Immigrant Incorporation and Sociocultural Transnationalism1

This article analyzes sociocultural transnational linkages among Colombian, Dominican, and Salvadoran immigrants in the United States. It emphasizes the importance of comparative analysis and yields three main findings. First, participation in any particular transnational activity is low, but participation over all the different forms of transnational practices is extended. Second, the process of incorporation does not weaken transnational participation. Third, there is more than one causal path that can account for the rise of transnational sociocultural practices. The different paths can be explained by reference to the context of reception and the mode of incorporation of each group.     

Immigrant Incorporation and Political Participation in the United States1

This article examines several factors related to immigrant incorporation that have been ignored in previous studies of voting participation. We add various immigrant‐related variables to a model that controls for individual resources, social incorporation, institutional barriers and contexts of political mobilization. We find little support for straight‐line assimilationist theories of immigrant adaptation. We also find that coming from a repressive regime has no significant effect on voting and that living in areas with Spanish‐language ballots does not increase the likelihood of voting among first generation Latinos. Our results also suggest that antiimmigrant legislation has a positive effect on participation among first and second generation immigrants. Overall, the immigrant‐related variables introduced in our analysis add significantly to the existing theoretical knowledge on voting participation in the United States.     

Post‐urbanism,Incorporation, and Migration

This paper explores an emerging pattern of migration currently being written by the new wave of Mexican migrants in New Haven, Connecticut, a city with little to no history of Mexican migration. Using New Haven as a case study, this paper argues that local conditions shape immigrant experiences and thus frame the process of social and economic incorporation. By contrasting first‐wave Italian migration and contemporary Mexican migration, we demonstrate that urban conditions both foster and impede the social and political integration of immigrant groups. Our analyses demonstrate that the presence of established ethnic communities pose challenges and benefits to the political and social incorporation of Italians and Mexicans in their respective urban eras. Moreover, we find that contemporary immigrants are entering settings that are more racialized and economically distinct than that of their first‐wave immigrant predecessors.     

In Search of a Better Life: The Experiences of Working Poor Immigrants in Vancouver,Canada

We utilized data from 72 in‐depth interviews with immigrant hotel and hospital support workers employed in the service sector of Vancouver, Canada to analyse migration decisions and subsequent experiences after arrival. We found that migrant social networks were centrally important, both as a stimulus for migration and in shaping post‐arrival experiences. At the same time, the working conditions faced by immigrants after arrival, such as low pay and long work hours, resulted in serious challenges. While some struggled with multiple jobs to make ends meet, others felt their economic circumstances prevented them from even bringing their children to Canada. In some cases, children were returned to their country of origin. Features of low‐wage service sector jobs also limited the time available for participation in community life. The findings both support and advance recent theoretical contributions about the incorporation of immigrants in the United States and Canada. As immigrants frequently face occupational downgrading and are channelled into low‐wage service sector jobs, the conditions of work and social policies are important for their post‐arrival experiences and incorporation. Going beyond traditional conceptions of citizenship in the immigration literature, some respondents acted through their union and community organizations to attempt to change society and improve their fortunes. While some sought social justice through political activism, others used their limited family and community life time to reterritorialize values from their countries of origin. Part of their activism was transnational, such as sending remittances to help loved ones back home, but other involvement included participation in organizations with the aim of promoting social justice or improving life in their new country. The experiences of immigrant service sector workers in Vancouver suggest a need for greater emphasis on the role of both immigrant and non‐immigrant specific social and labour policies for understanding immigrant incorporation in North America.     

Space,time, and self: Rethinking aging in the contexts of immigration and transnationalism

Critical gerontology views aging as a social construction that reflects the intersections of micro-processes with the macro-level forces of individual aging experiences. In the contexts of immigration and transnationalism, however, the macro-structural conditions, dynamics and experiences of aging have become further diversified and complicated. The dearth of empirical and explanatory knowledge in this area has inhibited us from comprehending aging in a changing world. Drawing on data from a study of Chinese grandparents' experiences of transnational caregiving in Canada, this article examines the impacts of such experiences on three interconnected dimensions – spatial, temporal and cognitive – of aging. Although the practice of transnational caregiving allows skilled immigrant families to mobilize care resources outside Canada, it has not only ruptured the traditional trajectories of aging for their elderly parents, but also complicated the inequalities that they have to bear on individual, familial and transnational levels. I argue that the critical examination of aging in the context of transnational caregiving helps us take into consideration those dimensions (such as place, space, time, and knowledge) that are changed by immigration processes, and rethink aging from a broader perspective that links seniors' experiences with their relationship with their adult immigrant children's families and macro-structures outside national borders.     

