ALBA, Richard and Victor NEE. REMAKING THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration

Abstract

ALBA, Richard and Victor NEE. REMAKING THE AMERICAN MAINSTREAM: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003, 359pp., $39.95 hardcover.This extremely well-researched and well-thought-out book takes a look at assimilationist impulses by Americans throughout history. We have a long history of wave after wave of immigrants of all kinds [English, Scottish, Irish, western Europeans including Germans and French, Africans from many nations, Hmong, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Afghan, Tibetan, Caribbean, Japanese and Korean and many more]. The authors point out that although the United States has experienced successive waves of immigrants [often met with fierce nativist hostility], there are mass migrations to the United States that began in the late 1960's which have dramatically increased the diversity of America. The 2000 national census, in fact, shows that there has been a huge increase in the number of immigrants and their children, who now constitute 20% of the total American population.Alba and Nee chose to write this book in response to what they see as ..... .the prevailing pessimism about the prospects for the assimilation of the new immigrants and their second generation........ ..our book seeks to compare the experience of two major waves of immigrants to the United States and their descendants: the late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century immigration from Europe and East Asia and the contemporary immigration from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean Basin. (p. x) In writing the history of immigration and assimilationist attitudes in the United States, the authors have tried to steer clear of any notion that immigrant groups should assimilate to the majority, ethnocentric cultural model, composed of middle-class Protestant whites of British ancestry.Alba and Nee spend a good deal of time and meticulous scholarship tracing the concept of assimilation throughout American history. While assimilation has enjoyed periods of great popularity in American culture [when diverse ethnic and racial groups were rated on a scale to measure the likelihood of their success in advancing toward that pinnacle of industrialized society], it has also gone through periods such as the 1960's when it was viewed as ethnocentric and patronizing, a way to force immigrants to quickly abandon their cultural and ethnic values. Early research and scientific literature urged immigrant groups to unlearn their own cultures and cultural traits and to accept the culture of the host society. In learning this new way of life, it was felt that these immigrants would learn a new way of life that would be necessary for their full acceptance by the majority culture. In large parts of America, assimilationist ideas are very much alive and are coming to the forefront very strongly as the United States opens its borders to Hmong and other refugees as well as Mexican workers and others from around the world.Alba and Nee point out that in some ways, transnationalism has replaced assimilationism. Transnationalism implies a kind of seamless connection between the daily workaday lives in America and the society of origin, ... ..through a web of border-spanning cultural, social and economic ties. (p. 7)I learned a great deal from this book. For example, Benjamin Franklin wrote with alarm about the increasing numbers of German immigrants settling in Pennsylvania, when he said, Why should the Palatine boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements and by herding together establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? …