the cities where they have settled in order to become integrated. Our research, in contrast, demonstrates the importance of contextualizing participation within the framework of the power relationships that justify and give meaning to certain practices of discipline and control. We look at one concrete example in Seville (Spain): the regulation of the Latin American sports leagues of San Jeronimo. This case demonstrates the central role of public space in monitoring and controlling immigrants and in the dynamics of resistance they develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of integration tests on a pre-entry or post-arrival basis has drawn attention to changing national integration policies. Yet, at the local level, language and civic culture courses have often been implemented before the development of national programmes. The way these policies came into place and the extent to which they responded to similar challenges has often been overlooked. This article explores the development of these measures in four cities – Stuttgart, Vienna, Barcelona and Turin – to find out which mechanisms account for convergence in policymaking. Integration courses present traits of similarity in their contents and target groups; however, this does not imply a consistent process towards convergence. Local introduction initiatives are the product of local policy arenas, which display different policy frames of migrant integration. On the other hand, new legislation and changes in the available financial resources for integration appear to be crucial factors that trigger divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to show the necessity to better understand the relevance of the arts in the theoretical and policy debates about immigrant incorporation and diversity in migration and post-migration cities, and also in the present phase of ethnicized and racialized social and economic relations. To do so, five domains can be considered that, taken together, constitute a general framework in which more theoretically grounded empirical research should develop: local culture, social relations and interactions, local cultural and incorporation policies, local politics and local economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How migration and mobilizations of difference are accommodated at the local level is a burning question. Concepts adopted by local governments and the capacities of cities to formulate and implement these have received increasing attention, but often without examining the ideas and norms that underlie local concepts and practices. This article assesses the hypothesis of local-level pragmatism, which it rejects, and develops the notion of ‘paradigmatic pragmatism’ to characterize how local-level politics address mobilizations of difference. Based on empirical findings from Amsterdam, Antwerp and Leeds, and comparing the content and the implementation of ‘diversity policies’, I argue against a dichotomy of pragmatic vs ideational politics. Instead, these cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity. This paradigmatic pragmatism invites further research on the effects of potential incompatibilities of immigrant policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Citizenship representations within national populations have mainly been deduced from state policies on migration. Yet, at the individual level, no studies have investigated whether citizenship representations are reliably associated with preferences for specific migration policies (i.e. the underlying assumption for deducing citizenship representations from state policies). Because several studies have shown that state policies may not reflect understandings of citizenship within national populations, it may be more relevant to study citizenship representations at the individual level, in relation to personal preferences regarding migration policies. This study examined how ethnic, cultural and civic citizenship representations relate to migration policy preferences at the individual level among majority group high-school students (N = 1,734) in seven EU countries. Findings add to the understanding of citizenship representations and may have implications for the implementation of migration policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understood as a philosophy counselling group rights and concomitant public policies undertaken by governments to preserve and enhance group identities, multiculturalism has little purchase in European immigrant integration debates. However, based on interviews with various actors engaged in policies that affect immigrants in the Netherlands and Germany, we argue that multiculturalism remains a going concern if it is understood as a problem-solving practice through which governments acknowledge and work with ethnic and religious groups to address issues of mutual concern, particularly on issues related to gender. We label this ‘multicultural governance’ and argue that it supports the principal ends of integration policy: the socialization of immigrants into prevailing national languages, norms and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Governments have policies explicitly directed at the integration of migrants. This article addresses how policymakers and politicians privilege certain constructions of the social relationship between migrants and the majority society (expressed through narratives of ‘integration’), while making it seem as if they were presenting facts in their policies. These constructions provide the justifications for adopting a direction in policy-making over other alternatives. This article sets to analyse comparatively how policy actors in two urban contexts construct migrants' integration through policy narratives and how, within this, they evaluate migrants as ‘integrated’ and ‘non-integrated’. Through narrative analysis, the article sheds light on how migrants are positioned by political institutions within the normative order of the society in which they live. Furthermore, it shows that local policy-making is