Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high quality resources and social capital that can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, Vallejo also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.
Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high quality resources and social capital that can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, Vallejo also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.
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Overview
Vallejo explores the challenges that accompany rapid social mobility and examines a new indicator of incorporation, a familial obligation to "give back" in social and financial support. She investigates the salience of middle-class Mexican Americans' ethnic identification and details how relationships with poorer coethnics and affluent whites evolve as immigrants and their descendants move into traditionally white middle-class occupations. Disputing the argument that Mexican communities lack high quality resources and social capital that can help Mexican Americans incorporate into the middle class, Vallejo also examines civic participation in ethnic professional associations embedded in ethnic communities.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804788663 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2013 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 248 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Barrios to Burbs
The Making of the Mexican American Middle ClassBy Jody Agius Vallejo
Stanford University Press
Copyright © 2012 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-8139-8
Chapter One
Class, Assimilation, and Mexican Americans
BRIAN REYES IS "LIVING THE DREAM" with his wife and two children in a charming middle-class neighborhood in Southern California. The exterior of Brian's sprawling, ranch-style home on Maple Circle was recently refreshed with a coat of light brown paint. Unfurled ferns and blooming begonias line the walkway and the lawn is a sea of emerald green. Brian's shiny new car is parked next to the family's minivan. Enter Brian's front door and step into a home that is tastefully decorated, with leather furniture, plush neutral carpet, a flat-screen television, and two large picture windows that look out onto an expansive backyard. Brian and his family exhibit all of the stereotypical symbols of middleclass life: the house in the suburbs, a fancy car, white-collar jobs, vacations, and weekends spent cruising in the minivan shuttling between Little League games and swimming lessons.
By all socioeconomic indicators, Brian is a member of the American middle class; however, his childhood was nothing like Leave It to Beaver, the iconic midcentury television show depicting middle-class suburban life. Brian used to visit Maple Circle as a young boy every week, but not as the playmate of the middle-class children who rode their bikes up and down the cul-de-sac. Brian would accompany his mother, who was employed as a domestic by several of Maple Circle's homeowners. As he explained, "My mom cleaned houses. She used to clean up and down the street here." Brian was raised in a colonia, a poor agricultural workers' community in sharp contrast to the sprawling ranch homes and well-manicured lawns of Maple Circle, by uneducated parents who toiled in low-wage, low-status jobs. Today, Brian Reyes holds a college degree, works as a midlevel manager, and owns a home on the very street where he once watched his mother scrub floors and clean toilets.
Latinos are the country's largest minority group, comprising 16 percent of the population—of which the Mexican-origin population constitutes nearly two thirds. Latinos' proportion of the population is expected to double by midcentury, a demographic change that is pushing the United States toward a society where whites will no longer be a numerical majority (Passel and Cohn 2008).. Immigrants have traditionally represented the prospect of success in America, but many scholars, political commentators, and laypersons fear that the growing Mexican American population will never achieve the rapid upward mobility and American middle-class dream that Brian Reyes exemplifies. These fears are rooted in the marginalized context of Mexican migration to the United States. Mexican immigrants typically migrate with low levels of human capital, they live in poor and working-class communities on arrival, many are unauthorized, and they face a society that is hostile to them (Bean and Stevens 2003; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008). By adopting such labels as "illegal aliens," "government drains," and "unassimilable," the media has greatly contributed to common assumptions and widespread panic that Mexican immigrants' native-born descendants will remain poor and uneducated, becoming a permanent drain on America's coffers (Chavez 2008; Hayes-Bautista 2004; Santa Ana 2002). The majority of research on the Mexican-origin population in the United States unintentionally contributes to the idea that Mexican Americans will never assimilate into the middle class, by focusing primarily on poor and unauthorized workers and their similarly low-income children who remain in disadvantaged or working-class ethnic communities.
