Remaking the American Mainstream; Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration

Alba, Richard and Nee, Victor

ISBN 10: 067401040X / ISBN 13: 9780674010406

Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2003

About this Item

xiv, [2], 359, [7] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Richard D. Alba (born December 22, 1942) is an American sociologist, who is a Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is known for developing assimilation theory to fit the contemporary, multi-racial era of immigration, with studies in America, France and Germany. Alba earned his B.A. in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1974 from Columbia University. Alba's text on assimilation theory (written with Victor Nee), Remaking the American Mainstream (2003) won the Thomas & Znaniecki Award of the American Sociological Association and the Eastern Sociological Society's Mirra Komarovsky Award. It was one of the most highly cited works in sociology. Alba has also written about the historical realities of assimilation, using Italian Americans to exemplify them. His book, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America, summarizes his thinking on the assimilation of the so-called white ethnics. Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, that assimilation continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. They also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains-language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage-they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life.

Seller Inventory # 75621

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Remaking the American Mainstream; Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 067401040X
• ISBN 13: 9780674010406
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Presumed First Edition, First printing.
• Condition: Very good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation - that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time - seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But, as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in their systematic treatment of assimilation, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favourable environment for non-white immigrants and their children than in the past. Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and in the contemporary world, have profoundly changed American society and culture in the process of becoming Americans. Surveying a variety of domains - language, socio-economic attachments, residential patterns and inter-marriage - Alba and Nee demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. They predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as non-whites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.

About the Author

RICHARD D. ALBA is Distinguished Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Albany VICTOR NEE is Goldwin Smith Professor of Sociology, Cornell University.