Abstract
One out of every six Americans between the ages of 18 and 32 are of immigrant parentage, and among Americans under 18, the figure jumps to one in four. In Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, immigrants and their children account for the majority of each city's population, signaling the growth of the new second generation in metropolitan areas across the country. Focusing on the children of immigrants in New York City, Inheriting the City tells the story of how today's 1.5 (e.g., individuals born abroad but migrating to the United States as children) and second generation are becoming American. Based on a telephone survey of 3,415 young adults (between the ages of 18 and 32) and open–ended, face–to–face interviews with 333 telephone respondents, Kasinitz et al. compare the trajectories of five 1.5 and second generation groups (Dominicans, South Americans, West Indians, Chinese, and Russian Jews) and three native–born groups without immigrant parentage (non–Hispanic whites, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans). In a city as racially and ethnically diverse as New York (where native–born whites are not the majority), Kasinitz et al. argue that it makes more sense to compare second–generation groups to their native–born minority counterparts, rather than compare all groups with native–born whites.
Using this point of reference, the authors find no evidence of “second generation decline.” In fact, all second–generation groups fare better than their minority reference groups in high school completion rates, meaning that 1.5– and second–generation West Indians, Dominicans, and South Americans are more likely to graduate from high school than African Americans and Puerto Ricans. Moreover, second–generation Chinese and Russian Jews have higher college graduation rates than native–born whites. The second generation is also making their mark in the city's labor market. Moving out of the ethnic enclaves and immigrant niches that employ their parents, the new second generation has shifted into the service sector, and while this does not mean that all have attained middle–class status, it does mean that most have landed jobs that are an enormous step up from the poorly paid jobs of the ethnic economy.
While the story about the second generation is one of incline vis–à–vis their minority counterparts, their progress is not uniform. Second–generation Chinese and Russian Jews are outpacing Dominicans, South Americans, and West Indians by a wide margin, revealing the vast differences in human capital among the parental generation. For example, three–fifths of Dominican parents, two–fifths of South American parents, and one–quarter of West Indian parents did not graduate from high school. By contrast, well over 90 percent of Russian parents have graduated from high school, and half have earned a Bachelor's degree or higher. Given the immense differences in parental human capital, it comes as little surprise that second–generation Russian Jews surpass their Dominican, South American, and West Indian counterparts with respect to education and earnings. However, what is puzzling is how second–generation Chinese (two–fifths of whom have parents who have not graduated from high school) have—within one generation—come to outpace native–born whites and stand on par with second–generation Russian Jews. More illustratively, how does the child of Chinese immigrant workers who speak little English and toil away in one of Chinatown's garment factories make it into one of the city's most competitive magnet schools and ultimately to an Ivy League university?
The answer, Kasinitz et al. explain, lies in the “differences in group resources” that immigrant families deploy as they negotiate the American educational system. The authors posit that working–class families are better able to take advantage of educational opportunities when they have middle–class and professional role models to which they can turn as mobility prototypes. The class diversity among the Chinese combined with dense ethnic networks link together middle– and working–class Chinese immigrants, providing the latter with information about how to navigate the American school system through ethnic channels such as newspapers, churches, and broadcast media. This is how a second–generation child of a Chinese immigrant garment factory worker whose mother is illiterate “knew” that her child should go to Stuyvesant (arguably the city's leading magnet school).
While the authors point to differences in group resources, they shy away from the role of culture, despite the fact that they introduce the possibility that human capital and structural differences affect the “norms,”“repertoires,” and “expectations” of the immigrants and the expectations that they pass to their children. This is a missed opportunity, especially because they devote a chapter of the book to culture yet chose to focus on language, transnationalism, and religion rather than on community norms and cultural repertories. Here, they could have explained that while all immigrant parents value education and want their children to do well in and finish school, the way they frame “doing well” and the expectations of “finishing school” may vary widely by group. Focusing on the different cultural frames through which immigrant and second generation groups define “doing well” and “finishing school” may further elucidate inter–group differences in second–generation educational outcomes.
This point aside, Inheriting the City is a tremendously ambitious project and masterful synthesis of survey and in–depth interview data of a population who will shape New York's (and America's) future. The new second generation is armed with a dual frame of reference through which they perceive choices where other native–born Americans (especially racialized minorities) perceive constraints; that they are located in two cultures is the real second–generation advantage. Moreover, that they have come of age in a diverse metropolis like New York also works to their advantage since the city has placed few barriers in their way to getting ahead. How long this advantage lasts, and whether the advantage dissipates more quickly for some groups will be the story for scholars of the next generation to tell.