The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (94 page)

racialized categories likèÀsians'' or ``Latinos'' ± or ``blacks'' or ``whites.''

Not, that is, without obliterating the entire histories, cultures, and identities of distinct peoples in the process ± an unintended consequence of official ethnoracial classifications. (Since 1977, those categories have been set by Statistical Directive 15 of the US Office of Management and Budget, the agency responsible

for determining standard classifications of racial and ethnic data on all federal forms and statistics, including the census. OMB Directive 15 fixed the identities of Americans in five broad categories for statistical and administrative purposes, but through widespread public use the categories soon began to shape those

identities and have evolved into political entities, with their own constituencies, lobbies and vested interests.)

Own

34 50 68

37

54 66 55 62 61 46 48 56

47 69 71 73 64 47 56 38 44 67

home (%)

graduates,

c

Public

(%)

4.7

5.7

3.4 3.7 7.7 3.5

2.2 7.9

3.7 4.8 4.3 5.4

7.5 7.8 5.3

assistance

10.7

11.3

10.4

10.6

16.7

26.2 16.2

college

Income

of

(%)

9.3

8.1

5.9

6.6 7.8 7.7 9.7

9.1

order

Poverty rate

15.7 16.2

24.3

16.7 15.7 12.7

12.8 15.6 15.7

25.0

25.5 14.7 15.3 12.1

rankin

8 4 6 7

7

6 8 9

Lower

(%)

12 13 12

26

11

13 16

11

20 21 18 22 11 12

blue-collar

1990,

b

in

USA

occupation

Upper

(%)

37 32 32

12

48 47 42 41 28 39 25 29

31 40 38 33 21 17 23 17 22 29

the

white-collar

in

and

force

7.1 7.8 9.5

5.0

6.3 7.5

5.5 3.3 7.9

7.8

8.3 9.5 9.1 7.9 5.8 7.3 6.6 4.0

groups

Self-

(%)

12.0

18.0

10.1

14.7

employed

groups

Labor

(%)

labor

immigrant

In force

75.1 66.4 52.2

70.7

74.6 64.9 67.9 75.1 76.3 54.2 63.9 62.3

39.7 57.3 52.1 54.7 50.4 64.4 64.1 73.7 77.4 60.9

racial±ethnic

a

principal US

of

9.1

college

(%)

47.1 38.4 18.6

64.9 62.2 50.6 46.8 43.0 35.0 34.4 30.9

27.1 23.1 22.1 19.1 16.3 15.9 15.6 15.5 14.9 14.8

graduates

native

Education

to

age

34 35 53

33

36 33 35 30 39 38 35 45

55 50 53 53 57 30 49 35 36 49

Median

characteristics compared

birth,

363,819

450,406 244,102 210,941 147,131 912,674 290,128 568,397 529,837

333,725 640,145 744,830 711,929 388,328 543,262 736,971 286,124 334,140 177,398

economic

Persons (no.)

of

4,979,037 5,095,233

8,416,924

and ntry

birth

cou

Social

of

and

Canada

*

average

average

27.2

and

*

America/

US

Kong

Kingdom

US Union

*

region

*

Caribbean

Table by

Region/country

ietnam

Africa Asia Europe Latin

Above India Taiwan Iran Hong Philippines Japan Korea China

Near Soviet United Canada Germany Poland V Cuba Colombia Jamaica Greece

26 60

37 81 16 20 23 26 62 19 36

49 65

63 68 43 44 26

54 54

and

Tables

Hispanicof .1993,

8.4 4.1

9.3 5.5 27.8 8.3 49.5 45.5 8.4 7.1 11.3

9.1 7.4

4.5 5.3 19.7 11.8 26.9

18.6 13.5

executives,

Persons August variability

24.4 8.4

21.7 8.0 30.0 25.8 38.4 40.3 7.0 24.9 29.7

18.2 12.7

9.8 9.2 29.5 17.1 31.7

30.9 24.5

1±5;

sample

professionals,

,CP-3-5,

,

Tables

to

States

24 9

21 18 31 28 23 41 36 27 32

19 14

8 13 21 16 21

19 19

income.

1993,

subject

refugees.

white-collar

as

July United

Census,

assistance

thein

11 29

14 20 11 7 9 7 9 6 6

22 27

34 29 18 18 17

18 16

Upper

US

public admitted

,CP-3±1,

older;

1990

or

States Islanders the

4.7 7.3

3.5

of

10.1 5.1 5.2 5.2 2.2 5.1 4.7 4.5

6.9 7.0

5.5 7.7 2.8 4.1 2.8

5.8 4.4

receiving officially

years

Pacific

been

United

16

the and (PUMS)

have

in

73.1 51.5

77.7 46.4 63.8 75.7 48.4 49.7 71.6 76.3 69.7

64.3 65.4

68.8 65.3 62.7 70.1 60.4

62.1 67.2

households

Asian

. persons laborers. of USA

Sample

1±5;

older

the

and and

or

to

Population

14.6 14.6

11.8 8.6 7.5 5.8 5.5 5.1 4.6 4.6 3.5

20.4 20.3

35.9 22.0 11.4 10.8 9.5

9.3 8.6

employed

line;

