The Mixed-Race Children of Immigrants: Intermarriage, Assimilation, and New Immigrant Trajectories in the United States

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 7: Multi-Racial & Mixed Race Identity

Abstract

As the United States braces for the impact of significant demographic change, the topics of immigration and multiraciality have been prevalent in discussions of the potential disruption of the contemporary racial status quo. In particular, there is interest in the impact of these growing populations on racial relations, and whether these changes might prompt a hardening of racial lines, the dissolution of racial boundaries, or a restructuring of the racial hierarchy. While these twin drivers of the new American demographic have been analyzed as part of the same wave of population change, they have largely been treated as two distinct and separate phenomena. However, a greatly underexplored intersection of multiraciality and immigration is the section of the population that is both multiracial and part of a recent immigrant generation. This paper focuses on the experiences of multiracial people who are the children of immigrants. While the trend of increased immigration and intermarriage has been credited for the growth the multiracial population, little attention has been dedicated to the migrants who may be mixed race or intermarried when they come to the United States. Since “multiracial” is a relatively new identity category itself—the 2000 Census was the first to allow respondents to indicate more than one category for race—the conflict of racialization practices between the home country and the emergent racial formations in the U.S. make for a particularly poignant site to study the shifting demographics and relationships in the new American racial landscape.

Author

• Alyssa Marie Newman, Harvey Mudd College