Making Sense of Ethnic Attrition in the Nigerian American Second Generation

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Making Sense of Ethnic Attrition in the Nigerian American Second Generation September 2016 Making Sense of Ethnic Attrition in the Nigerian American Second Generation Amon Emeka Skidmore College A paper prepared for presentation consideration by Population Association of America 2017 Annual Meetings Chicago, Illinois Abstract: Prevailing theories of immigrant adaptation hold that with the passage of time and generations, immigrant identities shift away from countries and ethnicities of origin and toward identities that reflect their destinations. Many European immigrants of the 20th century traded their specific national origins for American or White or Euro-American identities. Such identificational shifts have been associated with upward mobility even for some non-European groups including Mexican Americans. But it is not clear that this is path has been available to Nigerian immigrants. They may not be able to trade their Nigerian identities for American and certainly not White identities. When they cease to be Nigerian, they are likely to become Black or African-American in the eyes of others and perhaps in their own eyes. In this paper, I use U.S. Census and American Community Survey to trace patterns of identity in a Nigerian second generation cohort across a 25 year period (1990 to 2014) as they advance from early school-age to adulthood. The cohort shrinks inordinately across the period as its members cease to identify as Nigerian, and evidence suggests that those who are downwardly mobile are more likely to drop out of the Nigerian population leaving us with a positively selected Nigerian second generation and, perhaps, unduly optimistic assessments of intergenerational mobility among Nigerian Americans. 1 Making Sense of Ethnic Attrition in the Nigerian American Second Generation In 2014, there were just more than 275,000 Nigerian-born people living in the U.S. and tens of thousands more U.S. born persons of Nigerian-parentage. The exact size of the Nigerian second generation cannot be ascertained given limitations of the U.S. Census, but this number is of central importance for the purposes of immigration scholarship. The ability or inability of Nigerian immigrants to translate their high levels of human capital into oesuate ualit of life and pass those advantages on to their U.S. born children will shed new light on the impacts of national origins, ethnicity and race on immigrant adaptation in the post-Civil Rights Era U.S. Our ability to assess their intergenerational mobility among them will depend on our ability to reliably identify U.S. born adults of Nigerian parentage—the Nigerian second generation, but typical patterns of immigrant adaptation may undermine our ability to do this. Immigrants adapt in various ways to their new surroundings and this may include changes in the way they identify ethnically and/or racially. Traditional assimilation theories hold that with the passing of time and especially with the passing of generations, immigrants will less often identify with the places and peoples from whence they come and more often with the places and peoples of their new homes (Gordon 1964). The earliest articulations suggested that Irish immigrants, for instance, and especially their U.S. born descedats ould ease to idetif as Iish ad adopt a Aeia idetit. By the same logic, we may expect to find that some Nigerian-born Americans and even more of their U.S. born children will cease to identify as Nigerian after a time. Such identificational change may or may not reflect assimilation, but it will likely to lead some members of the Nigerian second generation not to identify as Nigerian when faced with questions of ethnic identity. This pattern of disidentification has is referred to as ethnic attrition which is of concern for scholars of immigrant adaptation because it undermines their ability to identify representative samples of second generation populations (Duncan & Trejo 2015). This is an especially pressing concern if those who identify with the ethnicities and national origins of their immigrant parents differ on social and economic dimensions from those who do not. In other words, ethnic attrition is an especially pressing concern if it is selective. In this paper, I use 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census data along with 2010-14 American Community Survey data to answer the following questions: 1) Is ethnic attrition evidenced in the Nigerian American second generation, and 2) is it selective? These are important questions for both theoretical and methodological reasons. To the extent that it happens, ethnic attrition may signal a pattern of immigrant integration consistent with assimilation and/or racialization theories developed by immigration scholars over the last century. But such attrition may also undermine our ability to track Nigerian American social and economic progress across generations by leading members of the Nigerian second generation not to identify as such. If thee ae etai tpes that ae oe poe to trade Nigerian identities for Black and/or American identities, then summary statistics based only on those who retain Nigerian identities will be misleading (Duncan & Trejo 2015). For these reasons, answering the questions asked above is crucial to our understanding of patterns of adaptation and achievement of Nigerian immigrants, Black immigrants, and immigrants more broadly. 