Table Of ContentInheriting the City
Inheriting the City
The Children of Immigrants
Come of Age
Philip Kasinitz
John H. Mollenkopf
Mary C. Waters
Jennifer Holdaway
Russell Sage Foundation
New York
The Russell Sage Foundation
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES
Mary C. Waters, Chair
Kenneth D. Brody Kathleen Hall Jamieson Shelley E. Taylor
W. Bowman Cutter, III Melvin J. Konner Richard H. Thaler
Christopher Edley Jr. Alan B. Krueger Eric Wanner
John A. Ferejohn Cora B. Marrett
Larry V. Hedges Nancy Rosenblum
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Inheriting the city : the children of immigrants come of age / Philip
Kasinitz...[et al.].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-674-02803-6 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-0-87154-748-4 (paper)
1. Children of immigrants—United States—Social conditions—20th
century. 2. Children of immigrants—United States—Social conditions—
21st century. I. Kasinitz, Philip, 1957–
JV6600.I64 2008
305.23—dc22 2007036136
Copyright © 2008 by Russell Sage Foundation. First papercover edition 2009. All rights re-
served. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be repro-
duced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher.
Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any
purpose.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.
ANSI Z39.48-1992.
RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
112 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10065
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Map of Respondents in Metropolitan New York xii
1 Introduction: Inheriting the City 1
2 The Worlds of the Fathers and Mothers 25
3 Ethnic Identities 66
4 Family and Neighborhood Origins 94
5 The School System as Sorting Mechanism 133
6 The Second Generation Goes to Work 173
7 Forming New Families 205
8 Culture Matters 241
9 Civic and Political Engagement 274
10 Race, Prejudice, and Discrimination 300
11 Conclusion: The Second Generation Advantage 342
Methodological Appendix 371
References 387
Index 413
Acknowledgments
The idea of doing a study of the second generation of immigrants in New
York originally emerged from the discussions of the Russell Sage Founda-
tion’s committee on immigration. As is the way of such things, the project
that produced this book, as well as its companion volume, Becoming New
Yorkers: Ethnographies of the New Second Generation (Russell Sage Press
2004), turned out to be much bigger and more complicated, and to take
much longer, than we or anyone in that initial meeting could have fore-
seen. But throughout it all, Russell Sage was a partner in our efforts, and
its president, Eric Wanner, was our biggest supporter. A worthy, occasion-
ally stern, and always astute advisor and task master, Eric made this study
possible. In addition to providing the funding for the project, Russell
Sage also hosted Philip Kasinitz and John H. Mollenkopf for a wonderful
year as visiting scholars in 2000–2001. We should particularly thank former
Russell Sage Foundation vice president Reynolds Farley and program offi-
cers Stephanie Platz and Aixa Cintron for their invaluable help.
We began the project as novices in the field of survey research. We
could never have pulled off a survey of this size without our friends.
Garth Taylor was a huge help in the early stages of the first proposal. The
telephone survey that is the basis of most of the quantitative analysis was
conducted by the firm of Schulman, Ronca and Bucuvalas Incorporated
(SRBI), and we worked closely with the staff of SRBI, particularly Al
Ronca and Michael Bucuvalas, throughout the early stages of the project.
One of the first things we learned is that surveys are expensive. We
spent much of the early years of our collaboration raising money. Fortu-
nately, as the project grew, generous support was provided by a variety of
sources. We owe thanks to the National Institute for Child Health and
Development (for NIH Grants 5R03HD044598–02 and 990–0173),
particularly our program officer, Rebecca Clark; the Ford Foundation,
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viii Acknowledgments
particularly Taryn Higashi; the Rockefeller Foundation, particularly
Katherine McFate; the Mellon Foundation, particularly Harriet Zuck-
erman; and the UJA-Federation of Greater New York, particularly Caro-
line Katz and the late Gary Rubin. The final data-gathering phase of the
project, re-interviewing our in-depth respondents in 2002 and 2003, was
supported by the MacArthur Foundation and its research network on
transitions to adulthood, led by Frank Furstenberg and wonderfully ad-
ministered by Patricia Miller. Thanks to them both. In addition, Mary
Waters was supported by a year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study, which provided valuable time to write as we brought the project to
completion during the academic year 2005–2006.
