The Coming of the Second Generation: Immigration and Ethnic Mobility in Southern California

Abstract

More immigrants come to the United States than to any other country; more come to California than to any other state; and more settle in Southern California than in any other metropolitan region. The largest nationalities that have come to the U.S. since the 1970s—comprising the largest concentrations of refugees and of immigrant professionals, entrepreneurs, and unauthorized laborers—have established their primary settlements there. Within a context of widening economic inequality and increasing governmental persecution of undocumented immigrants, central theoretical and policy questions concern the social mobility (intra- and inter-generational) of new ethnic groups being formed as a result of mass migration from Latin America and Asia—especially the rapidly growing generation of children of immigrants now making their transitions to adulthood (finishing their education, entering full-time work, forming families of their own). Findings are presented from merged samples of two major research studies in Southern California (IIMMLA and CILS-III). The focus is on the divergent educational mobility patterns of foreign-parentage (1.5- and 2nd-generation) young adults of Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian origin—representing distinct and segmented modes of incorporation. Multivariate analyses examine the effect of factors which facilitate or derail their mobility prospects, including the relative role of parental human capital and legal/citizenship status, family structure and neighborhood contexts growing up, early school achievement, linguistic acculturation, arrests and incarceration, and teenage and non-marital child-bearing, compared to patterns observed for native-parentage (3rd-generation and beyond) white, black, and Mexican-American peers. The paradoxical relationship of acculturation to mobility outcomes is considered. The resultant formation of new patterns of urban ethnic inequality, and their implications for social science and public policy, are discussed.

Keywords: Immigration, modes of incorporation, intergenerational mobility, segmented assimilation, language acculturation, education, incarceration, childbearing, urban inequality