Disadvantaged Second Generations: The Socioeconomic Incorporation of Mexicans in the U.S. and Maghrebins in France

Suny At Albany, Albany NY

Investigators

Abstract

The project, a collaboration between U.S. and French researchers, is an attempt to conduct systematic comparative research on second-generation incorporation of immigrants in the US and France. Examination of a wider range of contexts than can be found in one society alone can help to clarify the circumstances under which each of the competing theoretical models of incorporation--classical assimilation, segmented assimilation, and ethnic pluralism-best applies and the causal mechanisms involved. The intent is to study the socioeconomic incorporation of the second generation of the largest immigrant groups in France and the U.S.- Maghrebins, i.e., Muslim North Africans, in the former and Mexicans in the latter. A number of similarities in the situations of these two groups suggest that they may be on more or less parallel tracks of incorporation. The societies they have entered both have strong histories of assimilation as the principal mode of incorporating the descendants of immigrants, but the groups in question come from countries that have endured colonial or semi-colonial relationships to the host societies. Both impressionistic and systematic evidence indicate that they suffer from prejudice and discrimination and that their second generations (and, in the case of Mexicans, their third) evidence a variety of disadvantages, from higher rates of early departure from school to concentration in low-skill jobs. Thus, the evidence to date leaves it unclear which of the models of classic and segmented assimilation better applies and under what circumstances. If the socioeconomic trajectories of Mexicans and Maghrebins turn out to be similar in a systematic comparison, this could lead to a re-evaluation of the understanding of the position of the groups in both societies-in the U.S., this could entail some revision in the segmented-assimilation model, which is so far tied to features specific to the U.S. (e.g., racial segregation); and in France, to a revision in the understanding of the source of Maghrebin disadvantage, which is heavily colored by religious distinctiveness. The research will be based on analysis with multi-level models of a number of micro-level data sets in both countries-in the U.S., we will use the National Longitudinal Study of 1979 and the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988; in France, we will use four different studies, including the FQP ("Fonnation-Qualification-Professionelle") of 1993 and the "Generation 1992" of Cereq. All the studies offer a comparable range of variables measuring family origins, school achievement, and early labor-market experiences on major variables..