Brian Reyes contradicts worries, research, and pervasive stereotypes about Mexican Americans, and provides a more optimistic glimpse into the future, by demonstrating that the children of low-wage, poor, and uneducated Mexican immigrants can rise up from the barrio and achieve the American dream, yet we know little about the experiences of people like him. This is a book about middle-class Mexican Americans, a population that has been disregarded and left out of the pessimistic public, political, and scholarly debates surrounding Mexican Americans and their prospects for social mobility. The objective of this book is to examine the mobility paths, lived experiences, and incorporation outcomes of today's Mexican American middle class in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of this population and a more promising outlook for the future.
Traditional and contemporary models of assimilation generally apply racialized or linear assimilation frameworks as group-specific models to explain immigrant incorporation and adaptation. Drawing on the experiences of African Americans, proponents of the racialization perspective assert that the Mexican-origin population faces limited prospects for successful socioeconomic incorporation into the middle class. Their concern is that the Mexican second and third generations, many of whom are visibly nonwhite and most who are the children and grandchildren of low-skilled migrants, will be viewed as racialized minorities and face the added challenge of obtaining jobs in a restructured economy that ultimately leads to downward mobility or economic stagnation over the generations (Portes, Fernández-Kelly, and Haller 2005; Portes and Rumbaut 2001; Telles and Ortiz 2008). On the opposite end of the spectrum, the traditional assimilation perspective argues that immigrants who achieve upward mobility will follow a pattern of linear incorporation into the white middle class (Gordon 1964). The burning question is, are the descendants of Mexican immigrants experiencing a pathway of downward assimilation or stagnation that is akin to the blocked economic progress of African Americans, or will the children of Mexican immigrants become upwardly mobile and incorporate into the white middle class? Of these two possible pathways, Mexican Americans who have entered the middle class are clearly not experiencing downward or stagnated mobility as the racialization framework predicts, but does this mean that middle-class Mexican Americans incorporate in a straight line into the white middle class? I show that neither the racialization or linear perspectives fully explains Mexican American incorporation because these group-based models overlook variations in incorporation pathways within immigrant national origin groups (Bean and Stevens 2003; Telles and Ortiz 2008; Jiménez 2010). In other words, incorporation might not be an either-or proposition of downward assimilation as a minority or upward assimilation into the white middle class. In this vein, scholars have recently proposed that the mainstream middle class is composed of more than just white ethnics (Alba and Nee 2003) and that there might be an additional pathway into the middle class—incorporation into a minority middle class through a minority culture of mobility (Neckerman, Carter, and Lee 1999). The central questions of this volume are, how do middle-class Mexican Americans experience life in the American middle class? Do middle-class Mexican Americans follow a linear assimilation trajectory where they disappear into the white middle class, or are they incorporating into a minority middle-class culture and community?
This book details the variations in experiences and incorporation pathways among middle-class Mexican Americans, variations that are largely structured by class background. A consistent problem in research on Mexican Americans is a lack of attention to issues of class and the ways in which class background affects different spheres of social life and mobility pathways. Recent innovative studies of structurally incorporated Mexican Americans primarily focus on one dimension of assimilation, ethnic identification (Jiménez 2010; Vasquez 2011), and do not examine the experiences of those who, like Brian Reyes, have achieved rapid social mobility. This book examines middleclass Mexican Americans who hail from varying class backgrounds and generations and who are at different points on the mobility journey, from 1.5- (born in Mexico and migrated before the age of 12) and second- generation (the native-born children of immigrants) middle-class pioneers to the second generation who were raised in middle-class house holds to later-generation (the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants) Mexican Americans who hail from both low-income and middle-class families. To elucidate mobility experiences and incorporation pathways, this book details the mechanisms that foster upward mobility into the middle class and examines different measures of assimilation, including giving back and family obligations, racial and ethnic identity, and civic participation.
