Segmented Assimilation Test

The segmented assimilation test, formalized by Alejandro Portes and Min Zhou in 1993, examines why the children of immigrants follow strikingly different trajectories rather than converging on a single mainstream path. Against the classic assumption that each generation moves steadily upward into the white middle class, Portes and Zhou argued that the second generation can take at least three divergent routes: upward assimilation into the mainstream, downward assimilation into a marginalized underclass, or selective acculturation in which families preserve co-ethnic ties and values while advancing economically. Which route a child takes depends not on individual effort alone but on the 'modes of incorporation' — the government policy, societal reception, and co-ethnic community structure that greet the group on arrival. Empirically the theory is tested by modeling second-generation outcomes as a function of parental human capital, context of reception, and community resources, and by probing the interactions among them. The presence of significant interaction effects, rather than a single additive ladder, is the signature of segmentation. The framework reoriented immigration research toward the structural conditions that channel mobility downward as well as upward.