Marrying out: A boundary approach to understanding the marital integration of Asian Americans

Abstract

For decades, studies of intermarriage have provided insights regarding the integration and assimilation of ethnic groups in the US. In this paper, marriage outcomes are analyzed to gain a better understanding of the integration of Asian Americans into American society. Instead of utilizing assimilation theories that focus on individual-level variables such as education and nativity, I extend two theoretical perspectives to develop a boundary approach which emphasizes the how structured contexts at ethnic and racial boundary levels influence intermarriage outcomes. This approach recognizes the layered character of ethnic boundaries and the salience of ethnic and racial boundaries for new immigrant groups. Multinomial logistic regression models are used to analyze 2000 US Census data. The results generally support the theoretical predictions, suggesting that demographic distributions and the ways in which groups are structured in relation to one another along racial and ethnic boundaries are important predictors of intermarriage.