As will become clear throughout the book, the different experiences, dilemmas, and opportunities associated with growing up in poverty or middleclass privilege shape incorporation pathways and also how Mexican Americans experience American middle-class life. I demonstrate that Mexican Americans who grow up poor face challenges stemming from their social mobility, which leads to the adoption of a class-based minority identity and a minority pathway into the middle class. I also show that those who are raised in middle-class house holds and neighborhoods closely approximate the linear assimilation model as they are more likely to view themselves, and are viewed by others, as closer to whites. By using class background as a comparative analytical tool, this book refines assimilation theory by delving into the middle-class Mexican American category to demonstrate that there are multiple pathways into the middle class, that assimilation into the middle class does not always entail becoming white, and that assimilating as a minority is not necessarily a liability.
While the book makes important contributions by applying an underutilized theoretical paradigm, the minority culture of mobility, to an understudied group, examining the incorporation experiences of the Mexican American middle class also has considerable public-policy implications. The relatively young age structure of the Mexican American population combined with the graying of the white population and the impending mass retirement of the baby boomers means that the growing second and third Mexican American generations will make up a significant proportion of the working-age population, with demographers estimating that Latinos will constitute nearly one quarter of the labor force by 2050 (Suro and Passel 2003). Minorities, especially the growing population of Mexicans Americans, are poised to fill the white-collar positions vacated by the baby boomers if they can close the education gap, making it critical to examine the mobility paths and educational and workplace experiences of those who succeed (Myers 2007; Alba 2009).
Defining the Mexican American Middle Class
Scholars disagree about the most comprehensive way to define and measure social class. Traditional indicators of class status are income, occupation, and education (Blau and Duncan 1967; Pattillo-McCoy 2000), and most studies examining the immigrant middle class define middle-class status by investigating only one or two of these economic gauges (Clark 2003; Schleef and Cavalcanti 2009). In this book, I define middle-class status as a combination of the following four attributes: a college education; a total house hold income over the national median, which was $50,221 in 2009; employment in a white-collar occupation or business ownership; and homeownership. Income is an important indicator because it affords access to material goods and middle-class patterns of consumption (Levy 1998). However, income alone is only one gauge of middle-class status, which is why additional measures of middle-class status are included. Income fluctuates with age, and when defining social class among minorities, occupation or the type of business one owns offers a measure of prestige and the job's promise as a career that affords a particular set of opportunities, middle-class social networks, and connections. For example, a well-paid Mexican American plumber may engage in middle-class patterns of consumption, but he is not going to run in the same social circles as a similarly paid Mexican American financial adviser (Alba 2009). Indeed, scholars have demonstrated that the combination of earning a higher-than- average income, having a college education, and being employed in a white-collar job correlates to subjective perceptions of being a member of the middle or upper class (Hout 2008). Homeownership is also an important measure of middle-class status because it is the single asset in which middle-class families hold the majority of their wealth (Conley 1999). And in America, homeownership indicates a higher social standing and has traditionally been revered as the cornerstone of middle-class life (Clark 2003; Halle 1984).
The Mexican American respondents in this book are all employed in white-collar occupations or own businesses, and all make incomes well over the national median. Nearly three quarters of the respondents hold a combination of three middle-class indicators, and a quarter hold all four. Before I discuss the characteristics of my sample in greater detail, it is important to contextualize the middle-class Mexican American populations in the United States and in Los Angeles, California, the metropolitan region where this study is based. Table 1 details the nativity and generation, educational attainment, occupational status, and economic status (measured by homeownership, poverty rate, and total house hold income), by race and ethnicity for the United States using data from the 2008 Current Population Survey. At the national level, the Mexican-origin population exhibits the lowest levels of education of any other racial or ethnic group. Only 7.3 percent of Mexican Americans hold a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 28.8 percent of whites, 16.1 percent of blacks, and 45.8 percent of Asians. Mexican Americans are also the least likely of all groups to be employed in middle- (service and skilled blue-collar jobs) to high- status occupations (professional, technical, white-collar occupations) and are overly concentrated in low-wage labor, as measured by the Duncan Socioeconomic Index (SEI), which scores jobs according to occupational prestige. At 53.1 percent, Mexican Americans have rates of homeownership that are slightly higher than that of African Americans (50.8 percent), but much lower compared to those of Asians (64.6 percent) and whites (79.1 percent). The Mexican American poverty rate is slightly lower than that of African Americans, and Mexican Americans barely surpass African Americans in total house hold income. In the aggregate, Mexican Americans appear to be a poor and uneducated disadvantaged ethnic group. However, these larger trends are artifacts of high levels of unauthorized and low-wage Mexican migration to the United States during the last half of the twentieth century that mask the progress of the relatively small but nonetheless significant proportion of Mexican Americans who are achieving middle-class status.
