Children of New Arrivals Avoid Melting Into the Mainstream

The children of recent U.S. immigrants are not as eager to melt into mainstream American culture as their largely white predecessors traditionally have been, according to a new study.

The study found that many of these youngsters--mostly from Latin America, Asia and the Caribbean--are quickly learning English and developing other skills needed to do well in the larger society, but they are also holding on to the languages and customs of their native lands.

Researchers “did not see much evidence of a desperate search for getting lost in the mainstream of America,” said Alejandro Portes, chairman of the sociology department at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the study. “Rather, there is a slow process of acculturation and a pride of place in their parents’ ethnic background.”

The study, conducted by Portes and Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at Michigan State University, also found evidence that those who do retain strong cultural and family identity often outpace others in school, including their native-born white counterparts, because their native society reinforces the values of hard work and academic achievement.

The study is the first in-depth look at U.S. immigrant children in 50 years. It draws upon interviews with 5,000 eighth- and ninth-grade students attending public and private schools in San Diego and the Miami/Ft. Lauderdale area of Florida.

In San Diego, the primary ethnic groups included students whose parents came from Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia. In Miami, the sample contained immigrants primarily from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.

The findings suggest that the experiences of recent immigrants will not fit the traditional view of assimilation. That view, which stems in large measure from the work of sociologists such as Irving Child, author of the 1943 book “Italian or American? The Second Generation in Conflict,” described the upward mobility of European immigrants a generation or two after arriving in the United States at the turn of the century.

Because most earlier immigrants were white, “the process of assimilation depended largely on individual decisions to leave the immigrant culture behind and embrace American ways,” Portes and Rumbaut wrote. “Such an advantage obviously does not exist for the black, Asian and mestizo (mixed-race) children of today’s immigrants.”

Rumbaut said many recent immigrants are forced instead to settle in existing ethnic communities or alongside other minority groups that will accept them.

The study also questions whether one mainstream culture exists in the United States or if the nation is composed of a “rainbow” of social and ethnic mainstreams. “The question for many immigrants is not whether they will assimilate. They will,” Rumbaut said. “But the question is: Assimilate into what American mainstream or which American culture?”

The authors used examples cited in other studies to illustrate how immigrants assimilate into U.S. culture. At an unidentified high school in central California, virtually all the Mexican-Americans who graduated in the top 10% of their class in 1981 spoke Spanish at home and were rated as fluent in English.

“They had strong bicultural ties with Mexico and the United States, reflecting the fact that most were born in Mexico but had lived in the U.S. for more than five years,” the report said.

“They were proud of their Mexican heritage but saw themselves as different from . . . the recien llegados (recently arrived) as well as from the native-born Chicanos and cholos , who were derided as people who had lost their Mexican roots.”

By comparison, the researchers described the Chicanos and cholos as “mostly U.S.-born second- and third-generation students whose primary loyalty was to their in-group, seen as locked in conflict with white society.”

These students were less likely to speak Spanish and considered themselves “faced with what they saw as a forced-choice dilemma between doing well in school or being a Chicano,” the report said. “To act white was regarded as disloyalty to one’s group.”