Transnational Schooling and the New Immigrants: Developing Dual Identities in the United States

This essay examines education as a critical link to minority integration--one often lost in the debate over immigration on both sides of the Atlantic. It suggests that western European countries, in looking to the experience of the United States, should place the specific policies and practices in their historical context and sift through the underlying scholarly and political debates to best inform their judgment. It addresses two massive waves of immigration that have had a profound effect on American identity and schooling: the migration of southern and eastern Europeans in the early twentieth century, and the recent and continuing influx of immigrants from Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. It particularly focuses on the problems that arise from transnational life styles, the potential dangers of segmented assimilation, and the arguable benefits of selective acculturation in easing the way toward full social and political participation.