Read The Blackwell Companion to Sociology Online
Authors: Judith R Blau
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