Tables Microdata

years

Born

for

25

migrants

Use

fabricators, poverty

1993,

30 56

35 59 34 30 29 27 40 29 30

37 33

15 35 28 25 26

27 18

aged

Foreign

recent

Public

August

occupation

federal

The

most

persons

the

and ,operators,

percent5

168,659 169,827

225,393 580,592 347,858 225,739 118,833 171,577 210,122 485,433

365,024

for

Census, ,CP-3-3, a

4,298,014

below which

19,767,316

2,363,047

2,727,754

1,959,234 8,933,371

228,942,557

188,128,296 29,216,293

the

blue-collar

States from

groups

from

of

attainment participation

persons

Lower of

drawn

country

Bureau United

average

Republic

*

Indian/

(native-born)

force

the data

US

racial±ethnic

:US in

foreign-born native-born

(native-born) (non-Hispanic) (non-Hispanic) Islanders Rican

*

and

Salvador

Educational Labor managers; Percentage Denotes

Nicaragua Ireland

Below Haiti Italy Dominican Guatemala Cambodia Laos Portugal El Mexico

Total Total

Native Asian White Black Pacific Puerto American Alaskan Mexican

a

b

c

*

Sources Origin 1±5;

402

RubeÂn G. Rumbaut

One point that stands out in table 27.2 is the extremely high degree of

educational attainment among immigrants from the developing countries of

Africa and Asia ± 47 and 38 percent were college graduates, respectively. An

upper stratum is composed of the most sizable foreign-born groups whose

educational and occupational attainments significantly exceeded the average

for the native-born American population. Note that all of them are of Asian

origin ± from India, Taiwan, Iran, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Korea,

and China ± with recently immigrated groups reflecting the highest levels of

attainment. Also in this upper stratum (although not shown in table 27.2) were

smaller immigrant groups, notably those from Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa,

Kenya, Israel, Lebanon, Ghana, and Argentina. In fact, by the mid-1970s, one-

fifth of all US physicians were immigrants, and there were already more foreign

medical graduates from India and the Philippines in the USA than native African

American physicians. By the mid-1980s, over half of all doctoral degrees in

engineering awarded by US universities were earned by foreign-born students,

with one-fifth of all engineering doctorates going to students from Taiwan,

India, and South Korea alone; and one-third of all engineers with a doctorate

working in US industry were immigrants. Thesè`brain drain'' immigrants are

perhaps the most skilled ever to come to the United States. Their class origins

help to explain the popularization of Asians as à`model minority'' and to

debunk nativist calls for restricting immigrants to those perceived to be morèàssimilable'' on the basis of color, language, and culture.

By contrast, as table 27.2 shows, the lower socioeconomic stratum includes

recent immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Repub-

lic, and to a lesser extent Haiti ± many of whom were undocumented. They had

higher rates of labor force participation but much lower levels of educational

attainment, were concentrated in low-wage unskilled jobs, and had poverty rates

as high as those of native minority groups, though much lower proportions of

households on welfare. Here also were less educated but less visible and older

European immigrants from Italy and Portugal (34 percent of Portuguese

adult immigrants had less than a fifth grade education, compared to less than

2 percent of the total US-born population). And two Asian-origin nationalities,

Laotian and Cambodian refugees, exhibited by far the highest rates of poverty

and welfare dependency in the USA. Southeast Asians and to a lesser extent

Chinese and Korean workers are much in evidence, along with undocumented

Mexican and Central American immigrants, in a vast underground sweatshop

economy that expanded during the 1980s and 1990s in Southern California.

These data too debunk stereotypes that have been propounded in the mass media

as explanations of `Àsian'' success, and point instead to the contextual diversity of recent immigration and to the class advantages and disadvantages of particular groups.

A middle stratum, composed of groups whose educational and occupational

characteristics are close to the US average, is even more heterogeneous in

terms of national origin, as seen in table 27.2. It includes older immigrants

from the Soviet Union, Britain, Canada, and Germany, and more recent immi-

grants from Vietnam, Cuba, Colombia, and Jamaica. However, not at all

Immigration and Ethnicity

403

evident in table 27.2 is the fact that within particular nationalities there are often also many class differences which reflect different ``waves'' and immigration

histories. For example, while 31 percent of adult immigrants from China have

college degrees, 16 percent have less than a fifth grade education. Desperate

Haitian boat people arriving by the thousands in the 1980s and 1990s mask an

upper middle-class flow of escapees from the Duvalier regime in the early

1960s; by 1972 the number of Haitian physicians in the USA represented an

incredible 95 percent of Haiti's stock. Similarly, the post-1980 waves of Cuban

Mariel refugees and Vietnamesè`boat people'' from modest social class back-

grounds differed sharply from the elitè`first waves'' of the 1959±62 Cubans and

the 1975 Vietnamese, underscoring the internal diversification of particular

national flows over time ± and the complexities of contemporary `èthclass''

formations.

Among the employed, the percentage of older, longer-established Canadian

and certain European immigrants in professional specialties exceeds the respect-

ive proportion of their groups who are college graduates; but the percentage of

recently arrived Asian immigrants who are employed in the professions is gen-

erally far below their respective proportions of college graduates. These discrepancies between educational and occupational attainment point to barriers such

as English proficiency and strict licensing requirements that regulate entry into the professions and that recent immigrants ± most of them non-white, non-European, and non-English speakers ± must confront as they seek to make

their way in America. In response, some immigrants shift instead to entrepre-

neurship as an avenue of economic advancement and as an alternative to

employment in segmented labor markets. As table 27.2 shows, Korean immi-

grants are the leading example of this entrepreneurial mode of incorporation,

with self-employment rates that are higher by far than any other native-born or

foreign-born groups.

Some Questions and Reflections

Reflections on American

Pluralism

The rapid growth of this emerging population ± unprecedented in its diversity of color, class, and cultural origin ± is changing fundamentally the ethnic and racial composition and stratification of the American population, and perhaps also

the social meanings of race and ethnicity, and of American identity. All of this has led to a burgeoning research literature (see Smith and Edmonston, 1997;

Hirschman et al., 1999), and an intensified, at times xenophobic, public debate