Ethnic Capital Revisited: How Social-Class Diversity in Immigrants' Organized Activities Fosters Second-Generation Mobility

• In Event: 549 - Section on International Migration Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 13. Ethnic Communities

Abstract

How does participating in an ethnic organization boost educational expectations among the children of immigrants? Immigration scholars have recently shown that in national-origin communities with above average rates of college completion, the children of immigrants often earn at least a college degree even when their parents are not college graduates themselves, thus posing a considerable challenge to status attainment theory. In this paper, I investigate the relationship between group membership and higher education attainment among the second generation using original ethnographic data collected through a comparative, multi-site research design. I show how network closure in an ethnic community based organization harnesses ethnic capital and how trust facilitates its redistribution in an understudied white ethnic group, Armenian-Americans. I question why some participate and some stray if organizational membership is open to all co-ethnics and find that organizational leaders unconsciously favor participants with higher parental SES, observed through parental language fluency. While bilingual fluency ensures organizational embeddedness for higher SES participants, for those with lower SES, i.e. second generation coethnics who are not fluent bilinguals, organizational embeddedness follows from completing organizational curricula and the close friendships formed with higher SES coethnics in the process. These friendships serve to expand the educational expectations of lower SES coethnics, allowing them to acquire the cultural capital needed to successfully navigate higher education.

Author

• Oshin Khachikian, University of California, Irvine