The study was based at the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Thanks are due the
Graduate Center business office and the CUNY Research Foundation for
helping us to manage many aspects of a complex enterprise. Over the years,
many people worked on this project at both CUNY and Harvard Univer-
sity. They often made substantial contributions, not only to getting the
project done but also to the ideas that emerged from it. We had two crack,
multilingual teams of in-depth interviewers, one at work from 1998
to2001 and another who did the re-interviews in 2002–2003. We also had
an outstanding team of ethnographers, whose work is presented in Be-
coming New Yorkersbut who also contributed to the analysis in the present
volume. We also relied on our data analysts, administrators, and research
and editorial assistants—and some people filled multiple roles over the
years. Our heartfelt thanks go to Robert Lee Adams, Linda Allegro,
Merih Anil, Katsch Belash, Claudio Benzecry, Emily Bolton, Sherri-Ann
Butterfield, Alice Cepeda, Karen Chai, Tracy Chu, Randol Contreras,
Lauren Dye, Arianna Farinelli, Amy Foerster, Dorothy Friendly, Emily
Gan, Alwyn Gilkes, Corina Graif, Christian Grov, Martine Hackett, Luisa
Heredia, Diana Hernandez, Joshua Howard, Yvonne Hung, Miriam
Jimenez, Yvanne Joseph, Rose Kakoza, Alison Khaskelis, Hosu Kim, Niels
Kohlrausch, Sara Lee, Jacob Chong Li Lin, Laura Liu, Vivian Shuh-Ming
Louie, Victoria Malkin, Nicole Marwell, Noriko Matsumoto, Monica Mc-
Dermott, Tracy McFarlane, Tamara Mose Brown, Richard Ocejo, Carolyn
Pinedo-Turnovsky, Jackie Piracini, Giorgio Pirre, Binh Pok, Andrew
Reynolds, Michelle Ronda, Wendy Roth, Zoya Simakhodskaya, Ingrid
Skadberg, Sarah Song, Audrey Thomas, Rafael Perez Torruela, Alex Trillo,
James Trimarco, Debora Upequi, Susannah Vance, Linta Varghese,
Natasha Warikoo, Suzanne Washington, and Henry A. Welcome, Jr.
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Acknowledgments ix
A particularly important role was played by Dae Young Kim and Nancy
López, who managed the project in its early, pretest years. They were suc-
ceeded by Jennifer Holdaway, who managed the project through the most
crucial period of data gathering and who eventually became a full partner
in the endeavor, at which point Ervin Kosta came to fill the project man-
ager’s role. We should also make special mention of Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida,
who was an interviewer, an ethnographer, and a quantitative data analyst,
and who made particular contributions to the education and labor market
chapters. Cheri Minton at Harvard was invaluable in helping with com-
puter matters. The interviews were transcribed by Lynn Karow and Elinor
Bernal. Steve Romalewski of the CUNYMapping Service created the map
on page xii.
Helen Marrow, Van Tran, Rubén Rumbaut, Roger Waldinger, and Eric
Wanner all read and provided extremely useful comments on an earlier ver-
sion of the manuscript. Richard Alba deserves our special thanks for having
read both an early and a later version and making wonderfully incisive
comments on each. Significant portions of early drafts of the work were
read or listened to by Nancy Foner, Kathleen Gerson, Charles Hirschman,
Jennifer Hochschild, Peggy Levitt, Tomas Jiménez, Stanley Lieberson,
Douglas Massey, Joel Perlmann, Alejandro Portes, Aristide Zolberg,
Jeffrey Reitz, Carola Suárez-Orozco, and Marta Tienda. In addition we all
gave many talks based on this research, both throughout the United States
and in Europe. We cannot list all the different audiences and individuals
who gave us valuable feedback, but we deeply appreciate the responses we
received and believe they helped us to clarify our argument.
In addition to this volume and Becoming New Yorkers, several other
works draw, at least in part, on data from this study and contributed
to our overall intellectual arguments. These include López (2004), Kim
(2001), Zeltzer-Zubida (2004), Louie (2004), and Roth (2006). (These
works have also been the basis for numerous journal articles.) Data from
the second round of in-depth interviews will also appear as part of two ed-
ited volumes commisioned by the MacArthur Network on the Transiti-
tion to Adulthood.
We wish to thank Suzanne Nichols and April Rondeau at the Russell
Sage Foundation Press, as well as Michael Aronson at the Harvard Uni-
versity Press, which copublished the original hardcover edition of the
book. Suzanne especially had a great and lasting impact on us, most no-
tably when she proved that New York really is not as big a city as some
people might think.
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x Acknowledgments
We owe a great debt of gratitude to our thousands of respondents. Busy
young people, they took the time to share their stories with us, often for
many hours and in some cases as many as three times. Usually they did so
because they believed, as we do, that their story is an important one to
tell. What we can offer, by way of recompense, is that we tried, to the best
of our limited abilities, to get the story right.
Finally, we would like to dedicate this book to our families. They lived
with this project for more years than any of them would have liked, usu-
ally cheerfully, though occasionally reminding us of the need for balance
between work and family. We are deeply grateful for their patience and
support and advice. We dedicate this book to Lisa Gibbs, Basya Kasinitz,
Mira Kasinitz, Kathleen Gerson, Emily Mollenkopf, Ric Bayly, Katie Bayly,
Harry Bayly, Maggie Bayly, and Guy Padula.
