Is Intermarriage a Good Indicator of Integration?

Abstract

In this paper I review and examine the assumed link between intermarriage and integration. I focus primarily on literature from the US and Britain. Intermarriage is said to signal a significant lessening of ‘social distance’ between a minority group and the White majority, enabling unions between groups which would previously have been taboo. It is often assumed that intermarriage for ethnic minorities is the ultimate litmus test of integration, but is it? And if there is a link between intermarriage and integration, what is the nature and extent of ‘integration’ achieved by minority groups and by the minority partner? I argue that the link between intermarriage and integration is both more tenuous and more complex than many social scientists have argued, and needs a critical reappraisal, especially in multiethnic societies which are witnessing unprecedented levels of diversity, both across and within their ethnic minority groups.

Keywords:

• Intermarriage
• Integration
• Milton Gordon
• Minority
• Structural Assimilation
• Social Distance

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor of JEMS, Russell King, and the anonymous reviewer of this paper, for their helpful suggestions, and Jenny Money for her editorial labours. I would also like to thank the members of IMISCOE's Cluster C8, who encouraged me to write this piece; our discussions and debates have helped me to shape this paper.

Notes

1. In the 2001 British Census, ‘inter-ethnic’ marriages are those between people from ‘different aggregate groups, where the ethnic group categories are: White, Mixed, Asian [meaning South Asian], Black, Chinese, Other ethnic group—for example, a White Briton married to someone from a non-White ethnic group or a Pakistani married to a non-Asian (Office of National Statistics 2001). So a Pakistani marrying an Indian would not be inter-marrying by this definition. It is interesting, too, that the British Census employs the term ‘inter-ethnic’, but uses what I would call racial categories (such as White, Black, Asian), with the exception of the category ‘Chinese’.

2. The US Bureau of the Census identifies the following types of interracial marriage: ‘Black/White’, ‘American Indian/White’, ‘Asian and Pacific Islander/White’, ‘Other race/White’, ‘Other race/specified race’. The Census Bureau does not count unions between groups which are deemed to be within the same broad category, such as between a Japanese American and an Indian [South Asian] American. Nor is Hispanic origin taken into account in enumerations of interracial marriage (US Bureau of the Census 1998).

3. I recognise that ethnic and religious differences between partners can also be regarded as hugely problematic in the ‘West’ and in other parts of the world, such as in the Middle East or the former Yugoslavia.

4. I would like to thank an anonymous JEMS reviewer for this insight.

5. I would again like to thank an anonymous JEMS reviewer for this valuable suggestion.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Miri Song

Miri Song is Reader in Sociology at the University of Kent