As we write this introduction, Senator Barack Obama, son of an African immigrant to the United States, is in the middle of a fierce fight to secure the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Obama's candidacy brings into stark relief the fluid and evolving status of immigrants of color, regardless of either the outcome of the electoral battle or what one might think of the senator and his politics. Further, the Obama campaign is illuminating the complex and conflicted ways that racial and immigration politics intersect. Questions such as how our understandings of the constitution of racial groups are refigured, how the formation of arguably new racial groups proceeds, and what the role of racial and ethnic conflict and resentment are have all come into play during the course of the Democratic Party's contest. Obama's life story is a new one, in that it is the story of a descendent of an immigrant from a non-European part of the world, but the mythology of his story is also a very familiar one—the children of immigrants who take advantage of the opportunities available in this nation overcome large obstacles, and succeed in previously unimaginable ways.

This article presents an overview of the Hispanic population of the United States, focusing on the sources of its growth, its internal composition, its connections with the countries of origin, its role in the U.S. economy, and the emerging second generation. Intergenerational differences in outlooks and self-identities and the forces leading to the emergence of a “thick” Hispanic identity in the second generation are examined. The obstacles to successful integration faced by this youthful population and evidence of both “upward” and “downward” assimilation among its members are analyzed. Implications for the field of race and ethnic relations and for public policy toward immigrants and their offspring are discussed.

We examine the interlinked migrations between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, between the Dominican Republic and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and, finally, migrations from these three countries to the United States. The literature tends to draw stark differences between race and racism in the United States and the nonracial societies of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. However, although Blackness is a contextual category, through analyzing how “Black” migrants are racialized using these three contexts, we find that there is a simultaneously global and local derogation of “Blackness” that places Black migrants at the bottom of socioeconomic hierarchies. Further, these migrants remain largely outside of conceptions of the nation, and thus Blackness is constructed as a blend of racial phenotype and national origin, whereby native “Blacks” attempt to opt out of Blackness on account of their national identity. This dynamic is particularly true in the Caribbean where Blanqueamiento, or Whitening, is made possible through a dialectical process in which a person's Whiteness, or at least his or her non-Blackness, is made possible by contrast to an “Other.” Consequently, we argue that immigration becomes a key site for national processes of racialization, the construction of racial identities, and the maintenance of and contestation over racial boundaries.

This article considers how well the existing sociological literature on immigrant integration and assimilation responds to public fears over multiculturalism. The current backlash against multiculturalism rests on both its perceived negative effects for immigrants' socioeconomic integration and its failure to encourage civic and political cohesion. I offer a brief review of multiculturalism as political theory and public policy, demonstrating that multiculturalism addresses questions of citizenship and political incorporation, not socioeconomic integration. We have growing evidence that multiculturalism does not hurt immigrant citizenship or political integration, and might facilitate such processes. We know much less about the relationship between multiculturalism and socioeconomic outcomes. I discuss how sociologists have developed useful models of immigrants' socioeconomic assimilation but have paid scant attention to civic or political outcomes. They also have not adequately addressed the relationship between socioeconomic and political integration. We can, nonetheless, extrapolate from existing scholarship, and I outline two models of political integration that seem to emerge from the sociology of U.S. immigration: one of individual-level political assimilation, another of group-based political incorporation. I conclude by offering a number of hypotheses about the importance of “groupedness” for politics and the relationship between political action, multiculturalism, and socioeconomic integration.

One of the principal theoretical and policy questions in the sociology of international migration is the extent to which post-1965 immigrants are either assimilating in the United States or remain stuck in an ethnic “underclass.” This paper aims to recast conventional approaches to assimilation through a temporal and spatial reorientation, with special attention to the Mexican-origin case. Attending to the effects of the replenishment of the Mexican-origin population through a constant stream of new immigrants shows significant assimilation taking place temporally between a given immigrant cohort and subsequent generations. Thinking outside the national box, through comparing the growing differences between Mexican migrants and their descendants, on the one hand, and Mexicans who stay in Mexico, on the other, reveals, spatially, a dramatic upward mobility and a process of “homeland dissimilation” that conventional accounts miss. We demonstrate the analytic utility of these two perspectives through an empirical comparison with more orthodox approaches to educational stratification.

I examine how and why the social construction of Asian Americans has changed from coolie to model minority over the last century. I examine the role of the U.S. government in creating policies that systematically select particular types of entrants to the United States. Federal immigration policy privileges high-skilled workers, and a disproportionately large number of Asian immigrants are granted the status of lawful permanent resident by the federal government on the basis of employment preferences. U.S. immigration policy thus creates a selection bias, favoring Asian immigrants with high levels of formal education and social standing. I also consider the consequences of this selection bias for the construction of racial tropes and Asian American identity, and argue that the normative content of the dominant tropes of racial identity is critical in establishing the incentives and costs of identifying with racial and ethnic groups. Immigration policy, and the selection biases it may engender, is an important factor in how those tropes are constructed and experienced. Racial identity should, and does, vary as a function of the unique histories of migration, labor market demands, and shared experiences for people classified by race.

The Latino population has grown significantly over the last few decades in the United States and population projections suggest that the number of Latinos will increase disproportionately, relative to other immigrant groups, in the coming decades. These trends have resulted in great concern among some who fear that Latinos, especially Mexicans, are not acculturating and assimilating into mainstream, White America. Fears of the “browning of America” and of Latinos' presumed threat to the American way of life have led some to call for measures to ensure the preservation of America's national identity. Samuel Huntington is the latest public figure to make such claims. This paper provides an overview of Huntington's claims as well as the responses that his work has drawn from supporters and critics. Using data from the 2000 5% Public Use Microdata Sample, we assess the validity of Huntington's claims by examining the extent to which Mexicans, the largest Latino subgroup, have integrated into the United States, basing our assessment on a variety of selected demographic, social, and economic indicators. The results suggest that Mexicans have integrated in various dimensions, with the level of integration increasing with length of residence in the United States. We conclude with a discussion of the historical and contemporary context in which Mexicans have been racialized in the United States.