2 Why should we expect Nigerian Immigrants to Stop Identifying as Nigerian? To assess Nigerian adaptations in the U.S. we have to trust that the U.S. born children and grandchildren of Nigerian immigrants will identify themselves as such. Theory and prior research on patterns of immigrant adaptation in the U.S. suggest that some number will not. The phrase ethnic attrition implies no particular rationale, reasoning, or process leading idiiduals to dop out of thei ethnic group (identity), but social scientists have articulated a variety of reasons we might expect to see some amount of ethnic attrition among immigrant minorities. Some have argued that ethnic attrition is likely to reflect a pattern of assimilation whereby immigrants become identificationally indistinguishable from the members of the American mainstream—Americanization—by way of primary group associations and interaiage ith ees of the host soiet (Park 1951; Gordon 1964). Others have pointed to the possibility that some immigrants and immigrant groups undergo a segmented or racialized assimilation process that pulls some of them away from their national or ethnic origins and towards racialized minority identities that are marginal to the American mainstream (Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Golash-Boza 2006). All of theories portend ethnic attrition. Voluntary migrants are expected to move away from identities that accentuate their origins and toward identities that spotlight their destinations. This movement is part and parcel of the assimilation process as described by Milton Gordon (1964) and others. In its most extreme manifestations this identificational assimilation would lead immigrants and especially their children and grandchildren to identify entirely with the new country and not at all with the old. More often however, the salience of ethnic group memberships fade more predictably than the appeal of ethnic labels. Much has been made of an apparent fading of ethnic attachment among Europeans in the U.S. by scholars who suggest that for many of their descendants, ethnicity has become a more fleeting and occasional set of attachments (Lieberson & Waters 1986; Alba 1990; Waters 1990; Alba and Nee 2003). By the end of the 20th century, the descendants of European immigrants of the early twentieth century were by and large aeage Aeias i their workaday lives and ethi only on special occasions (Alba 1985, 1990; Gans 1979; Waters 1990). This may happen for Nigerians immigrants too, but with a significantly different set of causes and consequences that will be addressed later. Intermarriage between ethnic groups is by most counts a critical pat of the sto of Aeiaizatio of European immigrants in the 20th century (Lieberson and Waters 1993; Alba 1990). It makes sense that If [a] husad ad ife ae ot fo the ethi goup … the hildes ethi soializatio ill ot be as strong as it ould e if oth paets ee fo the sae goup. As a esult … the pepetuatio of ethi idetifiatio aog the hilde is ot assued he thee ae high leels of iteaiage (Waters 1990:102). So it is important to know how typical outmarriage is for whatever group(s) are being studied. However, it may be equally important to know whom they are marrying—what ethnic or racial boundaries are being crossed in the process (Lichter and Qian 2015; Cornell and Hartmann 2008: 172-3). Whether intermarriage will lead to ethnic attrition and, more specifically, assimilation of non- European immigrant groups who have been predominant in U.S. immigration streams for the last half century remains an open empirical question. 3 Ethnic Attrition Is Not Just a White Thing: The Mexican American Case There is reason to believe that ethnic attrition will occur among non-European immigrants in the U.S. Mexican Americans provide a useful case in point. They constitute the largest non-European immigrant group in the 20th century and there is evidence of substantial ethnic attrition among them. Alba and Islam (2009) showed that Mexican-American birth cohorts shrank considerably between 1980 and 2000. Whereas, more than 260,000 U.S. born 25 to 29 year olds identified as Mexican-American in in 1980 only 203,000 45 to 49 year olds identified as such in 2000—reflecting a 22% loss of identifiably Mexican- American persons. More than one in five Mexican-Americans born in the U.S. between 1951 and 1955 stopped identifying as Mexican-American somewhere between their 25th and 49th birthdays. Ethnic attrition is occurring. Hoee, Meia Aeias ae hadl eltig ito the Aeia aistea. To the contrary, the matter of properly identifying Mexican-Americans cohorts in the U.S. has become a pressing concern precisely because Mexican identities have continued to predominate in the Mexican descendant population leading to questions about their assimilation and assimilability (Telles and Ortiz 2008).
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