A clearer snapshot of the Mexican American middle class emerges when the data is disaggregated by generation since immigration as shown in Table 2. First-generation Mexican Americans (the foreign born) exhibit extremely low levels of education; nearly two thirds of the population lack a high school diploma. However, the proportion of Mexican Americans lacking a high school diploma decreases steadily with each generation since immigration, declining from 65 percent in the first generation to 29.1 percent in the third. In the same vein, the proportion of Mexican Americans who have attained "some college" more than triples from the first to the second generation, from 7.1 percent in the first generation to 26.9 percent by the second generation, and increases 1 percent to 27.8 percent in the third generation. While college graduation rates double between the first and second generations, from 4.9 percent to 9.5 percent, the national data show an increase of only 1 percent between the second and third generation since immigration.
Relatively low levels of education over the generations have caused much alarm among scholars and policy makers, leading some to conclude that Mexican Americans are not assimilating as rapidly, and to the same extent, as their white ethnic predecessors. Scholars argue that the substantial increase in education between the first and second generations is attributable to a sense of immigrant optimism that is inherited by the second generation, whose parents' striving for the American dream propels children to do well in school (Kao and Tienda 1995). Sociologists Eddie Telles and Vilma Ortiz (2008) assert that this sense of optimism fades over the generations and is not enough to buffer against the forces of institutional racism in education that stigmatizes Mexican Americans, leading to a reversal of educational mobility in the third generation. The data examined here are cross-sectional and detail educational attainment by generation since immigration and do not measure intergenerational educational attainment within families; however, a number of scholars have employed a birth cohort method or intergenerational analysis to demonstrate that each generation of Mexican Americans improves on the educational attainment of the last (Alba 2006; Jiménez 2010; Reed et al. 2005; J. Smith 2003; Zhou et al. 2008). Intergenerational analyses demonstrate that Mexican Americans' seemingly slow educational progress represents a delayed, rather than stagnated or reversed, assimilation trajectory (Bean and Stevens 2003; Bean et al. 2011; Perlmann 2005).
The national CPS data show that Mexican Americans in the United States, despite their relatively low levels of education, make significant progress on other important indicators of middle-class status by generation since immigration (although they do not approximate the patterns of whites, or Asians, whose levels of economic incorporation surpass those of all groups, including whites). For example, more than a quarter of the relatively young second and third generations work in high-status occupations. Total house hold income and homeownership rates increase with each generation since immigration and the poverty rate declines.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Barrios to Burbs by Jody Agius Vallejo Copyright © 2012 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of Stanford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
List of Tables....................ixAcknowledgments....................xi
1 Class, Assimilation, and Mexican Americans....................1
2 Mexican Americans Yesterday and Today....................26
3 Barrios to Burbs: Divergent Class Backgrounds and Pathways into the Middle Class....................43
4 Family Obligations: The Immigrant Narrative and Middle-Class Individualism....................70
5 Mexican Americans or Coconuts? Middle-Class Minority and American Identities....................104
6 Ethnic Professional Associations and the Minority Culture of Mobility....................143
7 Conclusion: The New American Middle Class....................174
Appendix A: Notes on Fieldwork....................191
Appendix B: List of In-Depth Interview Respondents....................199
Notes....................201
References....................207
Index....................227