Defining difference: the role of immigrant generation and race in American and British immigration studies

Abstract

This article reviews the ways in which Britain and the USA classify and analyse the integration of immigrants and their descendants. While both societies recognize racial differences in their official statistics and in the academic analyses of change over time, the USA tends to classify immigrants and their descendants by immigrant generation much more than Britain does. The importance of the concept of generation in American immigration research is highlighted and it is suggested that studies built on the importance of generation can illuminate social processes of integration in Britain. The complexities of defining and measuring immigrant generation are reviewed, including new developments in the measurement of generation that take into account age at migration, and historical period and cohort effects. Racial and ethnic minority groups formed through immigration may have very different characteristics depending on the average distance of their members from immigration – including the possibility of ‘ethnic leakage’, as more assimilated, later-generation individuals no longer identify with the group.

Keywords:

• generation
• immigration
• integration
• assimilation
• second generation
• race

Notes

1. Britain is still more generous than the USA, but the two countries are much less generous than established European welfare systems.

2. ‘The salariat or service class consists of salaried employees such as managers, administrators, or professionals, have relatively secure employment, an incremental salary scale, fringe benefits (e.g. pension schemes), and significant promotion chances’ (Heath and McMahon 1996, p. 92).

3. Their analysis excluded second-generation Chinese and Bangladeshis because of negligible numbers.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary C. Waters

MARY C. WATERS is M. E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University