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Examines the incorporation of second generation immigrants in New York City, asserting that their experiences are shaped by the history of immigration among Whites, predominance of minorities in the city's population and institutions today, and interactions among immigrants and native minority groups. Discusses school and work, intergroup contact and conflict, reassessing segmentation and assimilation, the positive impact of institutions on minority mobility, and the creation of hybrid minority cultures. (SM)

Explores racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. Subjective understandings of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. (GR)

Many observers have noted that immigrants to the United States are highly concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas of a relatively few states. Though immigrants diffused into many places that had previously seen relatively few immigrants during the 1990s, as of the 2000 census, 77 percent of the nation's 31.1 million foreign born residents still lived in six states -- California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois. According to the 2000 census, the two largest metropolitan areas, Los Angeles and New York, accounted for one third of all immigrants (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2002/demoprofiles.html). While immigrants moved into many new areas during the 1990s, making the challenge of incorporating their children a national issue, their concentration in our largest cities remained pronounced., This article examines how immigrants are being incorporated into American society in gateway cities by examining second generation immigrants in New York City. In contrast to the prevailing theoretical approach, [...]

This article explores the types of racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. The subjective understandings these youngsters have of being American, of being black American, and of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. Three types of identities are evident among the second generation - a black American identity, an ethnic or hyphenated national origin identity, and an immigrant identity. These different identities are related to different perceptions and understandings of race relations and of opportunities in the United States. Those youngsters who identify as black Americans tend to see more racial discrimination and limits to opportunities for blacks in the United States. Those who identify as ethnic West Indians tend to see more opportunities and rewards for individual effort and initiative. I suggest that assimilation to America for the second-generation black immigrant is complicated by race and class and their interaction, with upwardly mobile second-generation youngsters maintaining ethnic ties to their parents' national origins and with poor inner city youngsters assimilating to the black American peer culture that surrounds them., The growth of nonwhite voluntary immigrants to the United States since 1965 challenges the dichotomy which once explained different patterns of American inclusion and assimilation - the ethnic pattern of [...]