Assimilation, Segmented

Segmented assimilation is an idea that Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou introduced in 1993 in their article, “The New Second Generation: Segmented Assimilation and Its Variants Among Post-1965 Immigrant Youth.” The original formulation seeks [Page 169]to offer an alternative theoretical perspective for understanding the process by which America's new second generation—the children of contemporary immigrants—becomes incorporated into the host society's system of stratification and explaining the divergent outcomes of this process. The theory has attracted attention in the scholarly community since its inception. It has become a powerful and increasingly influential theoretical perspective in the sociology of immigration and race/ethnicity and has been applied in education, psychology, criminology, and public health, as well as beyond the U.S. context. This entry reviews classic theories of assimilation, ...