Voting here and there: political integration and transnational political engagement among immigrants in Europe

In this article, I examine voting patterns in origin and receiving country national elections among immigrants in Europe. The existing scholarship on transnational political engagement offers two competing interpretations of the relationship between immigrant integration and transnational engagement, which I classify as the resocialization and complementarity perspectives. The resocialization perspective assumes that transnational political engagement gradually declines as immigrants become socialized into the new receiving society. Conversely, the complementarity perspective assumes that immigrant integration increases transnational political engagement. I test these competing perspectives with survey data collected between 2004 and 2008 for 12 different immigrant groups residing in seven European cities. The analysis examines how immigrant political and civic participation in receiving countries affect their proclivities to vote in homeland elections. I also analyse the effects of receiving and origin country contexts on immigrant voting behaviour in homeland elections. While my findings support both the resocialization and complementarity perspectives, they also highlight the ways in which a set of origin‐country contexts shape immigrant propensities to engage in transnational electoral politics. I observe a degree of complementarity among immigrants with resources who are motivated and eligible to participate in both receiving and origin‐country elections.     

Negotiating civic identity across different political contexts: Immigrant participation in social movements and political incorporation

This article examines the understudied intersection between migration and contentious politics, focusing specifically on immigrant participation in social movements within their host societies. Drawing upon data from the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (Anti-ELAB) Movement in Hong Kong, it illuminates the process through which Chinese immigrants become politicized, evolve collective identities, and mobilize against civil dominance. Further, it underscores the transformative potential of social movements in facilitating immigrant political incorporation. However, it also recognizes the unilateral acceptance determined by mainstream society, which often leaves immigrants sidelined in discussions regarding their qualifications for unconventional political participation. To address civil inequality, immigrants establish their civil identities, challenge dominance, and amass political capital for future incorporation. This study extends the migration and social movements literature by shedding light on the political dynamics of immigrant participation and the hurdles they encounter during their journey toward political incorporation. It also underscores the significant role of progressive social movements in fostering immigrant political participation. Furthermore, the research highlights the unique immigrant political identity that emerges and evolves through participation in social movements, contesting exclusion and monopolistic dominance over democratic realization.     

Immigrant Incorporation in Western Democracies1

How much variation is there in immigrant incorporation policies and practices across the Western democracies? Concluding that the effort to capture variation in typologies of incorporation schemes is likely to prove both futile and misleading, I propose a radically dis‐aggregated perspective that conceives of incorporation as the product of the intersection of migrant aspirations and strategies with regulatory frameworks in four domains — state, market, welfare, and culture. Because some but not all of the regulatory institutions in these domains were created with immigrant incorporation in mind, national incorporation frameworks are not fully cohesive, are constantly changing, and at best can be described as belonging to a handful of loosely connected syndromes.     

Immigrant Transnational Organizations and Development: A Comparative Study1

This article explores how ninety Colombian, Dominican, and Mexican transnational immigrant organizations pursue philanthropic projects that aid in the development of their country or community of origin. We find that each nationality's context of exit and reception affects the origin, strength, and character of their organizations. We produce “maps” of the interaction of transnational organizations with each country of origin and conduct multivariate regressions to establish determinants of key organizational characteristics, including their degree of formalization and form of creation. Generally, Colombian organizations assume more middle‐class forms, Dominican organizations stem largely from politics in the country of origin, and Mexican organizations are primarily hometown associations with greater involvement of the national state. We observe that regardless of nationality, transnational immigrant organizations’ members are older, better‐established, and possess above‐average levels of education, suggesting that participation in transnational activities and assimilation are not incompatible. The character of proactive activities by each national state are examined. Theoretical implications for immigrant adaptation and community/national development are discussed.     