shaped by national citizenship regimes, models of steering, welfare regimes and stories about the nation and its people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religion is often perceived as one of the main barriers to immigrant integration in Europe. By focusing on the contested area of immigrants' gender role attitudes, this study analyses data of first- and second-generation immigrants from multiple origin countries and of different religious affiliations in comparison to the native population. It shows that higher levels of religiosity can explain immigrants' more traditional attitudes to some extent, but that origin country socialization acts as an important additional determinant of attitudes of the first generation. Among second-generation migrants, only Muslims continue to hold more traditional attitudes. Acculturation for longer-staying migrants is partly explained by declining religiosity, with some evidence for a decoupling of attitudes from religious beliefs among female migrants in particular. Intergenerational change, on the other hand, cannot be attributed to a decline in the role of religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the tension between ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ identity is not contingent, but structurally embedded in the workings of the contemporary nation state. Through an analysis of ‘the Chinese’ in ‘Australia’ it aims to demonstrate that seemingly unambiguous concepts such as assimilation (the ethnic is absorbed by the national), multiculturalism (the ethnic coexists with the national) and diaspora (the ethnic transcends the national) cannot capture the diverse difficulties, ambivalences and failures of identification, belonging and political agency experienced by Chinese Australians. A more satisfactory analysis requires a questioning of the groupness of ‘the Chinese’ (as well as ‘the Australians’) and overcoming conceptual groupism (Brubaker): the tendency to take discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous and externally bounded groups as basic constituents of social life. Instead a more processual and flexible understanding is proposed, where the relationship between ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ identity is one of constant evolution and mutual entanglement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Basque nationalism is singled out in the literature as a case of minority nationalism that faces an ongoing struggle between those in support of a liberal-inclusive definition of the nation and those favouring an exclusive-racialist one. Nevertheless, Basque nationalist parties have been welcoming of immigration and have legislated to create a regional citizenship based on residence rather than ethnicity. This article argues that, at least in part, the ‘positive’ response of Basque nationalists to the immigration wave that began in the early 2000s is an attempt to strengthen national solidarity by contrasting Basque values of openness and tolerance against the restrictive nature of the reforms to the immigration law in Spain that were initiated in 2000. This argument challenges the notion that sub-state nationalists are hostile to immigration because of the threat diversity poses to the nationalist project. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Among migration scholars, immigrant religiosity has become an important variable in understanding immigrant incorporation into the new society, but less studied are determinants of varying immigrant religious outcomes. Using a subsample of immigrant Muslims within the European Social Survey (2002, 2004, 2006), contexts of immigrant receptivity as less or more welcoming are tested on immigrant Muslim religious outcomes using multi-level modelling. Results confirm the hypothesis that less welcoming immigrant contexts are associated with higher religious outcomes among Muslim immigrants in comparison to the host region's religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages the debate on ethnic minority migrant incorporation by examining national identification dynamics among Caribbeans and South Asians in Britain. Caribbeans tend to be more economically, culturally and socially incorporated than South Asians in Britain. Therefore, according to conventional wisdom, Caribbeans should be more likely than South Asians to have high levels of positive British identification. Instead, public opinion data reveal that South Asians have higher levels of positive attachment to British identity. To explain this puzzle, I focus on the ways in which incorporation outcomes are mixed across indicators. I argue that high expectations of discrimination among Caribbeans contribute to lower levels of positive attachment to British identity. These findings suggest that understanding variation among incorporation outcomes is necessary for grasping the complexity of ethnic minority migrants' lives. Moreover, this article shifts the focus away from migrants' incorporation progress and towards host-society discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that assimilationist theory had a profound impact on immigration studies in the U.S. from the 1920s into the 1960s, but that this mode of conceptualization has been subsequently challenged theoretically by developments in social history. Specifically, exegetical evidence is offered for viewing the challenge as hinging on a reconceptualization of the meaning of culture and the role of social actors in creating their own history. The case is made by examining in depth two exemplars of immigration research published in different time-periods. For the assimilationist model, the author of this article refers to two books. The first is "Old World Traits Transplanted," by W. I. Thomas and others while the second is "The Transplanted," by John Bodnar. To illustrate the impact of assimilationist thought on scholarship for nearly a half century, analyses are provided of a select number of classic studies written between the respective appearances of the two aforementioned books.