IMMIGRATION AND ETHNIC AND RACIAL INEQUALITY IN THE UNITED STATES.

The article analyzes recent literature assessing the impact of three factors including economic restructuring, racial discrimination, and immigration on the current patterns of racial inequality in the U.S. Because of the enormous impact of immigration on the composition of America's nonwhite populations, researchers stress the importance of combining analyses of the economy and of racial and ethnic discrimination. The research literature on ethnic inequality shows that progress in narrowing the gap between minorities and whites and among white ethnics was made when the economy was expanding through the mid-1970s. After that, for many groups, the progress slowed, stopped, or reversed. The restructuring of the American economy in the last few decades has hit many unskilled minority workers hard. In addition, the evidence indicates that direct discrimination is still an important factor for all minority subgroups except very highly educated Asians. The large numbers of immigrants entering the U.S. in recent decades have had mixed success, but there are some intriguing ways in which immigrants seem to have achieved mobility in spite of hard economic times and nonwhite status.