This paper examines Korean-Latino relations based on the results of my own research in New York City and review of other empirical studies conducted in New York and Los Angeles. Korean-Latino relations have been established mainly through the employment of Latino immigrants in Korean-owned stores. Since Korean immigrants' heavy dependence on very disadvantaged Latino workers involves labor exploitation, it has been a source of Korean-Latino conflicts. There have been many cases of picketing against Korean stores by Latino employees in both New York City and Los Angeles. But Korean-Latino business-related conflicts have been much less serious than Korean-Black business-related conflicts. Moreover, the relationships between Koreans and Latinos have some positive aspects. First, due to cultural similarities and mutual benefits derived from the employer-employee relationship, many Korean merchants maintain strong personal ties with Latino employees, informally helping them and often sponsoring their applications for green cards. Second, Korean ethnic organizations staffed by 1.5- and second-generation Koreans in Korean enclaves in Los Angeles and New York City have recently expanded their services to Latino immigrant workers and Latino children. In particular, the efforts of the Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates in Los Angeles to protect Latino workers from exploitation by Korean merchants have greatly contributed to establishing cultural, social, and organizational linkages between the two communities.

This paper provides an overview of the current debate among economists pertaining to the effects of recent immigration on the earnings and employment of native-born workers. Since much of this debate revolves around methodological differences in research design, we devote much of our effort to discussing the various strategies that researchers have used to isolate immigrant competition effects, and attempt to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy. Our overall assessment is that the central tendency of the research evidence suggests that recent immigration has had only a modest effect on the labor market prospects of native-born Americans. Some potential hypotheses that may explain this lack of a large impact are capital accumulation and the imperfect substitutability between natives and immigrants.

Little controversy remains about the profound shifts in the demographic landscape of the United States since the mid-1960s. Far more controversial is whether this transformation will bring about a new politics of race. This paper argues that a key to settling this debate is a clearer specification of the “identity-to-politics” link: the nexus between a population defined by shared racial and ethnic labels and a collective group politics based on those definitions. The paper articulates some potential pitfalls in how this nexus is commonly specified in empirical research and proposes an approach that distinguishes five key processes that are typically lumped together in linking shared demographic categories to common political destinies: definition, identification, consciousness, venue selection, and choice. The paper describes an example of this approach (the case of ethnoracial classification and the empirical measurement of race) and concludes by discussing its potential utility and limitations.

In this essay, I contend that one can understand neither the development of mass action among contemporary immigrants, nor the sporadic nature of that action, without attending to the historic role of parties and community-based organizations in shaping immigrants' political mobilization. I draw connections between the mass immigrant-rights demonstrations that took place during the spring of 2006 and what we know about how immigrants' political participation in the United States is structured by (1) the declining influence of political parties, and (2) the critical function of community-based organizations. These organizations were the focus of my recent book, Democracy's Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions (2006). Why haven't activists been able to sustain the momentum that brought hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters out into the streets during the spring of 2006? Although they, along with the Spanish-language media, played a critical role in organizing mass demonstrations against punitive immigration legislation in early 2006, labor organizations, workers' centers, advocacy and social service organizations, ethnic voluntary associations, and religious institutions face severe constraints in terms of engaging in sustained, consistent political mobilization and, therefore, mainly achieve limited mobilization. However, voter registration data from the National Association of Latino Elected Officials suggest that the demonstrations may have spurred interest in more traditional types of political participation among immigrants and their supporters. Thus, while it is true that, for the most part, political participation does not take place overnight, there may be ways for U.S. civic institutions to speed up that process through direct mobilization and the provision of information that helps immigrants to feel more comfortable and confident taking part in the political system. Trusted community-based institutions represent a vital potential force in promoting political inclusion for immigrant newcomers who contribute to so many other aspects of American life.

This essay explores the contradictions posed by states' efforts to exclude immigrants from south of the U.S. border on the grounds that they “burden” the economy, despite the same states' windfall revenue from the taxation of undocumented immigrants. Lawmakers' ongoing anti-immigrant sentiment yields a racialized contradiction in which mostly Mexican and Central American immigrants are derogated as economic burdens. In fact, they are unfairly taxed in addition to being indispensable to the U.S. economy. Based on these and other phenomena, such as racially coded preferences for higher-class immigrants and “antidiversity visas,” I contend that contemporary U.S. immigration policy has regressed toward more blatant class and “race” (albeit racially coded) discrimination.

This essay attempts to broaden the context of public and policy discourses about the nature and complexities associated with migration to the United States. Several dimensions are examined: (1) global and U.S. migration trends; (2) the effects of migration on both the communities of origin and destination; (3) issues related to the rights and standing of migrants; (4) the gendered dimensions related to migration; (5) patterns of migrants' integration into their host society; (6) the impact of human-capital investment and its consequences; and (7) the limitations of the current policy discussions and initiatives. In the case of the latter, the need to move away from polarizing and simplistic perspectives and to integrate the many socioeconomic and political complexities associated with international migration is discussed. A more comprehensive understanding of migration recognizes that it is not exclusively the result of individual behaviors and motivations. Structural relationships, both domestically and internationally, as well as public policies have also had an effect on migration flows and patterns.