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Studies of the immigrant second generation have left us with the impression that most groups experience significant socioeconomic advancement with the passing of generations. However, findings are more mixed for immigrants who come to be seen as "Black" or "Brown." There is mounting evidence that contemporary "color lines" bear negatively on their socioeconomic trajectories. The experiences of African immigrants are poignant given the racial diversity among them. The earliest waves of voluntary immigrants from Africa were disproportionately White South Africans, Black Nigerians, and more racially ambiguous (by U.S. standards) Egyptians and Ethiopians. In this paper, I take a sweeping look at patterns of socioeconomic achievement among those African immigrants in 1990 and the U.S. born adult children of such immigrants 20 years later to see if African second generation cohorts outperform African immigrant cohorts--and to see if patterns of upward mobility are any more pronounced in some groups of African immigrants than others. Finally, I assess the relative importance of racial identity and national origins on intergenerational mobility as I try to answer the question, does it matter more that your parents came from Nigeria or that you are identified as "Black". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, 355,312 American Community Survey respondents claimed one or more Hispanic ancestries when asked "What is your ancestry or ethnic origin?" 22,542 of these Hispanic descendants answered in the negative when asked "Are you Spanish/Hispanic/Latino?" Six percent of Americans with Hispanic ancestry did not identify as Hispanic when asked directly. They are the Hispanic non-Hispanics. This paper seeks to explain their prevalence as a function of identificational assimilation, non-Hispanic proximal hosts, and Hispanic/class stigmatization. By putting these concepts to empirical test, it becomes clear that nativity, ancestry, race, and economic standing are all highly predictive of Hispanic identity. Most importantly, it is found that Americans of Hispanic ancestry who are of high economic standing are less likely to identify as Hispanic than those of lower economic standing. It is shown here that wholesale exclusion of Hispanic non-Hispanics which is standard practice in social scientific studies of Hispanic advancement downwardly bias our assessments of their collective socioeconomic achievements. I argue in favor of a more inclusive definition of the Hispanic population—one that includes all those who acknowledge there Hispanic ancestry and/or those who identify as Hispanic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of immigrant adaptation have focused on the rapid socioeconomic advancement of the "new second generation" who have tended to easily surpass the achievements of their immigrant parents and, on some measures, their third+ generation counterparts. However, most such studies have focused on "high-end" outcomes like college attendance or occupational attainment and do not disaggregate second generation groups by race. When this is done the story of universal advancement is undermined. This study takes an innovative approach to identifying immigrant second and third generation in the 1980 and 2000 U.S. Census data and uses it to demonstrate a significant race effect that grows with the passing of generations. Within the foreign-born population the incidence of poverty is not significantly greater for Blacks compared to Whites included in this study, but among the American-born children and grandchildren of these immigrants a large poverty gap opens leaving Black members of the "new second generation" significantly more susceptible to poverty than their White counterparts. The sharpest intergenerational declines in poverty are among Latin Americans. "Asian effects" are less clear but no less interesting. In all, results suggest that despite the new diversity introduced by post-1965 immigration, to be Black in the United States remains uniquely challenging. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the integration of Black and White immigrant groups into Black American, Black pan-ethnic, multiracial and White neighborhoods in an attempt to answer the question, "to what extent have Black immigrants become Black American?" By following the movement (or stability) of a single cohort grouping of Black and White immigrants from various national origins over the course of twenty years (1980-2000) we may assess the effects of race on life chances in the Post-Civil Rights era. By also identifying adult second generation Black and White populations and documenting their residential patterns, we may assess the extent of intergenerational advancement as well as the extent to which race bears on such processes—much the same as Lieberson (1980) did by looking at Black and White im/migrants of the early twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent immigration from the Caribbean, Africa and Europe has been overshadowed by immigration from Asia and Latin America, but these newcomers are of particular theoretical importance because they represent the immigrant analogs of the two most disparate and diametrically opposed American racial groups?Black and White Americans. This study employs data from the Current Population Survey (1996-2002) to compare patterns of educational and occupational achievement and mobility among Black and White immigrants. It is found that while the adult children of immigrants, irrespective of race, are doing significantly better than the immigrants themselves, racial disparities do exist. Upward mobility is, on some measures, more pronounced in the White immigrant population. While Black and White immigrants are practically identical in terms of educational attainment, the adult children of White immigrants have completed, on average, more years of education and are significantly more likely to have graduated high school than their Black counterparts. Patterns of occupational mobility seem to favor Black immigrants?particularly second generation Black women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experiences of Black and White immigrants to the United States in the Post-Civil Rights era provide a unique opportunity for the assessment of the impact of race on life chances. For various reasons, many of the African, West Indian, Afro-Caribbean and European immigrants who came in the years immediately following the 1965 Immigration Act had higher than average educational attainments and/or occupational skills when compared to the native population. In other words, the first waves of Post-Civil Rights era immigration were highly selected on education and/or occupation. Among these immigrants were the first substantial waves of voluntary African immigrants who arrived free of the oppositional culture and identity said to be common among their slave-descended African-American counterparts and were well-equipped to meet the challenges of the American economy. This was also true (though to a lesser extent) of West Indian and other Afro-Caribbean immigrants. This being the case, there is no obvious reason mobility patterns of these immigrants should differ from those of European immigrants save for one, the continuing salience of the race in determining life chances in America. This study uses Current Population Survey data from 1999-2001 to demonstrate a pattern of pronounced upward mobility among recent Black immigrants that exceeds theoretical expectations as well as the achievements of European immigrants of the same time period. Theoretical implications of this finding are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]