Incorporating Diversity: Rethinking Assimilation in a Multicultural Age

As the best single-source collection of classic and contemporary readings on the subject, this anthology will be a valuable reference to scholars of immigration, race and ethnicity, national identity, and the history of ideas, and indispensable for courses in history and the social sciences dealing with these topics.' Ruben G. Rumbaut, co-author of Immigrant America: A Portrait and Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation Societies today are increasingly characterized by their ethnic, racial, and religious diversity. One key question raised by the global migration of people is how they do or do not come to be incorporated into their new social environments. For over a century, assimilation has been the concept used in explaining the processes of immigrant incorporation into a new society. It has also been applied to indigenous peoples, to refugees, and to involuntary migrants caught up in the slave trade. Assimilation has confronted many scholarly challenges which were often intermeshed with particular political agendas. This book allows readers to obtain a clearer sense of the canonical formulation of assimilation theory and an understanding of the key themes and issues contained in current efforts to rethink and revise the classical perspective for today's changing world.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Introduction; Chapter 1 The Revival of Assimilation in Historical Perspective, Peter Kivisto; Part 2 The Classical Formulation; Chapter 2 Racial Assimilation in Secondary Groups with Particular Reference to the Negro, Robert E. Park; Chapter 3 The American Ethnic Group, W. Lloyd Warner, Leo Srole; Chapter 4 Assimilation into the Larger Society, Tamotsu Shibutani, Kian M. Kwan; Chapter 5 American Immigrant Groups: Ethnic Identification and the Problem of Generations, Vladimir C. Nahirny, Joshua A. Fishman; Chapter 6 The Nature of Assimilation, Milton M. Gordon; Part 3 Assimilation Revisited; Chapter 7 Is Assimilation Dead?, Nathan Glazer; Chapter 8 In Defense of the Assimilation Model, Ewa Morawska; Chapter 9 Toward a Reconciliation of “Assimilation” and “Pluralism”: The Interplay of Acculturation and Ethnic Retention, Herbert J. Gans; Chapter 10 The Melting and the Pot: Assimilation and Variety in American Life 1, Rubén G. Rumbaut; Chapter 11 Assimilation and Dissimilation, J. Milton Yinger; Chapter 12 Race, Religion and Nationality in American Society: Model of Ethnicity—From Contact to Assimilation, Elliott Barkan; Part 4 New Directions; Chapter 13 The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants, Alejandro Portes, Min Zhou; Chapter 14 Rethinking Assimilation Theory for a New Era of Immigration, Richard Alba, Victor Nee; Chapter 15 Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalization, Stephen Castles; Chapter 16 Social Spaces, Transnational Immigrant Communities, and the Politics of Incorporation, Peter Kivisto; Chapter 17 Theorizing the “Modes of Incorporation”: Assimilation, Hyphenation, and Multiculturalism as Varieties of Civil Participation, Jeffrey C. Alexander;

Review :

"As the best single-source collection of classic and contemporary readings on the subject, this anthology will be a valuable reference to scholars of immigration, race and ethnicity, national identity, and the history of ideas, and indispensable for courses in history and the social sciences dealing with these topics."
Ruben G. Rumbaut, Co-author of Immigrant America: A Portrait, and Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation.