Immigrants
Immigrants
Segmented Assimilation Theory and the Life Model: An Integrated Approach to
Understanding Immigrants and Their Children Lissette M. Piedra and David W Engstrom
The life model offers social workers a promising framework to use in assisting immigrant families. However, the complexities of adaptation to a new country may make it difficult for social workers to operate from a purely ecological approach. The authors use segmented assimilation theory to better account for the specificities of the immigrant experience. They argue that by adding concepts from segmented assimilation theory to the life model, social workers can better understand the environmental Stressors that increase the vulnerabilities of immigrants to the potentially harsh experience of adapting to a new country. With these concepts, social workers who work with immigrant families will be better positioned to achieve their central goal: enhancing person and environment fit.
KEY WORDS: acculturation; assimilation; immigrants; life model; second generation
Nearly a century ago,Jane Addams (1910)observed that immigrants needed helpintegrating their European and American experiences to give them meaning and a sense of relation:
Power to see life as a whole is more needed in the immigrant quarter of the city than anywhere else Why should the chasm between fathers and sons, yawning at the feet of each generation, be made so unnecessarily cruel and impassable to these bewildered immigrants? (p. 172)
The inability of some immigrant families to integrate the cultural capital from the world left behind with the demands of the new society creates a gulf of experience between immigrants and their children that can undermine the parental relation- ship. Today, the issue of family cohesion in the face of acculturative Stressors remains central to the im- migrant experience and creates a sense of urgency because it is so linked with the success of the second generation. The size of the immigrant population and the role their children vill play in future labor markets (Morales & Bonilla, 1993; Sullivan, 2006) moves the problem from the realm of the person to the status of a larger public concern.
Immigrant families are rapidly becoming the “typical” American family. More than one in seven
families in the United States is headed by a foreign- born adult. Children of immigrant parents are the fastest growing segment of the nation’s child popula- tion (Capps, Fix, Ost, Reardon-Anderson, & Passel, 2004).The U.S. Census Bureau (2003) reported that slightly more than 14 million children (approxi- mately one in five) live in immigrant families; the percentage is even higher (22 percent) for children under the age of six (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). At a structural level, these changing demographics create large-scale and long-range effects that bear on many social services and many issues of social pohcy (Sullivan, 2006). Specifically, the population growth of native-born children in nonwhite im- migrant families, in the context of an aging white population, has implications for intergenerational and interethnic justice. The native-born children of immigrants will make up a large portion of the future workforce—and of the future contributors to the social security—recipient population (Morales & Bonilla, 1993; Sullivan, 2006).
For many immigrants, relocating to the United States means leaving one cultural universe and enter- ing a new one—a life transition that, unlike other forms of life transitions, can span decades and affect subsequent generations. Immigrant families must grapple with a distinct set of cultural adjustments. Aside from adapting to a new society, immigrant adults rear children in a cultural context that is
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different—sometimes vastly so—from the one in which they themselves were socialized, and often that context includes speaking a language other than English.
Although contemporary immigrants and their native-born children—the second generation—face the same type of parental estrangement as earlier immigrants did, the social context has changed dramatically. Immigrant families today face the challenges of adaptation in an era of eroded social safety nets and heightened scrutiny of citizenship status (Engstrom, 2006). The industrial era long ago gave way to a more technologically complex society, and the labor market has bifurcated into two sectors: high-skilled work and low-skill work, the latter with correspondingly low wages and often with no benefits (Portes & Rumbaut, 2001 ¡Wilson, 1980, 1987). Many immigrants work in low-wage jobs that provide few or no benefits and little op- portunity for advancement.
Segmented assimilation theory identifies factors that contribute to the different rates of acculturation among parents and their offspring; it also explains how intergenerational acculturation patterns affect the way the second generation confronts external obstacles to social mobility (Portes, 1996; Portes, Fernandez-Kelly, & Haller, 2005; Portes & Rum- baut, 2001; Portes & Zhou, 1993; Waters, 1996). Segmented assimilation theory has been used by scholars studying the difficulties immigrant fami- lies have with acculturating to American society. For example, segmented theory has been used to ground case studies (Kelly, 2007) and to under- stand substance use and abuse (Martinez, 2006), educational performance (Stone & Han, 2005),and racial distrust among immigrant minority students (Albertini, 2004). Chapman and Perreira (2005) used segmented assimilation theory to inform aspects of their framework for assessment of the psychosocial risks associated with successful adaptation of Latino youths. Although a useful contribution to the lit- erature. Chapman and Perreira’s (2005) application of the theory is narrowly focused on Latinos and does not make use of this theory’s abihty to explain why some immigrant families have more difficulties with assimilation than others do. The explanatory power of the theory lies in its ability to illuminate factors that contribute to diverse life trajectories among immigrant families.
We argue that by adding concepts from segmented assimilation theory to the life model (Germain &
Gitterman, 1996; Gitterman & Germain, 1976, 2008), social workers can better understand the en- vironmental Stressors that increase the vulnerabilities of immigrants to the potentially harsh experience of adapting to a new country. Furthermore, this enhanced ecological approach can help practitio- ners better understand the crucial role that inter- generational acculturation plays in the challenges that some immigrant parents experience in their efforts to relate to and guide their children. With this expanded view, we believe that social workers who work with immigrant families will be better positioned to achieve their central goal: enhancing person and environment fit.
APPLING THE LIFE MODEL TO IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR CHILDREN The life model is particularly relevant for those vorking with immigrants and their children. In- spired by the idea that social work practice should be modeled on life itself, the life model places particular emphasis on the normal life processes of growth, development, and decline (Bandler, 1963; Germain & Gitterman, 1996, Gitterman & Germain, 1976, 2008). These processes, along with human motivation for problem solving and need satisfaction, are understood in the context of the life span. Life-modeled practice, grounded in ecological theory, seeks to maximize the fit between individuals, families, and groups and their environment (Germain & Gitterman, 1996; Gitterman & Germain, 1976, 2008). Capitalizing on reciprocal interactions between people and their environments, interventions are tailored to enhance people’s abihty to meet their needs and to coax the environment to become more amenable to their needs (Germain & Gitterman, 1996; Gitterman & Germain, 1976, 2008; Shulman & Gitterman, 1994). Problems in living (Gitterman & Germain, 1976) were originally conceived as generated by three interrelated sources: (1) stressful life transitions, (2) environmental pressures, and (3) maladaptive interpersonal processes (Shulman & Gitterman, 1994). Later, the hfe model added three new con- ceptual areas that reflect the profession’s evolving sensitivity to social diversity: (1) the recognition of factors that influence vulnerability and oppression; (2) the presence of healthy and unhealthy habitat and niche; and (3) consideration of variations in the life course (the trajectory taken by an individual), with attention to social and cultural determinants
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of these trajectories (Germain & Gitterman, 1996; Ungar, 2002).