Grounding Immigrant Generations in History: Cuban Americans and Their Transnational Ties1

The two paradigms for analyzing immigrant experiences, “assimilationist” and “transnationalist,” leave unanalyzed important differences in immigrant adaptation rooted in different historical generational experiences. This article analyzes the importance of a historically grounded generational frame of analysis. It captures differences in views and involvements between two cohorts of first generation émigrés. Empirically, the study focuses on different Cuban‐American cohort crossborder ties. The first cohort, comprised of émigrés who left between 1959 and 1979 primarily for political reasons, publicly oppose travel to Cuba because they believe it helps sustain a regime they wish to bring to heel. The second cohort, who emigrated largely for economic reasons, is enmeshed in transnational ties that, paradoxically, are unwittingly doing more to transform Cuba than first wave isolationism. The cohort comparison is based on interviews with émigrés in Union City, New Jersey and Miami, Florida. The analysis of effects of transnational ties rests on interviews in Cuba as well.     

Transnational political practices and the receiving state: Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands

This article examines how the social and political contexts in receiving countries affect the transnational political practices of migrants and refugees, such as their mobilization around political events in their homeland. The case study explores the political participation of Turks and Kurds in Germany and the Netherlands in its full complexity, that is in both the immigration country and in homeland politics. The findings suggest that transnational political practices should not be reduced to a function of the political opportunity structures of particular receiving countries for two main reasons: (a) more inclusive political structures, which provide for more participation and co‐operation on immigrant political issues, may at the same time, and for that very reason, serve to exclude dialogue on homeland politics; (b) homeland political movements may draw on a different range of resources than their immigrant political counterparts, including those outside the local political institutional context.     

Inequalities in Transnational Families

Over the past two decades, interest in the transnational lifestyles of contemporary migrants has grown significantly. In this article, we focus not on transnational identities, processes or structures, but rather on the emergent literature on transnational families in the context of migration to the United States. Transnational family studies broadly fall into two thematic camps: 1) those that describe transnational households as cooperative units in the face of economic, political and legal constraint and 2) those that show how the conditions that lead family members to live apart exacerbate and create new sources of conflict within families. Whether highlighting family conflict or cooperation, contemporary transnational family studies differ theoretically from prior research on immigrant families. Instead of focusing on immigrant incorporation, this literature demonstrates how global structures of inequality at the macro-level affect the everyday lives of transnational family members, as well as how individual action reproduces or challenges these broader social inequalities.     

Salvadoran economic transnationalism: embedded strategies for household maintenance,immigrant incorporation,and entrepreneurial expansion

This article presents a case study of the transnational economic practices linking two Salvadoran settlements in the United States and El Salvador. It considers the relationship between economic transnationalism, immigrant settlement and economic development in the country of origin. Four processes are examined including: (1) the creation of border‐spanning social networks by migrants and their home country counterparts; (2) the construction of transnational economic activities and institutions; (3) the broader transnational social formations in which these are embedded; and, (4) the cumulative and unintended consequences of economic transnationalism for migrant households, the immigrant community, and El Salvador. The article applies the concepts of social network, social capital, and embeddedness, to explain the sources and determinants of individual‐ and community‐level variation in types of transnational economic practices. The conclusions drawn are that economic transnationalism is both part of a transnational settlement strategy and holds potential for economic development in the country of origin.     

Political Incorporation Among Immigrants from Ten Areas of Origin: The Persistence of Source Country Effects

Using four years of data from the Current Population Survey, this study examines the effect of country of origin on two types of political incorporation among immigrants ‐ citizenship and voting ‐ in the contemporary United States. Results show that country of origin is a statistically significant predictor of citizenship acquisition for nine of ten immigrant groups and for voter turnout for five of ten groups, net of income, education, length of residence in the United States, and other demographic characteristics. The findings also suggest that country of origin matters as much for how it interacts with other key characteristics, such as education and income, as for the independent influence it exerts on these two political processes. For immigrants from most countries under examination, lower levels of education and income discourage citizenship acquisition. An exception is found among Britons, for whom lower levels of income encourages naturalizing. In the voting process, higher levels of education encourage voter turnout for most immigrant groups. Though country of origin has a greater effect on naturalizing than on voting, it significantly impacts both types of political incorporation. The differing effects of country of origin and other demographic factors on naturalizing and voting, respectively, suggest the two processes are distinct from one another.     

Migrating Gender Inequalities? Immigrant Women's Participation in Political Survey Research

This study examines the participation of immigrant women in political surveys in Canada as a form of political participation. Investigating immigrant women's participation in the various components of the Canadian Election Studies, this study highlights the structuring impact of pre‐migration experiences with gender inequalities from two different perspectives. The larger the gender inequalities in immigrant women's country of origin, the lower their retention rate to the post‐election surveys, and the greater their propensity to provide non‐responses to political survey‐items. This study contributes to a better understanding of immigrant political integration and the related impact of pre‐migration experiences.     

