The racial replenishment of ethnicity: Asian immigration and the limits of Japanese American assimilation

Abstract

ABSTRACT A growing literature on racialized assimilation notes the likelihood of simultaneous upward mobility and persistent racial marginalization within immigrant-origin communities of color. Thus far, this literature has focused on the ‘new second generation’ and not fully explored how race, class, and immigration lay the structural foundations for persistent racial and ethnic identity and community formations even into later generations. Leveraging 93 in-depth interviews with third and fourth generation Japanese Americans in suburban Southern California, this paper explores the persistent impact of race and ethnicity on long-time, ostensibly assimilated Americans. Japanese American ethnic persistence is directly influenced by the arrival of similarly racialized, high-skill Asian immigrants who inhabit the same middle-class spaces. As Japanese Americans are racially lumped with these newcomers, they assert their ethnic distinctness as they simultaneously build Asian American communities in recognition of common racialized experiences. Given contemporary US immigration’s non-white majority, this study illustrates the need for further exploration of the complex role of immigration and assimilation in shaping and replenishing middle-class minority understandings of race and ethnicity.