Introduction: Immigration and Its Aftermath

Abstract

The articles in this issue offer the reader a wealth of information on a topic of increasing visibility in the field of immigration. For a variety of reasons, the growth and adaptation of the second generation have not been subjects of great concern for researchers in this field during the recent past. Reasons include the relative youth of the second generation spawned by post-1965 immigration to the United States and the difficulties of studying it on the basis of census and other official data. Scholarly attention in this field has remained focused on adult immigrants, who are more visible and whose progress through the labor market and through the immigration bureaucracy can be more easily traced. Social scientists whose professional concern is with children, such as sociologists of education, have noted the surge of foreign-origin and, for the most part, nonwhite students in the nation's schools. However, the manner in which data on this new phenomenon have been packaged has hopelessly obscured its character and implications. School records and scholarly surveys most frequently use a classificatory scheme for students based on the pan-ethnic labels Hispanic, Black, Asian, and non-His? panic white. Such data are nearly useless for the study of the second generation because they mix children of native and foreign parentage, as well as those from the most diverse nationalities. The ethnic category Hispanic, for example, combines children whose ancestors were living in the country at the time of the Civil War with those who arrived recently as unauthorized aliens. The category Asian is still more egregious because the children grouped under it do not even share a parental language in common (Portes andTruelove, 1987; Massey, 1993). The dearth of accessible census data and the compressing of second-gen? eration youth into a classificatory scheme that obliterates their history have had the consequence of obscuring a major phenomenon in the recent evolution of American society. This result is unfortunate because the adap? tation of the second generation will be decisive in establishing the long-term outlook for contemporary immigration. It is indeed among the second generation, not the first, where such issues as the continuing dominance of English, the growth of a welfare-dependent population, the resilience of culturally distinct urban enclaves, and the decline or growth of ethnic intermarriages will be permanently decided. For example, the much de? bated issue of the loss of English hegemony in certain areas heavily affected by immigration will not be decided by first-generation immigrants, but by