The economic role of immigrant wives in Hong Kong

The objectives of this study were to compare the employment pattern of immigrant wives with native-born wives in Hong Kong, to examine the independent influences of sociodemographic characteristics and the assimilation experience on employment behavior of immigrant wives, and to establish the extent to which immigrant wives' employment is affected by social and demographic factors and conditioned on the assimilation strategy adopted by their families. Data of the 1986 census were used, based on a 1% sample of currently married women 20-44 years old. 5478 women were identified by place of birth and length of residence in Hong Kong and 3214 native-born women were used as a comparison group. Of this 5478, 2018 women were earlier immigrants from mainland China who had lived in Hong Kong for more than 5 years and 246 were recent Chinese immigrants. Labor force participation of the native born was 51.87% and that of China born was 48.89%, however, early immigrants had a rate of participation of 46.84% and recent immigrants had 66.81%. The labor market incorporation of early immigrants showed that 10.28% were self-employed and 13.13% were outworkers, which was in contrast to the native-born, who were more represented in employee occupations. 79.12% of native-born were wage employees compared 69.58% of early immigrants. Immigrant wives were disadvantaged regarding education and vocational training; their wages were substantially lower than those of the native-born women. Immigrant families had an average of 2.2 children, compared to 1.7 for natives. Logit analysis showed that age had a negative relationship with labor force participation, while education had a positive effect, and recent immigrants had a significantly higher labor force participation. Multinominal logit analysis found that more educated and better skilled women were significantly more likely to engage in wage employment. Children in the family restricted women's participation in wage employment.     

Parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in Alberta

This paper provides insights into the little-explored gendered perspective of the parenting practices of Somali immigrant mothers in a Canadian province (Alberta). We use a critical ethnographic methodology and a transnational feminist framework. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Somali mothers aged 18 to 50. Mothers were interviewed about their parenting practices in a post-migration context, including challenges. Our results show immigrant mothers combine their cultural values with new values from Canada that they find effective. We find gendered differences in how parenting experiences are perceived. Our results suggest the need for anti-racist and culturally safe health, education, and child policies and practices.     

Transnational migration: taking stock and future directions

Increasing numbers of sending states are systematically offering social and political membership to migrants residing outside their territories. The proliferation of these dual memberships contradicts conventional notions about immigrant incorporation, their impact on sending countries, and the relationship between migration and development in both contexts. But how do ordinary individuals actually live their lives across borders? Is assimilation incompatible with transnational membership? How does economic and social development change when it takes place across borders? This article takes stock of what is known about everyday transnational practices and the institutional actors that facilitate or impede them and outlines questions for future research. In it, I define what I mean by transnational practices and describe the institutions that create and are created by these activities. I discuss the ways in which they distribute migrants’ resources and energies across borders, based primarily on studies of migration to the United States.     

The Role of Social Networks in Immigrant Women’s Political Incorporation

This article examines how immigrant women’s social networks affect their propensity to vote and to participate in unconventional political activities, as well as their knowledge of politics and government services and programs. Our primary source of data is a telephone survey of women living in Canada’s two largest metropolitan areas. Our findings show that contrary to the social capital literature, bonding ties do not exert strong negative effects on political incorporation, while bridging ties are not as helpful as hypothesized. What is important for immigrant women are the resources that are embedded in their social networks.     

Perceptual Disconnect: An Ethnographic Account of Immigrant Political Incorporation

Scholarship often assumes that there is a correlation between successful immigrant political incorporation and newcomers’ ability to make sustained claims and reallocate city or state resources. By influencing or nominating legislators, scholars assume immigrants become civically engaged and politically empowered. However, these assumptions have not been tested. This article explores the personal experiences and perceptions of Armenian immigrants in Glendale, California, where nearly 40 per cent of the city's 200,000+ population is of Armenian descent, 70 per cent of whom are first-generation immigrants. Furthermore, over 70 per cent of Glendale's elected officials claim Armenian ancestry. Nonetheless, many of Glendale's Armenian residents do not perceive the benefits of their electoral achievements. That is, there exists a perceptual disconnect between the city's ethnic-leaning reallocations and the residents’ recognition thereof. This article argues, therefore, that electoral incorporation may not, after all, prove the final step in the achievement and perception of inclusion.